How Zcash reclaimed the privacy crown from Monero

For almost a decade, the rivalry between Zcash (ZEC) and Monero (XMR) defined the crypto privacy movement.

Both digital assets promised what Bitcoin could not, true transaction anonymity, but they took very different paths to achieve it. Monero has made privacy mandatory, encrypting every transaction by default. Zcash has made it optional, allowing users to choose between complete transparency and complete privacy.

For years, that choice seemed to hurt Zcash. Monero’s uncompromising design has won the loyalty of cypherpunks, darknet users, and privacy maximalists who saw ZEC’s “opt-in” model as a compromise.

However, as strict regulatory scrutiny and exchanges began to remove privacy tokens, Zcash’s hybrid model evolved from a weakness to a weapon.

this fall, Zcash overturned Monero in market capitalization for the first time in seven years, claiming the “privacy crown.” Data from CoinGecko shows that ZEC now has a market capitalization of $7.5 billion, compared to Monero’s $6.3 billion, ranking it among the top 20 cryptocurrencies in the world.

The change marks not only a reclassification, but a deeper narrative reversal. The very architecture that once made Zcash controversial, its balance between privacy and respect, is now attracting institutional money, ETF bonds and mainstream legitimacy.

From Cypherpunk to Compliant

Zcash was launched in 2016 by Electric Coin Company (ECC) under the leadership of founder cypherpunk. Zooko Wilcox. The mission was to address Bitcoin’s biggest flaw: the traceability of its transactions.

Using advanced proofs of zero knowledge (zk-SNARKs), Zcash allowed users to fully encrypt the data of the sender, the recipient and the amount of data while proving validity to the network.

However, the protocol introduced a new flexibility that allowed users to opt for transparent (T address) or protected (Z address) transactions. That optionality alienated privacy purists, but it made the project easier to regulate because crypto exchanges could list ZEC, because it was not completely anonymous by default.

On the other hand, Monero, created in 2014, went in the opposite direction. It enforced privacy across the board through ring signatures and furtive addresses, making every transaction opaque and untraceable. For years, this has given Monero dominance in the privacy sector, making it a currency immune to off-chain analysis.

But Monero’s strength has also become its Achilles heel. Because every transaction is private, the network remains under regulatory siege. It has been delisted by several major exchanges, including Binance, OKXand Huobi, due to concerns regarding anti-money laundering (AML) regulations.

Zcash, meanwhile, continues to trade freely on compliant platforms, and that accessibility now matters more than purity.

The 51% moment that changed everything

The tipping point for both privacy-focused blockchain networks occurred in mid-2025, when the AI-based protocol Qubic claimed to have gained majority control of Monero’s hashing power. a 51% attack that shook the trust in the network.

The attackers allegedly reorganized six blocks and orphaned dozens of others, effectively rewriting parts of the blockchain’s recent history.

A few weeks later, independent monitors reported another reorganization of 18 blocks, the largest in Monero’s history. Although no double spending has been done, the events have revealed structural fragility.

For investors and exchanges, this confirmed long-held fears: Monero’s commitment to anonymity made it harder to secure and audit.

Zcash, by contrast, had been quietly building a more modern governance and upgrade framework through ECC, the Zcash Foundation, and Zashi, its consumer blockchain project.

This stability, combined with a perception of regulatory friendliness, created the perfect backdrop for Zcash’s comeback.

How Zcash came together

Zcash’s rally didn’t happen in isolation. Over the past year, privacy tokens have grown amid a broader backlash against global surveillance measures, from the MiCA of the EU digital identity rules to UK data sharing proposals.

Amidst this climate, investors rediscovered ZEC. The token rose almost 200% in a month and 1,000% year-on-year, reaching a seven-year high of $478 before a minor correction to $461. Unlike past speculative pumps, this move had institutional depth behind it.

The gray scale Zcash Trust (ZCSH) returned 90% in September alone, while open interest in ZEC reached a new high of nearly $700 million.

Market participants interpreted these flows as early signs of a “regulated privacy trade”: exposure to cryptographic privacy without the legal baggage of Monero.

Considering this, Arthur Hayes, CIO of Maelstrom, predicted that the token could reach $10,000 while describing Zcash as the “clean privacy bet”.

Moreover, the latest momentum of Zcash is rooted in real technical progress.

In its October 2025 road sheetthe ECC has outlined several updates aimed at simplifying and securing private transactions.

The plan introduced ephemeral addresses for each exchange via the NEAR Intents protocol, automatic address rotation once funds are received, hardware resynchronization capabilities for Keystone wallets, and multisig Pay-to-Script-Hash (P2SH) support to better safeguard developer funds.

Together, these improvements simplify how users interact with ZEC through the Zashi wallet, which debuted earlier this year. Once criticized for its complex privacy workflows, Zcash’s interface now works with the ease of mainstream crypto wallets, thus removing a significant usability barrier.

Perhaps most notably, more than 30% of ZEC’s total supply now resides in screened pools, indicating that the use of privacy has come to market speculation.

As more transactions move through these encrypted channels, Zcash’s overall anonymity sector expands, strengthening both its privacy guarantees and the network’s long-term resilience.