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.

governance

github

twitter

website

Blockchains (L1)

Zcash

# Zcash Revenue Methodology

## 1. Overview

The Zcash revenue metric measures the total revenue generated by the Zcash protocol. However, Zcash operates as a decentralized cryptocurrency without a revenue model - the protocol does not collect fees or generate income from network operations. Therefore, this metric consistently reports zero revenue for all time periods, reflecting the protocol's design as a pure peer-to-peer digital currency without revenue generation mechanisms.

## 2. Data sources

The methodology leverages the existing fees calculation infrastructure but does not depend on the actual fee values:
- **Zcash blockchain transactions**: Complete transaction records including inputs, outputs, value transfers, and transaction metadata
- **Network fee data**: Calculated transaction fees paid by users to miners (used only for dimensional structure, not revenue calculation)
- **End-of-day token price feeds**: ZEC token prices for potential USD conversion (not utilized since revenue is zero)
- **Token metadata**: ZEC token information including decimal precision and identifiers

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Fees infrastructure reference
- **Purpose**: Establish the dimensional framework and time series structure for the revenue metric
- **Logic**: The calculation references the Zcash fees metric to obtain the proper timestamp boundaries, granularities, and dimensional attributes. This ensures consistency with other Zcash metrics while providing the structural foundation for revenue reporting. The fees data provides daily timestamps, chain identifiers, and product classifications that are inherited by the revenue metric.
- **Key fields**: `timestamp` (daily granularity), `timestamp_grain` (set to daily), `product_id` (blockchain product classification), `chain_id` (Zcash network identifier)

### Component B: Revenue value assignment
- **Purpose**: Set the actual revenue value based on Zcash's protocol design
- **Logic**: Since Zcash operates without a revenue model - the protocol does not collect transaction fees, take a percentage of network activity, or generate income through any mechanism - the revenue is explicitly set to zero for all records. This reflects the fundamental design of Zcash as a decentralized cryptocurrency where all transaction fees go directly to miners rather than to any central entity or protocol treasury.
- **Key fields**: `revenue` (hardcoded to 0 for all time periods)

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: The zero revenue values are combined with the dimensional structure from the fees infrastructure to create complete time series records
- **Currency conversion**: No currency conversion is performed since revenue values are zero in both native ZEC terms and USD equivalent
- **Time aggregation**: Daily time boundaries are maintained consistent with other Zcash metrics, ensuring proper alignment across the full metrics suite
- **Final calculation**: Revenue equals zero for all time periods, reflecting Zcash's design as a protocol without revenue generation mechanisms. The metric maintains proper dimensional structure and time series continuity while accurately representing the protocol's non-commercial nature.

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

fees * take_rate (illustrative — revenue is observed directly per project, not derived from take_rate)

Fee revenue retained after supply-side payouts. Before cost of revenue (e.g. L2 DA fees) and before operating expenses.

ZcashZEC

Revenue

Revenue

Competitive landscape