Foundry launches Zcash mining pool and claims 29.2% of

Foundry Digital has entered Zcash mining with a new pool it says already controls 29.2% of network hashrate. The move materially reduces ViaBTC’s prior dominance and reframes the market’s centralization and security narrative around ZEC.

Key Takeaways

Foundry Digital says its new Zcash mining pool has reached a 29.2% share of network hashrate via partnerships with institutional mining clients.
ViaBTC’s Zcash hashrate share dropped from 68.1% on Feb. 27 to 37% in the latest Zcashinfo.com snapshot.
The institutional miners supplying Foundry’s hashrate were not disclosed, leaving uncertainty around how durable the new distribution is.
Foundry’s Zcash block explorer shows the pool has mined 2,344 blocks since launching earlier this month.

Foundry’s Zcash Pool Arrives and Immediately Takes 29.2% Hashrate

Foundry Digital launched a Zcash mining pool and said it has already captured 29.2% of Zcash network hashrate through partnerships with multiple institutional mining clients. The company framed demand as compliance-driven, stating: “Institutional and public miners are seeking a compliant, purpose-built Zcash mining solution,” in a Monday statement.

For ZEC traders, the immediate point is not the branding. It is the speed at which a new venue absorbed hashpower that had been concentrated elsewhere. Hashrate is the computing power securing a proof-of-work network, and a large share translates into outsized influence over block production.

Foundry is also described as the largest mining pool on the Bitcoin blockchain, which matters because it signals existing distribution rails and client relationships that can migrate across PoW networks when economics and operational preferences line up.

Zcashinfo.com data shows ViaBTC’s share fell to 37% at the time of writing, down from 68.1% on Feb. 27. That is a sharp change in the concentration profile in a short window.

The headline risk has not vanished. It rotated. Instead of a single-pool dominance story, Zcash now looks closer to a two-large-pools distribution, with ViaBTC at 37% and Foundry at 29.2%. That shift matters because ViaBTC’s earlier dominance had already been treated as a security narrative. Coinbase flagged ViaBTC’s hashrate concentration as a security risk to the Zcash network in September 2023.

In practice, redistribution can be a sentiment catalyst even when it does not change fundamentals overnight. Traders tend to price the narrative first, then wait for the hashrate tape to confirm whether the new equilibrium is stable.

Pool Footprint and Miner Economics: 2,344 Blocks, 75-Second Cadence, 1.25 ZEC Subsidy

Foundry said it launched a Zcash block explorer showing the Foundry Zcash Pool has mined 2,344 blocks since it launched earlier this month. A block explorer is simply the public ledger view that lets anyone verify blocks, transactions, and related metadata.

Zcash blocks are mined roughly every 75 seconds and pay a block subsidy of 1.25 ZEC, which Foundry equated to about $458 at current market prices. For miners, pools exist to reduce payout variance by aggregating computing power and distributing rewards proportionally.

There is also a timeline wrinkle traders should not ignore. While Foundry described the pool as launching earlier this month, Zcashinfo.com data suggests Foundry began accumulating hashrate on or around March 4, about a week before the pool was first announced. That makes the “launch” look more like a phased rollout than a clean on/off switch.

Signals Traders Should Track in ZEC’s Mining-Power Shakeup

The first signal is whether Foundry’s share holds near ~29% or continues rising in subsequent Zcashinfo.com snapshots. A steady plateau implies sticky routing and stable miner preference. A continued climb reopens the same concentration debate under a different name.

Second, watch whether ViaBTC stabilizes around ~37% or rebounds toward prior levels. A rebound would suggest the recent shift was opportunistic rather than a durable re-rating of pool risk.

Third, any disclosure from Foundry on which institutional miners are contributing hashrate would help traders handicap persistence. Without attribution, the market cannot easily judge whether this is a few large miners that can re-route quickly.

Finally, updates to Foundry’s Zcash block explorer, including block counts and implied production rate after the initial 2,344 blocks, will be the cleanest ongoing check that the pool’s share is being maintained by real block production rather than a transient snapshot.

Marcus Hale’s Take: Centralization Risk Didn’t Disappear—It Rotated

I treat this as a market-structure story first and a “new entrant” story second. The threshold that matters is whether Zcash settles into a stable two-pool regime (ViaBTC ~37%, Foundry ~29%) or whether one pool resumes a path back toward majority control, because that is where the security narrative becomes tradable again.

The real test is whether Foundry’s share is sticky without naming the miners behind it. If the hashrate holds while block production stays consistent beyond the initial 2,344 blocks, the setup starts to look structural rather than narrative-driven, and that is when ZEC’s centralization discount can actually reprice in a durable way.

Foundry launches Zcash mining pool and claims 29.2% of network hashrate