Sovright Launches Zcash Mining Pool Testnet With Shielded Payouts

Sovright, the nonprofit contributor to Zcash, launched a testnet for a new mining pool on Monday, aiming to give independent miners more control over payouts and transaction selection at a time when the privacy-focused network rebuilds confidence after a sharp price crash earlier this month.

Formerly known as the Electric Coin Company or Bootstrap Org, Sovright designed the mining pool with shielded payouts by default, no minimum hashrate requirement and tools for miners operating physical hardware, the organization said. It also allows miners to either let the pool manage transaction selection or run their own node and build custom block templates, with the same fee structure in either case.

The launch targets a long-running structural issue in proof-of-work networks: while miners provide the hashrate needed to produce blocks, mining pools typically decide which transactions are included. For Zcash, whose core value proposition rests on shielded transactions that obscure sender, receiver and amount data, that has created a tension between the protocol’s privacy design and the mining infrastructure that helps secure it.

Sovright said some Zcash mining pools with significant network hashrate have historically censored shielded transactions, while some pools have at times exceeded 50% of the network’s total hashrate. Those dynamics have raised concerns over censorship risk, pool centralization and the resilience of Zcash’s mining layer.

“Mining is intended to be one of the most decentralized functions in a proof-of-work blockchain, yet Zcash’s mining layer has historically depended on a small number of operators,” Michelle Lai, executive chairman of Sovright, said in a statement.

The testnet launch comes after a volatile stretch for Zcash’s native token, ZEC. The asset fell by roughly half in early June after the disclosure of a critical vulnerability in Zcash’s Orchard shielded pool, which could have allowed undetectable counterfeit ZEC creation if exploited. The flaw was patched, but the episode triggered a sharp reassessment of supply-integrity risk across the market.

ZEC has since rebounded from the June 5 selloff, climbing back toward the $500 range by Monday, though it remained below the roughly $600-plus levels seen before the crash. The recovery reflects a partial stabilization after the vulnerability disclosure, but the incident has kept attention focused on the technical and governance layers that support Zcash’s privacy model.

Sovright said major Zcash pools currently pay miners to transparent addresses, making mining rewards publicly visible onchain. By supporting shielded payouts, the organization said the pool is intended to align mining rewards more closely with Zcash’s privacy principles.

The pool is also being positioned as an alternative for smaller miners at a time when institutional mining services have been expanding into Zcash. Foundry Digital, one of the largest bitcoin mining pool operators, announced earlier this year that it planned to launch an institutional-grade Zcash mining pool, citing renewed interest in the privacy coin.