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

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Blockchains (L1)

Zcash

# Zcash Token incentives Methodology

## 1. Overview

Token incentives for Zcash represent the daily total block rewards paid to miners for securing the Zcash blockchain network. This metric captures the monetary incentives distributed through the proof-of-work consensus mechanism, measuring the daily cost of network security in both native ZEC tokens and USD equivalent values.

## 2. Data sources

- **Zcash blockchain transaction records**: Complete transaction data from the Zcash blockchain, including coinbase transactions that contain mining rewards
- **End-of-day token price feeds**: Daily closing prices for ZEC token to enable USD conversion
- **Token metadata**: Zcash token information including decimal precision and standardized identifiers

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Block reward extraction
- **Purpose**: Extract mining rewards from coinbase transactions on the Zcash blockchain
- **Logic**: Filter Zcash transaction records to identify coinbase transactions using the `is_coinbase` flag. For each coinbase transaction, unnest the `outputs` array to access individual output values. Sum all output values measured in zatoshis (the smallest unit of ZEC) for each block to calculate the total block reward
- **Key fields**: `block_timestamp` for timing, `block_number` for block identification, `txid` for transaction reference, and `valueZat` for reward amounts in zatoshis

### Component B: Daily aggregation
- **Purpose**: Aggregate block rewards into daily totals
- **Logic**: Group block rewards by calendar day using timestamp truncation to day boundaries. Sum all block rewards within each day to calculate total daily mining incentives. Filter out any records with null timestamps to ensure data quality
- **Key fields**: `daily_timestamp` for the aggregation period and `total_incentives_zat` for the daily reward total

### Component C: Token unit conversion
- **Purpose**: Convert zatoshi amounts to standard ZEC token units
- **Logic**: Convert raw zatoshi values to ZEC by dividing by 100 million (1e8), as there are 100 million zatoshis in one ZEC token. Add standardized metadata fields including chain identifier, token symbol, and price feed reference
- **Key fields**: `token_incentives_native` representing the converted ZEC amount, `token_symbol` as 'ZEC', and `coingecko_id` for price lookup

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: The daily ZEC amounts flow directly from the conversion step into the final standardization process
- **Currency conversion**: USD conversion applies end-of-day ZEC price feeds to convert native token amounts to USD equivalent values using standard price normalization logic
- **Time aggregation**: Daily boundary logic uses calendar day truncation to ensure consistent time periods across different time zones
- **Final calculation**: The final metric represents the total daily mining incentives paid in both native ZEC tokens and USD equivalent, standardized with business classification metadata and data quality validation

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

Value of native tokens distributed as incentives.

ZcashZEC

Token incentives

Token incentives

Competitive landscape