Quick take:
- The amount of ZCash stored in shielded pools has hit an all-time high of 700,000 and growing
- The number of ZCash monthly shielded transactions has also hit an all-time high of 121,475
- Crypto users are continually valuing their privacy and ZCash is well placed to serve their needs
- ZCash recently had a halving event and its value should naturally grow
The amount of ZCash (ZEC) stored in shielded pools recently hit an all-time high of 700,000 and continues to grow by the day. This ZCash milestone was first observed by Josh Swihart of the Electric Coin Company, who shared his analysis via the following tweet.
Zcash just hit an ATH in $ZEC stored privately in the shielded pools! +700k and moving fast! 🚀🌕😜 pic.twitter.com/HrYWJ0PoiT
— Josh Swihart 🛡 (@jswihart) December 9, 2020
What is ZCash Shielded Pools?
Users of the ZCash network have the option of storing their funds in a regular transparent address or a shielded address. Transparent addresses start with a ‘t’ and shielded addresses begin with a ‘z’. The sum of ZCash held in shielded addresses makes up the ‘shielded pools’ category whereas ZEC in transparent addresses is referred to as the transparent pool.
‘ZCash shielded pools’ is a collective term that refers to ZCash stored in Sprout (beginning with ‘zc’) and Sapling shielded addresses (beginning with ‘zs’). Sprout and Sapling are different privacy upgrades on the network with Sprout addresses being migrated to Sapling.
ZCash Shielded Transactions Hit an All-time High in November
November also saw the Zcash network experience another all-time high in the form of the number of shielded transactions. According to ZCash metrics, November saw the highest number of shielded transactions at 121,475. The chart below, courtesy of the Electric Coin company, further demonstrates this fact.
ZCash Poised to Gain Value With the Recent Halving
Back in mid-November, the ZCash network went through a halving event that reduced block rewards from 12.5 ZEC to 6.25 ZEC. This means that the amount of ZCash that can enter into circulation due to mining has dropped by half.
The price of ZCash benefited from the event with the value of ZEC spiking to $90 on the 24th of November. ZCash (ZEC) is currently in the midst of a correction with the current $63 – $65 price area acting as support.
To note is that ZCash is a fork of Bitcoin and only 21 Million ZEC will ever exist. This, in turn, could be translated to mean that once the current correction bottoms out, ZEC investors will most likely accumulate for the long haul. One of their reasons for doing so would be that crypto users are continually valuing their privacy as seen with the amount of ZEC in shielded pools and ZCash transactions hitting an all-time high in November.