At a glance
How the three coins differ on privacy, mining, supply and launch. Zecnero’s facts come from its specification; the facts about Zcash and Monero come from their own sites and documents, listed under Sources.
| Zecnero | Zcash | Monero | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Default privacy | Shielded by default, and only: every payment is shielded. | Optional. Transparent and shielded transactions are both allowed; the sender chooses. | Private by default, for every transaction. |
| Transparent payments allowed? | No. Transparent outputs exist only in mining rewards, which must be shielded before they can be spent. The public testnet still allows transparent payments for now. | Yes. Transparent addresses work like Bitcoin: sender, receiver and amount are public. | No. Every transaction uses stealth addresses, ring signatures and RingCT. |
| Privacy technology | zk-SNARKs: the Sapling and Orchard protocols, inherited from Zcash. Sprout is removed. | zk-SNARKs: Sapling and Orchard. Sprout, the first shielded pool, no longer accepts new funds. | Ring signatures, stealth addresses and RingCT (hidden amounts). |
| Anonymity set | Every note in the shielded pool. The pool is new and small at first, and grows with use. | The notes in its shielded pools. Only shielded use counts: a transparent transaction has none. | The ring: each input is signed with a ring of 16 outputs (ring size 16). |
| Mining | RandomX, algorithm rx/zecnero (Zecnero’s own Argon2 salt). Mined on CPUs. | Equihash. Mined with ASICs. | RandomX (rx/0), since 2019. Mined on CPUs. |
| Supply | About 21 million: 20,999,993.5652 ZMR, halving every 1,680,000 blocks. No tail emission. | 21 million at most, halving about every four years. | No hard cap: a tail emission of 0.6 XMR per block since May 2022. |
| Launch | Fair launch: no premine, no sale. The only allocation is a 3% founder stream, written into consensus, to a published 2-of-3 multisig until the first halving. Testnet live since September 2026; Mainnet planned. | Launched October 2016. For its first four years a Founders’ Reward went to the Electric Coin Co., the Zcash Foundation and early investors; since 2020 a development fund takes a share of each block reward. | Launched April 2014, with no premine. No part of the block reward goes to development. |
Zecnero is Zcash with a short list of changes; Zecnero vs Zcash lists every one.
Anonymity set
A private payment hides which coin it spends among others that it could have spent. That group is its anonymity set. Monero hides each payment among 15 decoys (a ring of 16); Zecnero hides it among every note in the shielded pool.
Zecnero’s shielded pool is new and small, and its anonymity set grows with use.
Sources
Zcash
- Transparent and shielded transactions: z.cash, shielded and transparent Zcash
- Launch in October 2016, the 21 million supply and the Founders’ Reward: Zcash documentation, basics
- The development fund from 2020: ZIP 1014
- Sprout closed to new funds: ZIP 211
- Equihash, Sapling and Orchard: the Zcash protocol specification (PDF)
Monero
- Private by default: What is Monero?
- Ring size 16: Moneropedia, ring size
- Stealth addresses and RingCT: Moneropedia, stealth address, Moneropedia, RingCT
- RandomX: Moneropedia, RandomX
- Tail emission: Moneropedia, tail emission
- Launch in April 2014, no premine: About Monero
Zecnero
- Consensus rules, issuance and the founder stream: the specification and the FAQ
Zecnero is an independent project. It is not affiliated with the Electric Coin Co., the Zcash Foundation or the Monero Project.