Zcash keeps every coin in one of six value pools: the transparent pool, the shielded pools Sprout, Sapling, Orchard and Ironwood, and the lockbox. Each pool has a balance that full nodes track and that can never become negative. Only Sprout, Sapling, Orchard and Ironwood count as shielded. Three pools accept new ZEC from users today, Sprout and Orchard only pay out, and the lockbox fills from the block reward alone.
Snapshot, October 15, 2026
At block 3,519,197 (the last block of the UTC day) the six pools held 16,988,378 ZEC. 4,962,083 ZEC of it, or 29.21 %, sat in the four shielded pools. Live figures and the daily history: Shielded Supply and its CSV export.
All six pools at a glance
| Pool | Since (Mainnet) | Accepts new value? | Balance on October 15, 2026 (ZEC) | Counted as shielded? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transparent | launch, October 28, 2016 | yes | 11,956,395.41 | no |
| Sprout | launch, October 28, 2016 | no, since Canopy (block 1,046,400) | 22,309.44 | yes |
| Sapling | block 419,200, October 28, 2018 | yes | 475,581.09 | yes |
| Orchard | block 1,687,104, May 31, 2022 | no, since NU6.3 (block 3,428,143); can still be spent from | 350,438.01 | yes |
| Ironwood | block 3,428,143, July 28, 2026 | yes | 4,113,754.72 | yes |
| Lockbox | block 2,726,400, November 23, 2024 | only the 12 % block-reward stream | 69,899.625 | no |
| All pools | 16,988,378.29 |
Of the shielded ZEC, Ironwood held 82.90 %, Sapling 9.58 %, Orchard 7.06 % and Sprout 0.45 %. The transparent pool held 70.38 % of the whole supply and the lockbox 0.41 %.
How a pool balance is defined
A value pool is not an address or a wallet. It is a running total that the protocol computes from the transactions in the
chain. ZIP 209 defines the shielded ones: the Sprout balance is the sum of all vpub_old fields
minus the sum of all vpub_new fields, and the Sapling, Orchard and Ironwood balances are each the negated sum of their pool's
valueBalance fields. The protocol specification (section 4.17)
defines the transparent balance as "the sum of the values of all UTXOs", and ZIP 2001 adds the
lockbox balance.
ZIP 209 also sets the safety rule: if any of the six balances "would become negative", every node must reject the block, and the
sum of all six may never exceed 21 million ZEC. So no pool can pay out more than went into it. Nodes report the six balances in
the valuePools field of getblockchaininfo and getblock.
Transparent pool
The transparent pool works like Bitcoin: public addresses, public amounts. It has existed since launch, and block rewards paid to transparent addresses land here. On October 15, 2026 it held 11,956,395.41 ZEC. Its highest end-of-day balance in our series was 14,064,465.28 ZEC on September 29, 2024; it fell as more ZEC was shielded.
Sprout: the original shielded pool
Sprout is the shielded pool Zcash launched with on October 28, 2016. ZIP 211 disabled "the ability to add new value to the Sprout chain value pool balance" with the Canopy upgrade at block 1,046,400 on November 18, 2020, to reduce "complexity and attack surface". It also says this "does not prevent extracting value held in Sprout addresses and sending it to transparent addresses, or to Sapling addresses".
Our series starts on October 29, 2018, a day after Sapling activated; Sprout then held 324,547.18 ZEC and peaked at 370,700.99 ZEC on December 17, 2018. On the day Canopy activated it held 110,502.63 ZEC, and its balance has not risen in any daily snapshot since. On October 15, 2026 it held 22,309.44 ZEC, 79.81 % less than on November 18, 2020.
Sapling
Sapling activated at block 419,200. The protocol specification dates it to October 28, 2018; the block's own timestamp is 02:15 UTC on October 29. Sapling is still open: it accepts new value today. In our data its balance still rises on some days after Ironwood, for example from 502,834.19 ZEC on September 23, 2026 to 504,461.23 ZEC on September 24. Its highest balance in our series was 1,234,367.84 ZEC on June 22, 2023; on October 15, 2026 it held 475,581.09 ZEC.
Orchard
Orchard arrived with NU5 at block 1,687,104 on May 31, 2022. It held 156.22 ZEC at the end of that first day and reached its highest balance in our series, 4,556,955.65 ZEC, on April 16, 2026.
After a soundness flaw in the Orchard circuit, the protocol specification records that NU6.2 (June 3, 2026) re-enabled the Orchard pool "after it had been temporarily disabled". NU6.3 then changed Orchard's role. ZIP 258 states that from NU6.3 "the Orchard pool can only be spent from (not added to)", transfers between different addresses inside Orchard are disabled, and coinbase transactions may not use it. It also says: "Value may still leave the Orchard pool, including across the turnstile into the Ironwood pool."
So Orchard is not frozen: the ZEC in it can still be spent. On July 27, 2026, the day before NU6.3, Orchard held 3,660,063.94 ZEC. On October 15, 2026 it held 350,438.01 ZEC, 90.43 % less, as wallets move funds to Ironwood. The balance has not risen in any daily snapshot since NU6.3.
Ironwood
Ironwood is the newest shielded pool, activated by NU6.3 at block 3,428,143. Our end-of-day block on July 27, 2026 was 3,427,462, still before activation; on July 28 it was 3,428,611, and Ironwood held 133,046.24 ZEC that night. ZIP 258 describes Ironwood as another use of the Orchard protocol with its own note commitment tree and its own balance.
ZIP 318 gives the reason: the Ironwood pool "enables verification of the Zcash shielded supply after NU6.2 mitigated a soundness flaw in the Orchard circuit". Wallets are "required to add functionality to migrate Orchard funds", and the migration destination "MUST be" Ironwood, not Sapling. On October 15, 2026 Ironwood held 4,113,754.72 ZEC. What is verified about the upgrade itself is in our Ironwood status article. ZIP 258 and ZIP 318 still carry the status Draft.
The lockbox
The lockbox is the deferred development fund pool. Since NU6 at block 2,726,400 on November 23, 2024, ZIP 1015 sends "12% of the block subsidy" into it. ZIP 1015 calls it "a separate pool of issued funds tracked by the protocol": no address, no keys, and no user can pay into it. It is counted in the issued supply but not as shielded.
It held 112.875 ZEC at the end of its first day and 78,571.5 ZEC on November 23, 2025, the last day before NU6.1 moved a one-time 78,750 ZEC out to a multisig. Since then every block adds 0.1875 ZEC: (3,519,197 − 3,146,400 + 1) = 372,798 blocks, × 0.1875 = 69,899.625 ZEC on October 15, 2026. Who can spend it, and what comes next, is in our lockbox guide.
How value moves between pools
A transaction can move ZEC from one pool to another, for example when coins are shielded from the transparent pool into Ironwood. The protocol specification is plain about the cost: value transferred between chain value pools "always reveals the amount transferred". Inside one shielded pool, amounts stay hidden.
Those visible crossings are what makes the balances checkable. ZIP 209 notes that nodes can monitor the total value shielded into and unshielded from each pool, and it rejects any block that would push a pool below zero. The ZIPs call this boundary the turnstile (how turnstiles work). Two migrations have used it: Sprout to Sapling (ZIP 308) and now Orchard to Ironwood (ZIP 318), which asks wallets to move funds in fixed denominations over time so that a migration does not reveal a whole balance at once. Why a turnstile limits the damage of a cryptographic flaw is covered in Has Zcash ever been counterfeited?.
How to check the numbers
Every balance above comes from our daily Shielded Supply snapshot. The CSV export has one row per UTC day since October 29, 2018, with block height, block hash and all six pools. The step-by-step guide How to verify Zcash network statistics yourself shows the RPC call, the sums and the lockbox formula for the same block 3,519,197.
Percentages here are rounded to two decimals. The Shielded Supply page and the CSV cut the share after two decimals instead, so they show 29.20 % for October 15, 2026 (4,962,083.26 / 16,988,378.29 = 29.209 %). Why other sites publish different shielded shares is explained in Why Zcash shielded statistics differ, and the difference between supply and transaction shares in How much of Zcash is shielded?.
Sources
- ZIP 209 (Final): pool balance definitions and the non-negative rule, including Ironwood.
- ZIP 211 (Final): no new value into Sprout, deployed with Canopy; ZIP 251: Canopy at block 1,046,400.
- ZIP 205: Sapling at block 419,200; ZIP 252: NU5 at block 1,687,104.
- ZIP 258 (Draft): NU6.3 at block 3,428,143, Orchard spend-only rules, the Ironwood pool.
- ZIP 318 (Draft): Orchard to Ironwood migration; ZIP 308: Sprout to Sapling migration.
- ZIP 1015 and ZIP 2001 (Final): the lockbox and its place in the issued supply.
- Zcash Protocol Specification, section 4.17 (chain value pool balances) and section 6 (activation dates).
- Our data: the 2026-10-15 row of the Shielded Supply CSV and earlier rows for the history figures, read on October 16, 2026. The launch date is the timestamp of block 1 (October 28, 2016, 16:19 UTC).