THORChain switched on its Zcash liquidity pool on October 2, adding a permissionless cross-chain venue for the privacy coin as its developers prepare the NU7 network upgrade for November.
ZEC traded at about $1,368 on October 3, CoinGecko data showed, down slightly on the day but up 13 percent for the week and 68.8 percent for the month. The token sits roughly 57 percent below the all-time high of $3,191 it set earlier north in the multi-year bull run, with a market cap of $23.2 billion and the tenth-largest crypto ranking on CoinGecko.
THORChain ZEC Pool Went Live on October 2
THORChain executed a node rotation on October 2 and then confirmed the ZEC liquidity pool was live. In an X message the project said every validator node is now watching the Zcash chain. Native ZEC swaps are not yet enabled, and the team warned that initial pool depth is thin.
“The $ZEC pool is now live on THORChain. The network churned and every node is watching the Zcash chain… Trading is the next step. Liquidity is shallow for now and will grow over time, so trade with caution in the early days.”
– THORChain, October 2 X post
The launch follows September engineering work documented by the team including Zcash UTXO handling, transaction timeout logic, inter-node signing coordination and a dedicated ZEC price oracle. Deposits are open for liquidity providers, but the swap engine stays off for now. No total value locked figure was published for the first day of the pool. The team said the activation of native trading hinges on sustained capital inflows, and that larger orders could face heavy slippage in the early days.
Why the ZEC Pool Is Unusual
Zcash is not a standard account-chain asset. The network uses unspent transaction output mechanics, 75-second block intervals and optional shielded pools whose payloads outside observers cannot fully inspect. Any bridge or liquidity system has to handle timeouts and proof coordination across that structure, which is why THORChain spent September on UTXO and timeout engineering before opening deposits. CoinGecko classifies Zcash as a smart contract platform category asset and notes that over 30 percent of ZEC supply now sits in shielded pools, an all-time high, as holders seek protection from financial surveillance.
Liquidity providers can also evaluate the demand side. ZEC 24-hour spot volume ran $1.19 billion on October 3, up 39 percent from a day earlier, while perps open interest stood at $4.1 billion, about 18 percent of market cap, CoinGecko data showed. A price oracle shipped for the pool, and the project says the gate for trading remains liquidity depth rather than code readiness.
NU7 Upgrade Looms in November
The other big Zcash story remains the NU7 upgrade. Developer Sean Bowe said in a September 17 community update that the Zcash Foundation, Project Tachyon, Valar Group, ZODL and Shielded Labs had reached unanimous agreement on the scope and a target mainnet activation around November 5, with testnet activation on October 6. A final decision on the mainnet height is scheduled for October 20 after a two-week testnet review.
NU7 would cut Zcash block spacing from 75 seconds to 25 seconds under draft ZIP 218, disabling version 4 transactions and integrating a Network Sustainability Mechanism. The chosen NSM design preserves the existing halving schedule, with reintroduction of previously removed supply beginning February 2031. Coinholder polls backed keeping the halvings with 98.9 percent support and the NSM plan with 96.6 percent support. Version 4 deactivation would prevent further spending from legacy Sprout funds, meaning old zc addresses must migrate before November 5.
The upgrade matters for the THORChain pool as well. Roughly triple the block throughput changes how quickly deposits on a foreign chain can be confirmed against Zcash state, and the NSM will burn 60 percent of transaction fees starting in 2031, altering the fee market the pool’s oracle has to price. Shielded wallet sync bandwidth estimates actually drop from 271 MB to 169 MB per day under the faster block schedule, though full-node operators would process considerably more blocks per unit of time.
Corporate and Institutional Backdrop
Beyond this week’s news, 2026 has already handed Zcash a spot ETF. Grayscale’s ZCSH fund launched on NYSE Arca in late August and crossed $1 billion in assets within a month, with roughly $306 million in net inflows by late September, about $100 million of that from a DCG investment, according to ETF Trends. Paradigm’s disclosure of ZEC holdings in September added another institutional nod. In the derivatives market, CoinMarketCap tracked ZEC futures volume in the billions during the August surge, with open interest near 13 percent of market cap at that point.
That run has cooled from its September peak. The ZEC price touched $1,249 in early September, and CoinMarketCap notes a 21 percent correction from the peak in the last week of the month as the Grayscale ZECETF saw a $30 million single-day outflow on October 1. Cumulative ZCSH net inflows remain near $268 million.
What Happens Next
Three dates define the near term. October 6 brings NU7 testnet activation and, per CoinMarketCal, a Monero-Zcash chain release event. October 20 is the final mainnet decision date for the upgrade. November 5, if testnet review holds, marks the mainnet activation itself. The THORChain team will evaluate whether the pool has attracted enough depth by then to switch on native swaps.
The project’s own risk note frames the opportunity and the downside. Either thin liquidity grows into a genuine venue for a privacy asset with relatively few centralized listings, or early slippage tests the patience of traders and the pool idles until depth improves. With ZEC already up more than 900 percent over the past year, a good deal of the upgrade cycle is priced in, and the next leg depends on execution across the October 6 and November 5 milestones.