About this Chart

Shielded Supply tracks the total amount of ZEC held in the network's privacy-preserving shielded pools, where transaction amounts and ownership are cryptographically hidden rather than publicly visible like Bitcoin. Zcash has evolved through three generations of shielded technology, each improving on the last.

Sprout: The original privacy protocol launched with Zcash in October 2016, identifiable by addresses starting with "zc". Sprout required significant computational resources and is no longer supported for sending funds after the November 2020 Canopy upgrade.

Sapling: Arrived in October 2018 with dramatic improvements—transactions became much faster to create and small enough that mobile wallets could handle them, making privacy practical for everyday use through addresses starting with "zs".

Orchard: Activated in May 2022 as the latest and most efficient protocol, offering the strongest privacy guarantees and introducing unified addresses (starting with "u1") that let users receive funds to multiple pool types from a single address.

The metric is measured in both ZEC and USD to show both the absolute amount of funds using privacy features and their economic value, providing insight into privacy adoption on the network as users have progressively migrated from Sprout to Sapling and now to Orchard.