Foundry Digital Announces New Zcash Mining Pool
Foundry Digital, known for its leadership in Bitcoin mining pools, announced plans on Wednesday to launch a new mining pool for Zcash, set to become available next month. This initiative is particularly targeted at publicly traded companies and financial institutions that may lack the infrastructure necessary for validating Zcash transactions.
CEO’s Insights on Zcash
In a press release, Foundry CEO Mike Colyer highlighted Zcash’s evolution into a substantial asset over its nearly ten-year lifespan, noting its crucial role in enhancing financial privacy.
Structure and Compliance
The forthcoming Zcash pool by Foundry is expected to replicate the structure of “Foundry USA,” which currently oversees approximately 31% of the total Bitcoin hash rate and has mined around 4,150 Bitcoins valued at approximately $290 million over the past month. The new pool aims to reduce compliance and counterparty risks by operating within the U.S.
Market Demand and Mining Trends
A spokesperson for Foundry clarified to Decrypt that the decision to branch out into Zcash is not directly linked to Bitcoin’s current mining profitability. Instead, they emphasized a real market demand they identified that Foundry is equipped to fulfill. The spokesperson also mentioned a shift among Bitcoin miners toward exploring opportunities within AI data centers, influenced by rising energy costs. Despite these changes, they reaffirmed that the Bitcoin mining segment remains robust and foundational for the company.
Features of the Zcash Pool
The Zcash pool will offer participants 24/7 tech support and reporting tools designed for auditability of payouts. On the pricing front, Zcash was valued at around $215 on Wednesday, a decrease of 4.5% within the day’s trading, although it has experienced a remarkable gain of over 600% in the past year.
Understanding Mining Pools
Mining pools, which allow individuals to combine computing efforts to solve blocks collectively, ensure more consistent payouts as rewards are distributed in proportion to each member’s contribution. Other notable U.S.-based mining pool operators include Ocean and Luxor. Like Bitcoin, Zcash operates on a proof-of-work model, rewarding miners with new Zcash for their computational efforts—processing complex calculations every 75 seconds to validate transactions and maintain network security.
Hash Rate and Competitive Landscape
The processing power of miners is measured in Gigasols per second (GSol/s), reflecting the capacity to propose solutions for Zcash’s incoming blocks. Since early September, the hash rate for Zcash climbed from 8.1 GSol/s to 13.8 GSol/s, indicating heightened activity in the network. However, Foundry officials noted that while there are parallels between Bitcoin and Zcash, the proof-of-work algorithms for each are fundamentally different, meaning the mining hardware cannot be used interchangeably.
Currently, the leading Zcash mining pool is ViaBTC, which holds a 30% share of the Zcash hash rate, but Foundry’s entry is poised to alter the competitive landscape.
