Miners process transactions and receive fees from users (supply-side fees).

Zcash is a distributed ledger for transfer and store of value (a blockchain). Zcash was founded by Matthew Green, Ian Miers, Christina Garman and launched in 2016.

ZEC holders own and govern the protocol. They currently do not take a cut of the total transaction fees paid by users (revenue). Zcash’s investors include Fenbushi Capital, Pantera Capital, Digital Currency Group, etc.

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Blockchains (L1)

Zcash

# Zcash Fees Methodology

## 1. Overview

The Zcash fees metric measures the total transaction fees paid on the Zcash blockchain on a daily basis, denominated in USD. This metric captures the cost users pay to miners for processing their transactions and provides insight into network usage and fee market dynamics. The calculation follows Zcash's UTXO (Unspent Transaction Output) model where fees are derived from the difference between transaction inputs and outputs, accounting for Zcash's unique shielded pool mechanics through multiple value pools.

## 2. Data sources

- **Zcash blockchain transactions**: Raw transaction records containing transaction inputs, outputs, timestamps, and value balance information for shielded pool interactions
- **Transaction input/output data**: Detailed UTXO data including transaction IDs, output indices, and zatoshi values needed for fee calculations
- **End-of-day token price feeds**: ZEC-to-USD exchange rate data for currency conversion

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Input value lookup table

- **Purpose**: Creates a reference table mapping transaction outputs to their values for fee calculation
- **Logic**: Processes all Zcash transaction records and extracts each output with its transaction ID, output index (position), and value in zatoshis. Each record gets a unique identifier combining the transaction ID and output index. Values are stored as high-precision numbers to handle large zatoshi amounts accurately
- **Key fields**: `txid` (transaction identifier), `output_index` (output position), `output_value` (zatoshi amount)

### Component B: Fee calculation per transaction

- **Purpose**: Calculates individual transaction fees using Zcash's UTXO model
- **Logic**: Starts with all non-coinbase transactions (excludes mining rewards). For each transaction, calculates total input value by looking up previous transaction outputs using the input value lookup table, joining on transaction ID and output index. Calculates total output value by summing all outputs within the current transaction. The Zcash fee formula is applied by summing the net value changes across all supported pools: Fee = (Total Input Value - Total Output Value) + Sapling value balance + Orchard value balance + Sprout value balance. Each pool's value balance represents the difference between notes spent and notes created, where a positive value indicates value leaving the pool. This accounting ensures that shielded transactions across Sapling, Orchard, and Sprout pools are correctly processed without misidentifying shielded amounts as miner fees. Value balances are extracted from Sapling-specific fields, Orchard JSON data, and the net change in public values within Sprout join splits.
- **Key fields**: `fee_zat` (calculated fee in zatoshis), `block_timestamp` (transaction time), `txid` (transaction identifier)

### Final aggregation

- **Combining components**: Groups all transaction-level fees by day, filtering out any negative fees (setting them to zero) to handle edge cases or calculation errors
- **Currency conversion**: Converts fees from zatoshis to ZEC by dividing by 100,000,000 (1e8), then applies USD conversion using end-of-day ZEC price feeds via the standard conversion macro
- **Time aggregation**: Truncates transaction timestamps to daily boundaries and sums all fees within each day
- **Final calculation**: Daily total equals the sum of all individual transaction fees for that day, converted from zatoshis to ZEC to USD, with standard metric schema applied including chain identification as 'zcash' and categorization as layer-1 blockchain fees

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

Total value users pay to use a protocol (gross fees, user-paid fees).

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Fees

Fees

Competitive landscape