Questions about Zecnero.

Every Zecnero payment is shielded. Transparent outputs exist only in mining rewards, which must be shielded before they can be spent. Mainnet enforces this from block 1, and the public testnet from block 16,529.

Zecnero is forked from Zebra, the Zcash node, and keeps Zcash’s shielded cryptography: Orchard on Mainnet, and on the testnet from its NU2 upgrade (Sapling and Orchard before it). It mines with RandomX on ordinary CPUs instead of Equihash, and its payments are shielded only, where Zcash also allows transparent payments. There is no dev fund: the only allocation is a 3% founder stream until the first halving. Every change is listed on the Zecnero vs Zcash page.

Zecnero uses Monero’s proof of work, RandomX, but its code is forked from Zcash, not from Monero. Monero hides each payment among 15 decoys (a ring of 16); Zecnero hides it among every note in the shielded pool. Monero does this with ring signatures, stealth addresses and RingCT; Zecnero uses Zcash’s zero-knowledge proofs. Zecnero’s shielded pool is new and small, and its anonymity set grows with use. Monero has a tail emission, while Zecnero’s supply stops at 20,999,993.5652 ZMR. The compare page puts the three coins side by side.

Its node, zecnerod, is a fork of Zebra, the Zcash Foundation’s Rust node, so the shielded cryptography is Zcash’s. Mining uses RandomX, the algorithm Monero uses, under Zecnero’s own parameters. Zecnero runs its own chain with its own coins.

No. NU7 is a Zcash network upgrade, and it doesn’t activate on Zecnero. A Zebra release reaches Zecnero nodes only if we merge it and ship it in a Zecnero release. We review upstream security fixes and port the ones that apply. NU1 adopted Zcash’s Orchard fixes this way.

Yes. Zecnero’s proof of work is RandomX (algorithm rx/zecnero, and rx/zecnero2 on the testnet from its NU2 upgrade), which is built so an ordinary desktop processor is competitive hardware and a GPU adds little. You can mine the testnet today with one command, on the official pool or solo with your own node, on Linux or on Windows through WSL. The mining guide has the steps.

No. There is no premine, no presale and no token sale; mining is the only way ZMR is made. The only allocation is the founder stream, written into consensus: 3% of each block’s subsidy until the first halving, paid to a published 2-of-3 multisig address. That is about 1.5% of all ZMR ever issued. Kaito holds all three keys, and any spending from it is posted publicly.

It runs Zcash’s shielded transactions, forked from Zebra. What changes is the proof of work, the difficulty algorithm, issuance, network identity and chain selection. Everything else follows the Zcash protocol at NU6.

The public testnet has launched; Mainnet has not, and has no date. The node, the miner, the bridge and a testnet beta of the wallet are released, and testnet coins have no value. The official testnet pool is open at pool.zecnero.org. Progress is on the roadmap page and in the GitLab issues.

Nobody. There is no premine and no sale. The only allocation is the founder stream, which is written into consensus: every block below the first halving pays 3% of its subsidy to a published founder script. That is 0.1875 ZMR a block, 314,999.8125 ZMR in total, about 1.5% of the 20,999,993.5652 ZMR ever issued. The stream goes back into development and infrastructure. It is paid to a public 2-of-3 multisig (P2SH) address. Kaito holds all three keys. The 2-of-3 protects the stream against one lost or stolen key; it does not stop Kaito from spending it. Any spending is posted publicly. There is no dev fund, and no height is reserved for or restricted to any miner. After launch the founder mines from published addresses under the same rules as everyone else.

RandomX runs randomly generated programs whose instruction mix and memory behaviour are modelled on general-purpose processors, so a desktop CPU does the work well and a GPU adds little. Dedicated RandomX hardware sold so far has shown little efficiency advantage over a high-end desktop chip. If hardware with a large advantage appears, the proof of work can be changed by a network upgrade.

Run one command. On Linux, or in Ubuntu under WSL on Windows: curl -fsSL https://downloads.zecnero.org/install-miner.sh | bash. In Windows PowerShell: irm https://downloads.zecnero.org/install.ps1 | iex. It downloads and checks the signed release, asks you to save your mining key, then asks how you want to mine: press Enter for the official pool, which makes a wallet for your payouts (save its 24-word seed too) and starts mining about a minute later, or choose solo to run your own node. The mining guide at zecnero.org/mine explains each step, walks Windows through WSL, and has a manual setup. For pool mining without WSL there is also an opt-in native Windows beta, which needs an update at the next network upgrade.

Most people should mine on the pool. The official testnet pool, pool.zecnero.org, runs the node for you: your computer runs only the miner, mining starts about a minute after the install, and the pool pays your part of each block it finds once your balance reaches 0.5 ZMR, with a pool fee of 0% on the testnet (1% on Mainnet). Solo mining runs your own node, the bridge and the miner: the node syncs first, and you get a whole block’s reward when your computer finds one, and nothing until then. The one-command installer asks which you want and defaults to the pool. Solo miners keep the network spread out. The pool page shows the official pool’s share of the network at all times. On an existing install, zecnero-miner update then zecnero-miner mode pool switches to the pool, and zecnero-miner mode solo switches back.

Not on the testnet: the official pool, pool.zecnero.org, takes 0% there. On Mainnet it will take 1% of the reward of each block it finds, that is the subsidy less the 3% founder stream, plus the block’s transaction fees. The fee is taken before the rest is split among the pool’s miners by their shares. It goes to the pool’s fee address and funds the pool and its infrastructure. Other pools exist, and solo mining pays no pool fee.

No. Each block pays 6.25 ZMR, halving every 1,680,000 blocks. Issuance ends after 30 halvings at 20,999,993.5652 ZMR, and block producers are paid by transaction fees from then on.

Payments are. Every payment goes to a shielded address, and between shielded addresses the sender, receiver, amount and memo stay encrypted. Transparent addresses receive mining rewards only (on Mainnet from block 1, on the testnet from block 16,529); they work like Bitcoin and are fully public, so shielding mined coins shows the transparent address and amount it spends.

No. It’s an independent fork with no affiliation to Electric Coin Co. or the Zcash Foundation.

Nowhere. Testnet ZMR has no value and is not sold anywhere; you get it by mining the testnet, or get a few test coins from the faucet at faucet.zecnero.org. Mainnet has not launched, so Mainnet ZMR does not exist yet. There is no exchange listing, and there has been no presale and no token sale of any kind. Mining is the only way ZMR is made.

It is not ours. ZMR exists only on its own chain. Any “Zecnero” token on Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain or anywhere else is somebody else’s coin using our name.

They’re not. Nobody from the project will DM you first, and nobody will ever ask for your seed phrase.