Foundry captures 30% of Zcash hashrate at launch – Is ZEC becoming too centralized?

A well-known Bitcoin mining pool, Foundry Digital, operator of Foundry USA Pool, made headlines for launching Foundry Zcash Pool. Interestingly, even before the launch, the mining customers had already been onboarded, showing eagerness. Additionally, with the 11th of March being the initial launch date, the hashrate surged to 30% of the present Zcash network hashrate.  Remarking on the scale of growth in just a few days, the press release noted,  The pace of adoption of Foundry Zcash Pool makes it clear that institutional and public miners are seeking a compliant, purpose-built Zcash mining solution. The firm also took to X and highlighted,  Institutional miners have been looking for compliant, purpose-built $ZEC infrastructure, and we're proud to deliver it. Pros and cons of Foundry Zcash Pool As a part of the plan, the Foundry Zcash Pool will be operated from the U.S. to minimise compliance and “counterparty risk for regulated institutional and public miners.”  With "transparent and auditable payouts", the Pool will also provide additional benefits to the miners. However, it's important to note that this move would also undermine the decentralized ethos in the mining sector. This also raises a question of potential regulatory compliance in the long run. Hence, a deeper analysis suggests that this move by Foundry Zcash Pool is a double-edged sword.  Miner revenue, hashprice and hashrate analysis paint a concerning picture This was crucial given the timing, as the miner's daily revenue dropped sharply from $45 million at the start of 2026 to the $28-$35 million range at press time. On the other hand, the hashrate was also seeing highly volatile spikes and finally stood at 1.2B EH/s, suggesting miners were earning less despite increased competition. Confirming this sentiment, another chart on Bitcoin’s [BTC] hashprice suggests that since January 2026 to date, though Bitcoin’s price has seen some signs of recovery, the hashprice, which is miner earnings per unit, fell sharply. This, in turn, has resulted in a 30% drop in miners' profitability, which is well below its long-term average of $0.046 per TH/s/day over the past year.  Zcashinfo.com also makes it to the spotlight Besides the pool launch, Foundry also announced the launch of Zcashinfo.com, "a new block explorer built for the Zcash community". The latter was built to provide miners with a one-stop shop for “real-time pool rankings, hashrate distribution, block data, network difficulty trends,” etc.  Applauding the move,  Zooko Wilcox, Founder of Zcash, added,  I’m happy that Foundry is bringing their institutional credibility and long-term commitment to Zcash. $ZEC price action This coincided with ZEC's price trading at $376.11 at the time of publishing after a hike of 4.38% in the past 24 hours. The aforementioned price action comes on the heels of ZEC struggling to break past the $250 resistance level since the final week of February. However, with the bullish price action at the time of reporting, the odds of ZEC hitting $400 looks high. Final Summary The launch of Foundry Zcash Pool comes at a time when the overall miners' profitability is down by 30%. Alongside the pool, Zcashinfo.com provides access to all on-chain data in one place, making things seamless for miners out there.