Zcash Shielded Supply
How much ZEC is held across Zcash's shielded value pools — Sprout, Sapling, Orchard and Ironwood — at a specific block, tracked daily. This measures pool balances, not transaction volume, transaction counts, or anything about individual holders.
Observation date November 4, 2026 · block 3,542,138
29.24% of supply shielded · 4.98M ZEC
TransparentShielded
Value-Pool Balances
Total Shielded ZEC
4.98M ZEC
4,979,180.8460 ZEC exact
Shielded Share of Supply
29.24%
Composition of total supply
- Sprout12.23K ZECLegacy pool, deprecated since the Sapling upgrade — balances may still exist here, but new shielded activity doesn't use it.0.07% of supply
- Sapling421.5K ZEC2.47% of supply
- Orchard324.25K ZEC1.90% of supply
- Ironwood4.22M ZEC24.79% of supply
- Transparent11.97M ZECFully public, exactly like Bitcoin — shown for contrast only, never counted as shielded.70.31% of supply
- Lockbox74.2K ZECProtocol-reserved development fund (ZIP 2001) — not spendable by or attributable to any user. Never shielded user funds.0.43% of supply
Shielded pools (Sprout, Sapling, Orchard and Ironwood) shown with a colored marker; Transparent and Lockbox are never shielded and are shown only for context.
Shielded Supply Over Time
One verified observation per UTC calendar day, where available. Missing dates are shown as breaks in the chart — never filled in, estimated, or interpolated. Hover, or drag a finger across the chart, to read any day.
Full daily history, oldest first: one row per verified UTC day with every pool balance in ZEC, total shielded, total supply and shielded share. Days without a verified snapshot are absent rows, never estimated.
Want the current figure on your own site? Embed the Shielded Supply Widget.
Shielded Supply Change
The latest snapshot (November 4, 2026, block 3,542,138) compared with the daily snapshot exactly 7, 30, 90 and 365 days earlier. Shares are shown as in the CSV: shielded ZEC divided by all issued ZEC, cut (not rounded) to two decimals. A change in the share is given in percentage points (pts).
| Period | Shielded then | Change | Share then → now |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 dayssince Oct 28 | 4.96M ZEC | +20.8K ZEC | 29.14% → 29.24%+0.10 pts |
| 30 dayssince Oct 5 | 4.94M ZEC | +43.84K ZEC | 29.08% → 29.24%+0.16 pts |
| 90 dayssince Aug 6 | 4.35M ZEC | +628.64K ZEC | 25.79% → 29.24%+3.45 pts |
| 1 yearsince Nov 4, 2025 | 4.97M ZEC | +9.95K ZEC | 30.35% → 29.24%−1.11 pts |
- Highest shielded balance in our series
- 5.18M ZEC
- April 16, 2026, block 3,310,535; latest is −203.73K ZEC
- Highest shielded share in our series
- 31.12%
- April 6, 2026, block 3,299,073; latest is −1.88 pts
Highs cover our daily series from October 29, 2018 on, one snapshot per UTC day; a higher value between two snapshots would not show. Every date and block above is a row in the CSV.
What Each Pool Is
What is a value pool? Zcash tracks ZEC across several protocol-level pools. Shielded pools (Sprout, Sapling, Orchard and Ironwood) use zero-knowledge proofs so individual balances and transactions inside them stay private; transparent addresses are fully public, like Bitcoin. Read the full explanation → All six pools, including the lockbox, are compared in Zcash value pools explained.
Sprout
Zcash's original shielded pool, live since launch. Deprecated since Sapling — balances may remain, but it's no longer where new shielded activity happens.
Sapling
Zcash's second-generation shielded pool (2018), which made shielded transactions fast enough for everyday use. Still holds and can move value.
Orchard
Zcash's shielded pool introduced with NU5, built on the Halo 2 proving system. Since the NU6.3 (Ironwood) upgrade, Orchard is exit-only — value can still leave it, but no new deposits are permitted.
Ironwood
Zcash's current shielded pool, reusing and extending Orchard's cryptographic design, active on mainnet since the NU6.3 upgrade in July 2026. Its governing ZIPs are still formally marked Draft in the official Zcash specification — see the Network Upgrade Tracker for details.
Ironwood's balance above is already included in this page's Total Shielded and Shielded Share figures — it's classified as shielded because real on-chain data already reports it, on the same basis as Sprout, Sapling and Orchard. NU6.3 (Ironwood) has been active on Zcash mainnet since block 3,428,143 on July 28, 2026. New shielded activity uses the Ironwood pool; Orchard remains spendable but exit-only. Its governing ZIPs (258, 318 and 326) are still listed as Draft in the official zcash/zips index. That is a document status, not a sign the upgrade is inactive. See the Network Upgrade Tracker for the sources behind both.
Ironwood Migration
84.78% of all shielded ZEC sat in the Ironwood pool on November 4, 2026 (block 3,542,138). Ironwood activated at block 3,428,143 on July 28, 2026; the table compares each pool with the last daily snapshot before that block.
| Pool | Before IronwoodJul 27 | 30 days agoOct 5 | LatestNov 4 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ironwood | 0 ZEC | 4.06M ZEC | 4.22M ZEC | +4.22M ZEC |
| Orchard | 3.66M ZEC | 376.97K ZEC | 324.25K ZEC | −3.34M ZEC |
| Sapling | 592.22K ZEC | 476.92K ZEC | 421.5K ZEC | −170.72K ZEC |
| Sprout | 22.64K ZEC | 22.31K ZEC | 12.23K ZEC | −10.41K ZEC |
| All shielded | 4.27M ZEC | 4.94M ZEC | 4.98M ZEC | +704.26K ZEC |
Balances are protocol value-pool totals at each day's snapshot block (blocks 3,427,462 and 3,542,138). They show where ZEC sits, not who moved it: a lower Orchard balance does not mean every coin went to Ironwood, because ZEC can also leave a shielded pool for a transparent address. Orchard is exit-only since NU6.3, behind a turnstile. Every row is in the CSV; background in our Ironwood write-up.
What This Data Means — and Doesn't
- A value-pool balance measures ZEC represented in that protocol pool at a particular block — a snapshot, not a running feed.
- "Shielded supply" is the sum of the pools this codebase currently classifies as shielded (Sprout, Sapling, Orchard and Ironwood) at that block — see Methodology below for what "classifies" means here.
- Transparent supply is shown only for context/contrast — it's never counted as shielded.
- Other sources quote other shielded percentages, usually because of a different date, denominator or metric. Our guide Why Zcash shielded statistics differ checks published figures against this data.
- These figures do not, and cannot, reveal individual shielded balances, senders, receivers, or amounts — the same reason a shielded or Unified address search on the Zcash Explorer can't return one either. See the Zcash Explorer Guide for why that's a property of Zcash's privacy design, not a missing feature.
- These figures do not measure shielded transaction volume or transaction counts. Shielded transaction value is never publicly exposed by Zcash's design; daily shielded transaction counts, however, are tracked separately on Zcash Network Activity — see the FAQ below for how the two pages differ. Looking for exchange trading volume (a different meaning of "volume" entirely) instead? See Zcash Volume by Exchange.
Why This Is Public, Even Though Zcash Is Private
Zcash's shielded pools use zero-knowledge proofs to hide the sender, receiver and amount of an individual shielded transaction — but each pool's total balance is still part of what every full node needs to verify the chain's overall accounting is correct (no ZEC created or destroyed outside the rules). That aggregate total is a protocol-level fact, structurally separate from any single transaction's private details. Observing a pool's total says nothing about who contributed to it or what any individual transaction inside it did.
This is a conservative, technical description, not an absolute guarantee about every possible future attack or analysis technique — for the fuller picture of how Zcash's privacy model works, what a viewing key is, and how this compares to other approaches, see Zcash Privacy, Explained.
Methodology & Data Source
The underlying source for every figure on this page is the Zcash blockchain itself — specifically, the value-pool totals every full node computes and can independently verify. NOWNodes is the RPC provider this implementation currently uses to reach that blockchain data; it doesn't create or own the data, and could in principle be swapped for another provider without changing what this page means.
Which pools count as "shielded" is this codebase's own classification, not something the blockchain data itself flags — the underlying RPC response reports each pool's balance, not whether it's shielded. An unrecognized pool id is never silently included or excluded: publishing pauses for that day until a human reviews it, so this classification can't silently drift from what the chain actually reports.
Each daily snapshot is defined as the last block with a timestamp at or before 23:59:59 UTC of that day. The total supply is the sum of every pool balance the node reports for that block (transparent, lockbox and the shielded pools), exact to the zatoshi. Only when the snapshot block is also the newest block is this sum compared with the node's separately reported chain supply; for finished days, which are read later, it is the sum of the reported pools. A day whose pools don't add up, or that reports a pool type this site doesn't yet recognize, is never published as a partial or best-guess figure. You can repeat every step yourself: see How to verify Zcash network statistics yourself. Historical gaps in the chart above reflect exactly this: a date with no verified snapshot, shown as a gap, never filled in.
Cite this data
Figures here are daily snapshots, not live values. Quote the date with the number, and link the page so readers can see the history and the method.
Sentence
On November 4, 2026, block 3,542,138, 29.24% of all ZEC (4.98M ZEC) was held in shielded pools, according to ZecZcash's Zcash Shielded Supply Tracker (https://zeczcash.com/shielded).
Source reference
ZecZcash, "Zcash Shielded Supply Tracker", data for November 4, 2026, block 3,542,138. https://zeczcash.com/shielded
Need the full series? Download the CSV (one row per day, oldest first).
Common questions
What is Zcash shielded supply?
The total amount of ZEC held across Zcash's shielded value pools (Sprout, Sapling, Orchard and Ironwood) at a given block, as reported directly by Zcash blockchain data. It's a balance figure, not a measure of how many transactions moved through those pools.
What is Orchard?
Zcash's shielded pool introduced with the NU5 upgrade, built on the Halo 2 proving system. Since the NU6.3 (Ironwood) upgrade, Orchard is exit-only — value can still leave it, but no new deposits are permitted.
What is Sapling?
Zcash's second-generation shielded pool, introduced in 2018, which made shielded transactions dramatically faster and more practical than the original Sprout pool. Sapling can still hold and move value even though newer shielded activity moved first to Orchard and, since the Ironwood upgrade, to Ironwood.
What is Ironwood?
Zcash's current shielded pool, active on mainnet since the NU6.3 upgrade in July 2026, reusing and extending Orchard's cryptographic design. Its governing ZIPs are still formally marked Draft in the official Zcash specification — a document-status detail, not a sign the upgrade isn't running; see the Network Upgrade Tracker for details. This page counts Ironwood as shielded, on the same basis as Sprout, Sapling and Orchard.
Can this data reveal individual shielded balances or who holds them?
No. Value-pool balances are protocol-level totals — the sum of everything in a shielded pool at a given block. Zcash's zero-knowledge design means individual shielded balances, senders, receivers and amounts are never revealed by this or any other public data. Nothing on this page can identify a person, address or transaction.
Does shielded supply equal shielded transaction volume?
No. This page shows a balance — how much ZEC sits in each pool right now — not how many shielded transactions occurred or how much value moved through them on a given day. Zcash's design means shielded transaction value is never publicly exposed, here or anywhere else. Daily shielded transaction counts are tracked separately — see Zcash Network Activity for shielded transaction activity by day.
Why can historical data contain gaps?
Every snapshot on this page is only published once it passes our checks: every pool the node reports for that block must be a known pool, and the pool balances must add up exactly to the total supply we publish. If a day's data can't be verified, it's simply not published for that day — never filled in with an estimate, an interpolated value, or a repeated prior figure. A gap in the chart means "not yet verified," not zero.
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