About this Chart

Transaction fees are paid by users to miners for processing and validating their transactions on the blockchain. In Zcash, fees vary across different chain value pools because each pool requires different levels of computational work to validate. Since April 2023, fees follow the ZIP 317 standard where each transaction costs 5,000 zatoshis (0.00005 ZEC) per logical action with a minimum of two actions, making fees predictable and proportional to the computational work required.

Transparent: The public pool that works like Bitcoin, where addresses and amounts are visible. These transactions require only basic cryptographic verification, typically resulting in the lowest fees.

Sprout: Zcash's original privacy protocol from October 2016. Sprout transactions used complex zero-knowledge proofs that required substantial computational resources to validate, though this pool is now deprecated and stopped accepting new funds in November 2020.

Sapling: The efficient privacy protocol from October 2018 using Groth16 zero-knowledge proofs. Sapling transactions hide amounts and addresses while being efficient enough for mobile wallets to create and for validators to verify.

Orchard: The latest privacy protocol activated in May 2022, using advanced Halo2 proofs that provide the strongest privacy guarantees. Despite more sophisticated cryptography, Orchard remains efficient to validate.

Mixed Sapling + Orchard: Some transactions combine both Sapling and Orchard components in a single transaction, allowing users to move or consolidate funds across these two shielded pools simultaneously. These mixed transactions are enabled by the v5 transaction format introduced with Orchard.