What Zecnero isZecnero is a shielded-only privacy coin. Every payment goes through a zero-knowledge shielded pool, so sender, receiver and amount stay private on-chain. There is no transparent payment to fall back on and no opt-in step to forget.
It's a fork of Zebra, the Rust node for Zcash. It keeps Zcash's Sapling and Orchard shielded pools and replaces Equihash with RandomX, the CPU-oriented proof of work that has secured Monero since 2019. No machine class should hold a large efficiency edge per watt over a normal desktop CPU, because better hardware for RandomX looks like the CPU you already have.
No premine. No sale. Coins only come from mining.
Why Zecnero instead of Zcash or Monero | Zecnero | Zcash | Monero |
| Privacy by default | Mandatory, every payment shielded | Optional, transparent or shielded | Mandatory |
| Sender hidden among | Every note in the shielded pool | Every note in the pool, shielded payments only | A ring of 16, the real input plus 15 decoys |
| How it's hidden | Zero-knowledge proofs | Zero-knowledge proofs | Ring signatures |
| Amounts hidden | Always | Shielded payments only | Always (RingCT) |
| Mining | CPU, RandomX | ASIC, Equihash | CPU, RandomX |
| Launch | No premine, no sale | Founders' reward | No premine |
Against Zcash: Zcash's zero-knowledge cryptography is the strongest privacy tool in production, but using it is optional, and much of Zcash's history sits on transparent addresses. Every payment that moves between transparent and shielded leaves a link that chain analysis can follow. Zecnero removes that choice. The only transparent outputs are fresh mining rewards, and consensus forces those into the shielded pool before they can be spent. So every coin in circulation passes through the pool, and the pool grows with every block. Mining also stays on CPUs instead of ASICs.
Against Monero: Monero makes privacy mandatory, which is the right call, but it hides each sender among 15 decoys. Decoy selection and timing analysis are documented attack surfaces on ring signatures. Zecnero uses zero-knowledge proofs instead. A payment proves it's valid without pointing at any set of possible senders, so it's hidden among every note in the shielded pool. Both coins hide amounts, and both are mined on CPUs with RandomX.
The combination: Zcash's cryptography, Monero's rule that privacy isn't optional, and Monero's CPU mining, in one chain that launched with no premine.
A new shielded pool starts small. Zecnero's grows from the first block, because every mining reward has to enter it before it can be spent.
TestnetTestnet launched on September 24, 2026 at 21:11 UTC. Anyone can mine it today with the guide at
zecnero.org/mine, solo or through the pool at
pool.zecnero.org.
| Genesis hash | 004aa9ae10c69d42dfba2ecd1485aab0881109c73d49796336a5c976461df0a8 |
| Commits to | Bitcoin block 968452 |
| Seed nodes | seed1.zecnero.org (Toronto), seed2.zecnero.org (Coventry), port 18733 |
| Founder address | n2RY7SPTGa9K9YRQvZokbh3jUpAX9W8LNWc (2-of-3 P2SH) |
| My mining address | nmNLhptcyBUTKPAFoYwNAKps6TAZnaRoBCq |
Testnet runs the Mainnet rules ahead of Mainnet. Mined coins already have to be shielded before they can be spent. Shielded-only payments arrive in the next testnet network upgrade, announced in this thread with its date. Until then, testnet still accepts transparent payments.
On the first day one miner brought about 14 kH/s for a few hours, most of the network, then left. Blocks slowed until ASERT walked difficulty back down. Mainnet uses a 1 hour half-life to recover faster from swings like that, and testnet adopts it in its next upgrade.
Testnet coins have no value.
Allocation| Premine | None |
| ICO / presale / token sale | None |
| Dev fund / treasury | None |
| Blocks reserved for anyone | None |
| Founder stream | 3% of each block subsidy, from block 1 until the first halving at block 1,680,000 |
The founder stream totals
314,999.8125 ZMR, which is
1.5% of total supply. Consensus enforces it. Every block pays it regardless of who mined that block, and it stops permanently at the first halving. It goes to a 2-of-3 multisig. The testnet one is live and listed above. The Mainnet one gets published before launch.
How the founder fund is run:
- It pays for development and infrastructure.
- The multisig is separate from my own mining wallet.
- Any spending from it is posted publicly.
- Any sale gets announced before it happens.
I'll also mine at Mainnet launch with the same public software everyone else uses, from addresses published in advance, so anyone can measure my share of early blocks.
Specifications| Ticker | ZMR |
| Privacy | Shielded-only. Sapling and Orchard pools, zero-knowledge proofs. Transparent outputs exist only in mining rewards, which must be shielded before they can be spent. Mainnet enforces this from block 1. Sprout removed. |
| Proof of work | RandomX-Zecnero: the RandomX reference configuration with its own Argon2 salt. RandomX v2 is planned for Mainnet. |
| Block time | 75 seconds |
| Difficulty | ASERT (aserti3-2d), 1 hour half-life on Mainnet |
| Block reward | 6.25 ZMR |
| Halving | Every 1,680,000 blocks (about 4 years) |
| Total supply | 20,999,993.5652 ZMR. Issuance ends after 30 halvings. No tail emission. |
| Transactions | Version 5 only |
| Coinbase maturity | 100 blocks |
| Max reorg depth | 20 blocks |
Design choices worth arguing about- Shielded-only from block 1. The strongest privacy rule a Zcash-based chain can have. It means exchanges need shielded deposit support, and the viewing-key tooling for that is being built before Mainnet.
- A private RandomX salt. Monero's RandomX rigs and rental markets can't point at Zecnero on day one. Anyone can add the variant to a miner, and the design doesn't depend on keeping them out.
- Orchard circuit fix from NU6.2 applied at block 1. Zecnero follows Zcash NU6, except for the NU6.2 Orchard soundness fix and the canonical proof size rule, which apply from the first block.
- Genesis commits to a recent Bitcoin block hash. The genesis timestamp is the public release time, so blocks mined before release would stand out against the difficulty schedule.
- 20 block reorg limit plus checkpoints. A small new chain is cheap to attack with rented CPU. Nodes refuse deep reorganizations.
- No tail emission. Same shape as Bitcoin and Zcash. The tradeoff is a fee-only security budget in the long run.
MiningThe miner is a fork of XMRig with an
rx/zecnero algorithm and the dev donation set to 0. It also ships in SimpleMining OS, and cpuminer-rplant 6.0.17 supports the algorithm. On Linux it runs natively. On Windows it runs through WSL today, and a native Windows build is on the way. Setup, solo or pool:
zecnero.org/mine.
Every release ships a SHA256SUMS file signed with the Zecnero key below. Check both before running anything. Downloads:
downloads.zecnero.org.
Reference benchmark:
about 8,200 H/s on an i7-13700KF at 16 threads with huge pages and the MSR mod, and about 6,000 H/s under WSL2 without huge pages. RandomX wants roughly 2 MB of L3 cache per thread, so running every thread is often slower.
Windows Defender flags XMRig-based miners, stock XMRig included, as
Program:Win32/Contebrew. Verify the release SHA-256 and add a folder exclusion. Don't turn off your antivirus.
Pool operators: the node supports getblocktemplate and submitblock, and the zecnerod repo has an integration guide.
Hashrate earns its share of blocks. Nothing more is promised. Nobody should buy hardware to mine this.
WalletWallet 0.2.1 sends and receives shielded Sapling payments with memos. It connects to the public node by default, or to your own zecnerod. There's a command line build for Linux and Windows and a desktop app for Windows at
zecnero.org/wallets. Orchard support arrives in wallet 0.3.0, right after the next testnet upgrade.
Status| Public testnet | Live since September 24, 2026 |
| Node: issuance, founder stream, RandomX, ASERT, reorg limit | Running on testnet |
| Shielded-only consensus rules | Built and tested, coming in the next testnet upgrade |
| Miner (XMRig fork) | Released, verified against test vectors |
| Testnet pool | Live at pool.zecnero.org |
| Block explorer | Live at explorer.zecnero.org |
| Wallet 0.2.1 (CLI + Windows desktop) | Released |
| Orchard wallet 0.3.0 | Built and tested, next |
| Testnet faucet | Live |
| Native Windows miner | In progress |
| Mainnet | Planned for Q4 2026 |
The RandomX-Zecnero hash has been checked across four separate implementations (reference C++, the Rust binding, XMRig on Linux, XMRig on Windows), and they agree on all 17 published test vectors.
The Mainnet date will be announced here at least a week ahead, together with the founder addresses and the genesis parameters.
Known risks- A new chain has little hashrate. Majority attacks are cheap until it grows.
- CPU-friendly proof of work also suits botnets and stolen cloud accounts.
- Sapling depends on the Zcash Sapling trusted setup. Orchard needs none.
- The node modifies consensus code. Outside review is welcome now, before Mainnet.
- Privacy coins face delisting pressure in several jurisdictions.
Looking for- Review of the protocol specification, the consensus changes in particular
- Rust developers with Zebra or Zcash experience
- Testnet miners on any hardware, especially older machines and ARM
- Node runners and pool operators
LinksSecurity issues go to
zecnero@zecnero.org privately, before any public post.
Zecnero has no price, no market and no token on any other chain. Any "Zecnero" token you find elsewhere belongs to someone else.
