Grayscale credits Zcash’s 20% developer funding with a decade of innovation

Grayscale is making the case that Zcash’s most underrated feature isn’t its privacy tech. It’s the paycheck. The asset manager says Zcash’s practice of routing 20% of block rewards to developers has supported a decade of innovation on the network. How the money moves Every time a new block is mined on Zcash, freshly created ZEC gets distributed. Under the structure Grayscale highlights, miners keep 80% of block rewards. The remaining 20% is set aside for development and ecosystem work. That 20% is further divided. According to the research findings, 8% of rewards goes to community grants, while 12% flows into a development fund lockbox. The lockbox is the interesting part. Funds accumulate there rather than being handed straight to a single team, which means the money sits in reserve until the community decides how to deploy it. Grayscale’s October 2026 report frames this protocol-level funding as the foundation for nearly a decade of advances in privacy technology. A funding model with history Zcash launched in October 2016 with ecosystem financing baked in from day one. The original version was called the Founders’ Reward, which also took 20% of block rewards. That arrangement en...