Monero vs Zcash: how their privacy really differs

Monero makes every transaction private by default. Zcash lets each user choose: its shielded addresses use zero-knowledge proofs to hide the sender, receiver and amount, but its transparent addresses work much like Bitcoin’s.^[1][2] A fully shielded Zcash payment hides in a bigger crowd than a Monero payment does today, but most ZEC isn’t shielded.

What’s the main difference between Monero and Zcash?

Default versus optional privacy. On Monero, every transaction is private by mandate, so you can’t send a transparent payment by accident.^[1] On Zcash, a transparent address, starting with “t”, shows the sender, the recipient and the amount to everyone, as Bitcoin does. Shielded pools keep ownership, balances and history out of public view.^[2]

Newer Zcash addresses, called unified addresses, start with “u1” and can hold more than one kind of receiver, so a payment’s privacy depends on which receiver is used. Payments that cross between the transparent and shielded sides leak too: the amounts going into or out of a pool are visible, and they can be used to infer links between addresses.^[2]

How much Zcash activity is shielded?

A minority. About 29% of the ZEC issued so far was held in shielded pools as of October 2026, according to The Block, which cites Zcash’s official network dashboard.^[2] The rest sits in transparent addresses, where balances and payments are public. That figure counts coins, not transactions, and coins can sit in a pool without moving.

The split matters for privacy. The shielded crowd is made up only of people who chose to shield, and every trip across the boundary hands an observer an amount to match.

Is Monero more private than Zcash?

It depends on which transactions you compare, because the two hide the sender in different ways.

Monero uses ring signatures. When you spend, your wallet signs with a ring of 16 possible outputs, one real and the rest decoys taken from the blockchain, so every input has an “immediate anonymity set” of 16. Monero’s developers say rings are open to some attacks and allow statistical analysis, which the way decoys are chosen only partly offsets.^[3]

Zcash uses zk-SNARKs, a compact kind of zero-knowledge proof that lets an encrypted transaction be checked as valid.^[4] Observers can’t see which notes, Zcash’s units of value, were spent or who received them,^[2] so the crowd is, in effect, every note in that pool rather than a ring of 16.

So a fully shielded Zcash payment has the bigger crowd. But every Monero payment hides its sender, receiver and amount,^[1] while most ZEC sits in public addresses and crossings between pools leak amounts. Neither coin guarantees complete anonymity.^[2] How private is Monero? covers Monero’s limits in detail.

What is FCMP++, and when will Monero get it?

FCMP++ is Monero’s planned replacement for ring signatures, built on full-chain membership proofs. Instead of hiding among 16 ring members, each input would prove that it spends one of any output on the blockchain. When developers described the plan in April 2024, that meant going from an immediate anonymity set of 16 to about 100 million.^[3]

As of November 2026, it isn’t live. FCMP++ runs on a public test network called a stressnet, whose latest beta came out on 26 October 2026 with a warning that it will likely have bugs.^[5] The developers’ stated route to the main network runs from the beta stressnet through code review and audits, then Monero’s ordinary testnet, then mainnet.^[6] Check getmonero.org for any announced date.

Does Zcash still need a trusted setup?

Its first two shielded systems did; Orchard, added in May 2022, doesn’t. Sprout and Sapling needed public parameters created in elaborate multi-party ceremonies, and anyone who kept the secret randomness from such a setup could create false proofs that look valid, and so counterfeit coins. Orchard uses the Halo 2 proving system, which removes the trusted setup.^[4] Monero’s range proofs, called Bulletproofs, need no trusted setup either.^[7]

Hidden amounts bring a shared risk. Monero contributors have pointed out that when amounts are hidden, as in Monero and shielded Zcash, nobody can simply count the supply, so a bug in the code could allow inflation that nobody sees. They noted that such a flaw had affected Zcash, and that after a 2017 Monero bug it was verified that no inflation had occurred.^[8] In mid-2026, a security researcher found a counterfeiting flaw in Orchard, which Zcash patched in a network upgrade. Its developers believe the flaw was never exploited, but say exploitation would have been undetectable on the blockchain. So they introduced a new shielded pool, Ironwood, which funds reach through a “turnstile” that they say will provide evidence that no counterfeiting occurred.^[2][11]

How do their supplies differ?

Monero has a fixed emission rate rather than a maximum supply. Each block pays a permanent “tail emission” of 0.6 XMR, which adds less than 1% a year, a rate that falls towards zero over time. The aim is to keep miners paid without relying on fees alone.^[1]

Zcash follows Bitcoin’s model: a maximum of 21 million ZEC, with the block reward halving roughly every four years. The most recent halving, in November 2024, cut the reward to 1.5625 ZEC.^[2] In November 2026, Zcash’s NU7 upgrade cut the target time between blocks from 75 seconds to 25, scaling each block’s reward and the halving schedule to match so the 21 million cap holds. It also began setting aside 60% of transaction fees in a public reserve, to be paid back out through block rewards from about 2031.^[12]

Who pays for development?

Zcash funds development from the block reward. Under a funding model introduced in November 2025, 80% of each block subsidy goes to miners, 8% to community grants and 12% to a development fund controlled by ZEC holders.^[2]

Monero relies on volunteers and donations. Its FAQ says everything is built by volunteers or community-funded contributors.^[1] Developers raise money for specific work through the Community Crowdfunding System: a 2026 proposal for four months of full-time work, including the FCMP++ integration, was funded by 44 contributors.^[6]

How are Monero and Zcash mined?

Monero uses RandomX, a proof-of-work algorithm designed to resist ASICs, the specialised machines built for mining, so that miners with common consumer hardware can compete fairly.^[1] Zcash uses Equihash.^[2] When Zcash adopted it in 2016, its developers thought cost-effective ASICs for it were unlikely to appear soon, but by May 2018 Equihash had been implemented in ASIC miners.^[9]

Which wallets and exchanges support them?

Any Monero wallet sends private transactions, because there’s no other kind.^[1] With Zcash, check that your wallet supports shielded addresses, since a unified address is only as private as the receiver a wallet actually uses.^[2] Monero wallets explained covers wallet types and backups.

Some exchanges have delisted privacy coins over compliance concerns.^[2] Access differs by coin, though: as of November 2026, Kraken doesn’t let clients in the EEA, the UK, Canada or Australia deposit or trade Monero, while Zcash is restricted only for its Australian clients.^[10] Why exchanges delist Monero explains the rules behind decisions like these.

How do Monero and Zcash compare side by side?

Monero or Zcash: which fits which need?

Neither is better for everyone. It depends on what you need:

• Privacy without decisions. Monero applies the same protection to every payment, so there’s no setting to get wrong and no public mode to slip into.
• A choice of transparency. Zcash lets you keep some funds public, for example for open accounts, and shield the rest. Its shielded pools offer a bigger crowd per payment, as long as you stay shielded.
• The setup. Monero’s Bulletproofs need no trusted setup; on Zcash, only the older Sprout and Sapling pools used one. Both coins depend on their cryptography and code being right.
• Supply. Zcash has a fixed cap. Monero adds a small, permanent reward to keep paying miners.
• Access. Exchange listings and wallet support differ by coin and by country, so check what works where you live.

Both projects are still changing: Monero is testing FCMP++, and Zcash introduced a new shielded pool and its NU7 upgrade in 2026. For the wider picture, see Privacy coins explained.