Private digital cash

Your money.
Your privacy.

Ycash is an open, permissionless digital currency designed for private peer-to-peer payments.

Get Ycash Explore Ycash

01Transaction
- Sender
- Amount
- Recipient
02Privacy layer
03Protected transaction
- Sender — not exposed
- Amount — not exposed
- Recipient — not exposed

Protocol facts

Sourced

Max supply Source (opens in a new tab): 21M
Announced Source (opens in a new tab): 2019
Source Source (opens in a new tab): Open
Mining Source (opens in a new tab): GPU

Video

What is Ycash?

An introduction to Ycash. The sections below cover the same ground in more detail.

Privacy

Your transactions are your business.

Public blockchains make transactions verifiable. But verification shouldn't require exposing everything about the people using the network.

Technical comparison sourced from the official Ycash shielded transactions page (opens in a new tab).

Transparent

Ordinary bitcoin-style transactions

Sender
Amount
Recipient

Visible: Sender address
Visible: Recipient address
Visible: Transaction amount

An ordinary bitcoin-style blockchain transaction exposes the sender address, the recipient address, and the transaction amount to the entire world.

Shielded

Protected Ycash transactions

Sender
Protected
Recipient

Does not expose the sender address to anyone, not even the recipient
Does not expose the recipient address to anyone
Does not expose the amount to anyone

These properties are taken from the official Ycash shielded-transactions documentation.

Privacy shield

A transaction can be verified without being exhibited.

01Transaction
- Sender
- Amount
- Recipient
02Privacy layer
03Protected transaction
- Sender — not exposed
- Amount — not exposed
- Recipient — not exposed

01Transaction02Privacy layer03Protected transaction

An ordinary bitcoin-style blockchain transaction exposes the sender address, the recipient address, and the transaction amount to the entire world.

Cash should work for you.Not the other way around.

No bank required. No permission required. No borders.

Explore the technology

Why Ycash

Built for private payments.

Private

Move value without putting your financial activity on display.

Open

The technology is available to inspect, build, and contribute to.

Permissionless

Open networks should be open to everyone.

Community

Ycash is built around people who choose to participate.

History

A lineage, not a copy.

Ycash's node software is a fork of the Zcash codebase. The first 570,000 blocks of the Ycash blockchain are the same as the first 570,000 blocks of the Zcash blockchain. That shared beginning does not mean Ycash is identical to Zcash today. Source

2009
Bitcoin
Digital scarcity and permissionless money.
2016
Zcash
Privacy-preserving cryptocurrency technology.
2019
Ycash
A chain fork focused on accessible digital cash.
Today
Ycash
Open-source wallets, mining, and developer tooling.

Technology

Under the hood.

Shielded transactions

Shielded transactions are a core feature of Ycash. They are designed so a payment can exist on the network without exposing the sender address, recipient address, or amount.

Read the documentation

Proof of Work

New Ycash is issued through a permissionless mining process open to anyone with a GPU and an internet connection. Exact algorithm details belong in the mining documentation, not on this page.

Mining overview

Open infrastructure

The Foundation publishes node software, wallets, and developer libraries in the open. The list below includes repositories with recent public activity.

Build on Ycash

Use Ycash

Get Ycash. Use Ycash.

01
Get a wallet
Choose the wallet that fits the way you use Ycash.
Explore wallets
02
Get Ycash
Find available ways to acquire Ycash.
Explore options
03
Send & receive
Send Ycash to another address and learn how protected transactions work.
Learn how

Ecosystem

Explore the Ycash ecosystem.

Wallets, exchanges, explorers, mining software, and Foundation projects are collected in one directory and checked against current official sources.

Open the directory

Mining

Help secure the network.

Anyone with a GPU and an internet connection can participate in the permissionless mining process. Source

GPU
Miner
Network
Block
Reward

Start mining

Developers

Build on Ycash.

Explore the software, tools, and infrastructure behind the network.

Ycash core

v4.5.0

ycashd v4.5.0

Released 03 Apr 2026

View release

Community

Don't just use the network.Join it.

Get started