NiceHash launched Zcash Pool soon after the official Zcash coin/network launch. The launch was fast and unexpected. The first few moments when the pool still wasn't reaching it's critical mass everything was working well, but later it just got overloaded because of the high demand and popularity of our services. Because of the pool problems, fast 24-hours NiceHash contracts were canceled soon after activation and all unused BTCs the buyers invested into these contracts were returned to their NiceHash wallet (from which buyers are able to withdraw back to their BTC addresses).

After all this, it came a few hours long period of bad luck on the Zcash pool - there weren't any blocks found. That’s why the rewards were very small during the first hours since the pool was started. This also resulted in small rewards with the rented hashing power or shortly-active contracts, pointed to our Zcash pool.

In the same time the problems with payouts appeared. The payouts couldn't be processed because of the flaws in the Zcash protocol. Zcash has a very special system for sending ZEC from generated blocks and the system wasn't represented by the official Zcash developers very well so there were many noises and misunderstandings around that. Payouts were late - not just by our Zcash Pool, but by other pools as well. Some pools solved these problems faster, other slower. The payments were then processed after approximately 12 hours. After some more hours, our threshold for the payout was decreased from 0.01 ZEC to 0.001 ZEC as many members of the community requested that and we granted their wishes.

There were some chattering around the web that we scammed users and all this was made on purpose. We didn't scam anyone. There were however indeed very real problems that we faced - but we were working hard to address them and get a working solution. Unfortunately the issues with the Zcash pool yielded in poor profits for some users - and we are very sorry for that. But please note that this was due to bad pool performance, not because we would lost or even steal coins from anybody. Moreover, all the BTC funds that were not spent on the NiceHash contracts or NiceHash orders, were automatically refunded (as we promised on the contract page). Basically, the main issue was that you, our loyal users, weren’t able to do a stable mining on our pool (but many others pools were facing similar problems) - and we are of course sorry for that.

All ZECs are paid regularly now and the Zcash pool is stable, found more then 100 blocks already. The payments are automatic and currently set at 0.001 ZEC. There is still a problem with special wallets - mining is only enabled with "t addresses" - as soon as exact clarification about “z addresses” will be given by Zcash developers, we’ll enable mining with “z addresses” as well.

Anyone who thinks that mined ZECs weren't paid out to them, should drop us an email with all possible information about the order/contract (if the order/contract was placed), Zcash wallet address, and expected ZECs that weren't paid out. The same goes for buyers - if you think that your BTCs weren't refunded, send us an email with all information and we will look into it. But please - do include as much as possible information, such as screen-shots, exact addresses and time periods.

One important fact to note is that you must understand what Immature, Confirmed and Paid balance is. Immature balance is only an approximate value, and is not guaranteed to become Confirmed. Immature coins are coins that were created in a block reward and haven't aged sufficiently, yet. The problem with immature block rewards is that they could still disappear again, if the generating block ends up being invalidated by the Zcash blockchain. Therefore only after blocks mature, shares are re-processed and appropriate Confirmed balance is rewarded to your worker. Once coins are Confirmed, they are at the final value and are waiting to be paid out to you. Of course, Confirmed balance increases while coins matures and decreases while coins are paid out. Once coins are shown in Paid balance this means that coins were actually sent to your wallet address and you should already see them on the Zcash blockchain. Please note that many pools aren't even displaying Immature balance, but since we prefer complete transparency we are also displaying this Immature balance - which is, once again - only an approximate value and may vary during a particular period of time.

We were doing the best we could to correct the noises and establish the payments - just like were the developers on the other pools. We weren't just waiting for things to magically work, but we were working around the clock on them and we are honestly lacking sleep time. This is why you also haven't heard much from devs on the forums.

There are still some issues with the performance of the website of the pool and we are still working on this. However, the pool itself is running flawlesly, finding blocks and processing paymets - mining is working as expected and all miners are welcome to join our pool. We did also upgrade our pool's hardware to run faster. We weren’t very good at predicting how the pool and network would work - but we will continue to improve it and do the good work as NiceHash is known by. We also ask for understanding if your emails are not answered right away - but we will answer them as soon as possible.

Most importantly - the whole NiceHash team is working very hard for you and we will contiune to deliver excellent services - just as you were used in the past!

Thank you for your understanding and patience. Keep on hashing/solving!

Best regards,
NiceHash team