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Shielded Supply tracks the total amount of ZEC held in the network's privacy-preserving shielded chain value pools, representing funds whose amounts and ownership are cryptographically protected. Zcash has evolved through three generations of shielded protocols: Sprout (the original, now nearly extinct), Sapling (legacy but still in use), and Orchard (the current standard offering the strongest privacy). When users "shield" their ZEC, they move funds from the transparent pool—where balances are publicly visible like Bitcoin—into one of these shielded pools where zero-knowledge cryptography obscures transaction details.

Total ZEC held in privacy-preserving shielded chain value pools

Zcash: Shielded Supply

Privacy Flows tracks the daily net change in ZEC held within each shielded chain value pool, measured in both ZEC and USD. A positive delta indicates net shielding activity (more value entering the pool than leaving), while a negative delta indicates net deshielding (more value exiting than entering). These flows are calculated from the blockchain's consensus-level pool tracking, which maintains cumulative balances for each pool.

 Net value movement across shielded chain value pools

Zcash: Privacy Flows

The shielded ratio measures what percentage of Zcash's total circulating supply is held in privacy-preserving shielded pools rather than in the public transparent pool. This metric serves as a key indicator of privacy adoption on the network—a higher ratio means more users are choosing to keep their funds private.

The calculation divides the total ZEC held across all three shielded pools (Sprout, Sapling, and Orchard) by the entire chain supply. When users shield their ZEC, they move funds from the transparent pool where balances are publicly visible into one of the shielded pools where amounts and ownership are cryptographically hidden. When they deshield, funds move back to the transparent pool.

The shielded ratio has evolved over time as the network introduced new privacy protocols. Initially, most shielded funds were in Sprout, then migrated to the more efficient Sapling after its October 2018 launch, and are now increasingly moving to Orchard since its May 2022 activation. A rising shielded ratio indicates growing privacy adoption, while changes in the ratio can reflect user behavior, regulatory developments, or the availability of wallet software that supports shielded addresses.

Share of circulating supply held in shielded (private) pools

Zcash - Shielded Ratio

The anonymity set measures the total number of note commitments in Zcash's shielded pool commitment trees, representing the fundamental privacy metric for the network. When a user spends a shielded note, they reveal a nullifier to prevent double-spending, but observers cannot determine which commitment in the tree corresponds to that nullifier without the spending key. The larger the commitment tree, the more potential notes a spend could be hiding among, providing stronger privacy guarantees—essentially, each commitment represents a possible source for any given shielded transaction.

Note commitments are cryptographic hashes added to a Merkle tree whenever shielded outputs are created. Crucially, even when notes are spent and their nullifiers revealed, the commitments remain in the tree permanently. This means the anonymity set can only grow over time, never shrink, as each new shielded output adds another potential hiding place for future spends.

The anonymity set cannot be derived from other metrics like transaction counts or pool values. A single transaction can create multiple shielded outputs (multiple commitments) or none at all if it's purely deshielding. Similarly, pool value in ZEC doesn't indicate anonymity strength—a pool with 1,000 small notes provides more privacy than a pool with 10 large notes holding the same total value, because anonymity depends on the count of potential notes to hide among, not their monetary value.

The chart tracks commitment tree sizes for both Sapling and Orchard pools separately, showing how each protocol's privacy set has grown since activation.

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