After a 1460% increase, re-evaluating the value foundation of ZEC

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Bitget Wallet

2025-11-23 14:35:23

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Narrative and emotion can create myths, while fundamentals determine how far those myths can go.

Original Title: Bitget Wallet Research Institute: After a 1460% Surge, Reassessing the Value Foundation of ZEC

Original Author: Lacie Zhang, Researcher at Bitget Wallet

The Myth's Beginning, the Prelude to Collapse

In just the past two months, Zcash ($ZEC) has become the most dazzling focus of the entire cryptocurrency market. From a surge from $50 at the end of September to a recent peak of $730, the increase reached as high as 1460%, with the FDV soaring to a historical peak of $13B in 8 years.

What further heightened the sentiment was the endorsement from numerous top figures: endorsements from heavyweight personalities like @naval, @0xMert_, and @CryptoHayes acted as catalysts, igniting market FOMO and attracting a large number of KOLs, retail investors, and even some funds to reassess this old chain. Rarely, both Chinese and English CT communities are fervently discussing ZEC, the privacy narrative, and the resurgence of ZK technology; Privacy seems to once again be hailed as the protagonist of the "next big trend" in the cryptocurrency market.

However, beneath this seemingly hot and perfect narrative, some key fundamental issues have been consistently overlooked: Can ZEC's miner economic model, network security, and on-chain interaction activity truly support an FDV of over $10 billion? The Bitget Wallet Research Institute will take you on a journey to explore this in this article.

ZEC is on the Eve of a Typical Hardware-Price Scissors in PoW History

Before discussing the sustainability of any PoW project, the economic incentives on the mining side often provide the most intuitive reflection of the chain's value capture ability.

Let's first calculate ZEC's current payback period:

1) Z15 Pro: The Most Mainstream Miner Currently

The most discussed and sought-after flagship ZEC miner in the current market is the Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro, with the following hardware specifications:

• Hashrate: 840 KH/s

• Power: 2780 W, actual operation around 2560 W

• Energy Efficiency Ratio: 0.302 KH/W

Currently, the official website only has futures for the Z15 Pro, with delivery in April 2026, priced at $4,999. Those who can't wait can also purchase second-hand spot miners on the black market for around 50,000 RMB.

2) ZEC's Hashrate and Mining Revenue: Astonishing Daily Earnings

In the past two months, ZEC's high returns have rapidly attracted hashrate into the market, with the overall network hashrate beginning to grow significantly, and difficulty has entered a rising cycle. The chart clearly shows that ZEC's price (yellow line) began to break away from its sideways state at the end of September, while hashrate (light purple) and difficulty (dark blue) also saw a synchronized increase. This trend indicates that the mining side has begun to respond to the price increase.

As of the time of writing, the key parameters of the Zcash network are:

• Total Network Hashrate: 13.31 GH/s

• Network Difficulty: 118.68M

• Block Reward: 1.5625 ZEC

To calculate daily earnings, we input the Z15 Pro's parameters into a mining revenue calculator, using standard miner settings:

• Pool Fee: 2%

• Electricity Price: $0.08 / kWh

• Daily Electricity Consumption: $5.34 (2.78 kW × 24 hours × $0.08/kWh)

We can then arrive at an astonishing figure: the net earnings of a single Z15 Pro are nearly $60 per day! Historical data shows that such high earnings have persisted for at least a week.

3) Payback Period: Extremely Rare High ROI

Assuming that network difficulty remains unchanged in the short term and electricity costs are stable, we calculate the payback period using the futures price of the Z15 Pro miner at $4,999.

To reflect the true cost, we amortize the miner over 5 years (1826 days):

• Daily Machine Cost Amortization: $2.74

• Daily Net Earnings After Amortization: Approximately $56.04

Thus, the static payback period for a Z15 Pro is only about 89 days, translating to an annualized return rate of up to 410%.

This figure is extremely rare in the entire history of PoW ------ it can even be said to be abnormal:

• The payback period for BTC miner upcycle usually takes 12-24 months

• The ROI for ETH during the PoW era ranged between 300-600 days

• Any PoW project with a payback period of less than 120 days (such as FIL, XCH, RVN, etc.) has almost always experienced a surge followed by a collapse

4) Case Review: The Repeated Hardware-Price Scissors

Hardware-Price Scissors is a recurring "harvesting" script in the history of PoW mining, where miners order miners at a premium price when the coin price is at its highest and FOMO sentiment is strongest (at this time, ROI appears extremely low, with a payback period of only 4 months). However, when the miners are actually delivered and the hashrate surges (usually delayed by more than 3 months), the manipulators often sell at high prices, leading miners to face a "coin price halving + production halving" double whammy, and the miners in hand instantly become high-priced scrap metal.

• In May 2021, Chia caused a global hard drive shortage. At that time, the price of XCH soared to $1,600, and the static payback period shown by early hard drive investments was once compressed to less than 130 days. This extreme profit instantly triggered a tsunami of global storage computing power. However, what followed was a brutal "scissors difference": despite the decline in coin prices, the hard drives ordered earlier continued to come online, and the overall network hashrate still surged after the coin price peaked, with the payback period rapidly extended from 30 days to over 3,000 days.

Observing the data of the IceRiver KS1 miner, in mid-2023, its payback period once dropped to 150 days. Unlike Chia, KAS's coin price even maintained an upward trend. But even so, miners still faced losses, because the growth rate of hashrate far exceeded the growth rate of coin price. The rapid iteration and large-scale deployment of industrial-grade ASICs led to an exponential increase in overall network difficulty. Despite the strong coin price, due to the skyrocketing difficulty, the payback period for the KS1 machine still irreversibly soared to 3,500 days.

ZEC's Hashrate Level is in a Historically Dangerous Zone for 51% Attacks

Beyond the mining economic model, another decisive risk line is the network's security and hashrate scale. For PoW chains, "total network hashrate + 51% attack cost" directly determines whether it can remain self-consistent under high valuation.

1) Total Network Hashrate: Only Equivalent to a Small to Medium-Sized Bitcoin Mining Farm

As of the time of writing, ZEC's total network hashrate is approximately 13.31 GSol/s. Based on a single Z15 Pro's hashrate of 0.00084 GSol/s, only about 14,857 Z15 Pro miners are needed, with corresponding energy consumption at around 40 MW, which is only equivalent to the scale of a small to medium-sized Bitcoin mining farm.

From the perspective of the entire network's hashrate scale, Zcash's security foundation appears extremely weak, having entered the risk zone of many small PoW chains that have been successfully attacked by 51%.

2) Attack Cost: Theoretically Only in the Millions of Dollars

Generally, initiating a 51% attack requires controlling over 50% of the total network hashrate at the same time. If ZEC's network has nearly 16,000 Z15 Pros forming the main force, then an attacker only needs to rent or purchase thousands of devices to potentially control over 50% of the hashrate.

A rough estimate:

• Each Z15 Pro futures cost ~ $5,000, generally, purchasing over 300 units constitutes a large customer order, which can enjoy at least a 10% discount

• Controlling hashrate ~8,000 units → Cost at most ~ $40M, with the energy consumption required for the attack around 20 MW

• If renting or second-hand prices are lower, the actual startup cost could be in the millions of dollars

On a public chain with an FDV of nearly $10 billion, only a million-level hashrate investment is needed to launch potential chain reorganization or double-spending, which itself is a structural risk that cannot be ignored.

3) Comparison with Mainstream Chains: Huge Security Gap

To provide a more intuitive and clear perception, let's make a simple comparison with other large PoW chains in operation:

More critically, ZEC's current hashrate not only falls far below mainstream PoW chains like BTC/LTC/KAS, but even chains like ETC, BTG, VTC, and BSV, which have been successfully attacked by 51%, had higher hashrate during their attacks than ZEC currently, indicating that ZEC's network security has effectively fallen into a dangerous zone of vulnerability.

On-Chain Data Reveals that ZCash's Actual Usage Remains Very Limited

Despite the recent surge in ZEC narratives, on-chain data provides a more sober perspective ------ there is a significant deviation between actual usage and the current tens of billions FDV.

From transaction volume, active addresses to ecological scale, Zcash's actual network activity is far from the prosperity implied by price trends:

• The average daily transactions in the past month were only 15,000 - 18,000 transactions/day, only 1% - 2% of large public chains

• As a privacy chain, the vast majority of transactions are still transparent transactions, with shielded transactions accounting for less than 10%

Repricing When the Market Returns from Frenzy to Calm

Narratives, emotions, celebrity effects, and mining economic traps have collectively pushed an eight-year-old dormant project to the peak of public opinion. But through the bustling surface, when we truly return to the three core aspects of blockchain: economic sustainability, network security, and on-chain adoption, ZEC presents a completely opposite picture.

This is:

• A mining environment with a payback period of only 89 days and an annualized return of 410%

• A hashrate scale equivalent to a medium-sized Bitcoin mining farm, with a 51% attack cost as low as millions of dollars, transaction volume and daily activity only 1%-2% of mainstream public chains, and actual usage of privacy features accounting for less than 10% of a PoW chain

History has proven countless times: extremely short payback periods (super high ROI) are often precursors to mining disasters and price crashes.

Whether ZEC will be an exception, I cannot assert.

But the rules of the crypto world have never changed: narratives and emotions can create myths, but fundamentals determine how far those myths can go.