Published Zcash shielded figures range from "fewer than 15 %" to 59.3 %, and most of them are not contradictions. They answer different questions: how much ZEC sits in shielded pools, or how many transactions use one. They also use different dates and denominators. Checked against dated chain data, every supply figure that states its date matched ours within 0.1 point.
The numbers on October 14, 2026
29.21 % of the issued ZEC supply sat in shielded pools (block 3,518,049). In the 30 days from September 15 to October 14, 50.91 % of all transactions had a shielded part and 24.02 % were fully shielded. Live figures: shielded supply and network activity.
Two different questions
A supply share is a stock: ZEC held in the Sprout, Sapling, Orchard and Ironwood pools at one block, divided by all ZEC in existence. A transaction share is a flow: how many of a period's transactions touched a shielded pool. Both can be true at once. On October 14, 2026, 29 % of ZEC was shielded while half of the month's transactions had a shielded part. Our guide How much of Zcash is shielded? explains the three measures in detail. This page checks the figures other publishers quote against them.
Supply share: what is counted
Each shielded pool has a balance that the protocol tracks. ZIP 209
defines it: the Sapling balance, for example, "is the negation of the sum of all valueBalanceSapling fields for transactions in
the block chain", and the same rule applies to Orchard and Ironwood. Nodes report these balances through
the getblockchaininfo RPC as valuePools, and our daily snapshots read them at a fixed block.
The pool mix on October 14, 2026: Ironwood 82.89 %, Sapling 9.59 %, Orchard 7.07 %, Sprout 0.45 % of all shielded ZEC. A view that shows only one pool undercounts badly. The home page of one public explorer listed only the Orchard pool (350,439 ZEC) when we read it on October 15, which is about 7 % of shielded ZEC since Ironwood took over new shielded activity. The migration is visible on our shielded supply page.
The denominator: issued, circulating, or 21 million
News articles say "total", "issued" or "circulating" supply. For Zcash these were the same number in every dated figure we checked, because all issued ZEC counts. Two choices still move the result:
| Definition, October 14, 2026 | Arithmetic | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Shielded / issued supply, lockbox included (our method) | 4,961,270 / 16,986,585 | 29.21 % |
| Shielded / issued supply without the lockbox | 4,961,270 / 16,916,900 | 29.33 % |
| Shielded / 21 million maximum supply | 4,961,270 / 21,000,000 | 23.6 % |
The lockbox changes the share by about 0.1 point. Dividing by the 21 million cap changes it by about six points, because 4 million ZEC are not issued yet.
Transaction share: fully shielded or any shielded part
Our activity data sorts every transaction into transparent-only, shielded-only or mixed. A mixed transaction has a transparent and a shielded part, for example when coins are shielded. Every block also has one coinbase transaction, about 1,150 a day, which is always transparent. That gives four answers for the same 30 days (September 15 to October 14, 2026, 351,878 transactions, 34,394 of them coinbase):
| Definition | All transactions | Without coinbase |
|---|---|---|
| Fully shielded (84,512) | 24.02 % | 26.62 % |
| Any shielded part (179,127) | 50.91 % | 56.42 % |
Single days vary much more: on October 12, 2026, 13.17 % of transactions were fully shielded; on October 14, 47.76 %.
The date: from 12 % to 31 % and back
The supply share is not stable. In our series it was 12.34 % on January 1, 2025, 23.39 % on October 1, 2025, reached its high of 31.12 % on April 6, 2026, fell to 25.38 % on July 27, 2026, the day before Ironwood activated, and stood at 29.21 % on October 14. A figure without a date can be any of these.
Published figures, checked against the chain
We compared figures that publishers state with our daily snapshots for the same date. Where a source gives no method, we say so; "our arithmetic fits" is our reading, not the source's statement.
| Source | Figure | What it measures | Date of the data | Our value for that date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blockworks, Q1 2026 report | 31.0 % | supply share | March 31, 2026 | 31.05 % |
| Blockworks, Q2 2026 report | 26.3 % | supply share | June 30, 2026 | 26.31 % |
| KuCoin blog | 28.9 % | supply share | September 10, 2026 | 28.92 % |
| zkp.baby | 29.21 % | supply share, lockbox in the total | October 15, 2026 | 29.21 % (October 14) |
| Coin Metrics, issue 338 | ~30 % | supply share | not stated (published November 18, 2025) | 29.39 % |
| The Block | 23 % | "total supply", method not stated | not stated (published November 11, 2025) | 29.42 %; divided by 21 million: 22.95 % |
| CoinDesk Research | 59.3 % | "shielded transaction share", definition not stated | February 2026 | no activity data before August 2026 |
| Blockworks, Q1 2026 report | 21.2 % | shielded transactions among non-coinbase transactions | Q1 2026 | no activity data before August 2026 |
| Kappos et al., USENIX Security 2018 | 14.96 % | transactions touching the shielded pool | up to January 21, 2018 | not comparable (eight years old) |
Every dated supply figure matched within 0.1 point. The Block's 23 % matches our data divided by the 21 million cap (22.95 %), but the article does not state its method. Claims that "fewer than 15 %" of transactions are shielded match the 2018 study, not recent data.
How to cite a shielded figure
- Say which measure: share of supply, fully shielded transactions, or transactions with any shielded part.
- Name the denominator: issued supply (with or without the lockbox), or all transactions with or without coinbase.
- Give the date and, for supply, the block height.
- Link the source page and, if possible, the data file.
Our shielded supply and activity pages each have a "Cite this data" box with a ready sentence, and the data page lists every CSV download.
What no public figure can tell you
Zcash hides amounts inside shielded pools, so nobody can publish the share of ZEC value moved in shielded transactions. Pool balances also say nothing about how many people use them or who holds the coins: they are net totals at a block. What an observer can and cannot link is explained in our privacy overview.
Sources and method
Supply figures are our daily value-pool snapshots (CSV); transaction figures are our finalized daily activity counts, coverage from August 25, 2026. Definitions: ZIP 209 (pool balances), ZIP 1015 and ZIP 2001 (the lockbox counts toward issued supply). Third-party figures were read on October 15, 2026; we quote only figures we opened ourselves, and none of the publishers was contacted.