• Shielded balance took a long time to appear
  


• You cannot send from shielded to transparent
  


• Syncing and balance updates were slow and inconsistent
  

• Could receive shielded ZEC
  


• Balance took forever to sync
  


• Wallet constantly glitched
  


• Send transactions failed
  


• One failed transaction took 12 hours to clear and return the balance
  

• Looked better initially
  


• Still wouldn’t send from shielded to transparent
  


• Imported my Nighthawk seed
  


• Waited 24 hours for balance to sync
  


• Balance never appeared
  

• Imported the same seed
  


• Correct balance appeared within 30 minutes
  


• Shielded → transparent transaction worked
  


• I was able to recover my stuck funds back into Brave
  

• Optional privacy is a joke
  


• Wallet ecosystem is unreliable
  


• Sync times are absurd
  


• Balance delays are constant
  


• You often need multiple wallets just to move your own money
  

(Jan 8, 2026 05:07 PM)Mewtwo Wrote:  It’s interesting to note whether traceability is even possible with ZEC. One way for sure is timing and amount once it becomes transparent again. Also, Zcash privacy pool seems to be small, so it makes it a lot more easier for forensics to trace.

Mandatory privacy for all transactions is what will make a blockchain fully anonymous.

(Jan 8, 2026 05:12 PM)Omniscient Wrote:  Zcash has Elliptic Risk Assessment Levels. The good news is that's why it's on exchanges. The bad news is that privacy is lost.

Monero has not a single crypto blockchain analysis company that can do AML risk scores. That's all I really need to know.

(Jan 9, 2026 06:19 AM)Mewtwo Wrote:  DAC8 just started rolling out in the EU. Basically it’s mandatory reporting on exchanges, offline wallets, freezing assets on exchanges if audits don’t match. I think this is going to pressure a lot of folks to start using XMR and DEX to avoid the stress of DAC8 entirely.

(Jan 14, 2026 01:53 PM)Mewtwo Wrote:  https://www.theblock.co/post/385629/zcash-foundation-says-sec-has-closed-book-on-years-long-probe

I wonder if this is the true reason why the team left. Maybe they were pressured to do this by the USA

(Jan 28, 2026 02:58 AM)Siipi Wrote:  Why don't you just stick with Zashi and use shielded pool with Njalla, for example, and trade via ShapeShift? Transparent transactions don't matter if you use shielded pool and Tor to hide transaction history.

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The Electric Coin Co left due to the removal of grants to Electric Coin Co and Zcash Foundation. They started a new company and apply for community grants from the lockbox of all users and Zcash Community Grants. Now the reserch and development isn't linked to a central company but to the community. Anyone can participate and apply for grants. Also, mining pools don't bring centralization as the nodes decide which miners to trust and the zk-proofs show if there's something wrong with transactions.

(Jan 8, 2026 04:18 PM)Omniscient Wrote:  My Zcash Experience (Why I’m Done With It)

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In April, I noticed Zcash starting to gain serious momentum, both in price action and social media hype.

At the time, it was trading around $30. It eventually ran past $700, and as of today sits around $425.

Given the hype, I figured it was worth actually using Zcash instead of just watching the chart.

For context, I’ve used Monero for years and consider it a real privacy coin. It works, it’s reliable, and privacy is not optional. I assumed Zcash would offer something comparable. I was very wrong.

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Zcash “privacy” is optional (and that’s the problem)

For anyone unfamiliar, Zcash privacy is not default. It’s optional.

Privacy only exists when using shielded addresses. While funds are in shielded addresses, transactions and balances are private. Sounds good in theory.

Here’s the catch:
I could not find a single KYC exchange that supports shielded deposits. If you want to interact with exchanges, your ZEC must be moved to a transparent address, completely breaking privacy.

Some exchanges support shielded withdrawals, which is a small plus, but the moment you want liquidity, privacy is gone.

---

Wallet hell begins

I started looking for a Windows desktop wallet that supports shielded addresses.

I was recommended zecwallet.co, except the site has been offline for weeks. There is a zecwallet.com, but I strongly recommend not installing it. It was buggy, failed to run properly in a Linux VM, and my antivirus flagged it. I also have no idea who operates it.

At that point, someone in Convo pointed me to the Brave Wallet. I already used Brave, but didn’t realize it supported shielded ZEC. It does, but only after enabling it in settings.

Unfortunately, the experience was still bad:

• Shielded balance took a long time to appear
  


• You cannot send from shielded to transparent
  


• Syncing and balance updates were slow and inconsistent
  

So now I needed another wallet just to move my own funds.

---

Android wallets: even worse

Since desktop options were failing, I moved to Android wallets.

Nighthawk was the first one I tried:

• Could receive shielded ZEC
  


• Balance took forever to sync
  


• Wallet constantly glitched
  


• Send transactions failed
  


• One failed transaction took 12 hours to clear and return the balance
  

At this point, I had $50 stuck in a wallet I couldn’t spend from.

Next, I tried YWallet:

• Looked better initially
  


• Still wouldn’t send from shielded to transparent
  


• Imported my Nighthawk seed
  


• Waited 24 hours for balance to sync
  


• Balance never appeared
  

Finally, I tried Zashi:

• Imported the same seed
  


• Correct balance appeared within 30 minutes
  


• Shielded → transparent transaction worked
  


• I was able to recover my stuck funds back into Brave
  

---

Final outcome

Today, I moved all my ZEC to an exchange and traded it for BTC.

My conclusion: Zcash is terrible to actually use.

• Optional privacy is a joke
  


• Wallet ecosystem is unreliable
  


• Sync times are absurd
  


• Balance delays are constant
  


• You often need multiple wallets just to move your own money
  

Can Zcash be used privately? Sure, technically.
Is it practical? Not at all.

It is nowhere near the reliability or usability of Monero.

I’m done with it.

Thanks for reading.