In short
Zecnero (ticker ZMR) is a proof-of-work cryptocurrency on its own chain. Its code is a fork of Zebra, the Rust node the Zcash Foundation maintains, pinned at release v6.3.0. It keeps Zcash’s shielded transactions and changes how blocks are made and paid for: the proof of work is RandomX, so an ordinary desktop processor is competitive hardware, and the only allocation is a small founder stream written into consensus.
It is not a Monero fork, and not a token on another chain. It borrows Monero’s proof-of-work algorithm; everything else comes from Zcash.
Where it stands
The public testnet is live. Anyone can run the node and mine it with a desktop CPU, and a testnet beta of the wallet sends transparent and Sapling shielded transactions. Testnet coins have no value.
Mainnet has not launched and has no date. What is left before it is on the roadmap. There is no price, no exchange listing, and there was no sale of any kind.
The software
| Program | What it does |
|---|---|
zecnerod | The full node: validates blocks, keeps the chain, and hands block templates to miners over RPC. |
zecnero-bridge | Turns the node’s block templates into jobs a RandomX miner understands, on your own machine. |
xmrig-zecnero | A build of the XMRig miner that knows the rx/zecnero algorithm and the Zecnero header. |
zecnero-keygen | Makes a transparent address and its key to mine to. |
| Zecnero wallet | Command-line wallet for Linux and Windows, desktop wallet for Windows. Talks to your own node. See Wallets. |
All of it is on GitLab, and releases are signed with the Zecnero release key.
Privacy
Every coin sits in one of three pools. Transparent addresses work like Bitcoin: amounts and addresses are public. Sapling and Orchard are the shielded pools: sender, receiver, amount and memo are encrypted, and zero-knowledge proofs show the transaction is valid without revealing them. The cryptography is Zcash’s, unchanged. Sprout, Zcash’s oldest shielded pool, is removed.
Today the wallet supports transparent and Sapling. Orchard is part of the protocol, but wallets refuse it until a proving-key fix lands; the comparison with Zcash explains why.
Supply
Each block pays 6.25 ZMR, and the subsidy halves every 1,680,000 blocks, about four years at one block per 75 seconds. After 30 halvings it reaches zero, at a total of 20,999,993.5652 ZMR. There is no tail emission: from then on miners are paid by fees alone.
Fair launch
There is no premine, no presale, no dev fund and no treasury. The one allocation is the founder stream: every block below the first halving pays 3% of its subsidy, 0.1875 ZMR, to a published founder script. That is 314,999.8125 ZMR in total, 1.5% of all ZMR ever issued, and it stops at the first halving. Nodes reject any block that leaves it out, so it is visible and fixed.
The genesis block commits to a recent Bitcoin block, which proves it did not exist before that block was mined. Before Mainnet, the genesis time, the founder script and the founder’s mining addresses are published, so anyone can measure the founder’s share of early blocks.
What it is not
- Not affiliated with Electric Coin Co., the Zcash Foundation, the Monero Project or XMRig.
- Not a token. Anything called Zecnero or ZMR on Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain or any other chain is unrelated.
- Not an investment. Nothing here says anything about price or returns; a miner’s expected share of new coins equals its share of the hashrate, and nothing makes mining profitable.
Next: how mining works, Zecnero vs Zcash, or the specification.