Zcash Beats Monero and Shiba Inu (SHIB) in Market Cap, Litecoin Now Just $1 Billion Away

Zcash, or as it better known, $ZEC, just surpassed meme coin Shiba Inu ($SHIB) and another privacy project, Monero ($XMR), in market capitalization, with its total figure increasing to $6.22 billion, or about $382 per coin, after jumping 14.8% in 24 hours.

This crypto rankings shake-up puts $ZEC in 21st place globally, just below Litecoin's $7.29 billion market cap with a $95 price tag per LTC. Basically, another strong day for Zcash could flip the rankings again, pulling $ZEC into the top 20 — probably for the first time ever.

Of course, the rally did not happen in isolation. Most of this insane 800% run in a month can be attributed to such figures as Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz and Naval Ravikant, who have renewed interest in a privacy coin that many had written off as a "dino" coin.

Going further with his Zcash shill, Mumtaz just today confirmed that $ZEC light-client integration will follow the rollout of SIMD-0388. This system upgrade will enable BLS12-381 elliptic-curve syscalls.

Solana + Zcash = ?

To put it simply, once this update is live, developers can build a "light client" — a lightweight connector that lets Solana read and verify Zcash data without running a full Zcash node. This means Solana apps could check Zcash transactions directly, opening a path for cross-chain privacy tools or swaps between Solana and Zcash.

Interestingly, Solana Labs cofounder Anatoly Yakovenko even publicly congratulated the overtaking.

Inside the Zcash community, the milestone of surpassing $SHIB and $XMR was received as a long-awaited victory. Sean Bowe, one of the project’s early engineers, called it "years in the making."

Traders added fuel to the fire, pointing out that $ZEC’s exchange float has thinned considerably since the middle of the year, leaving prices hypersensitive to new demand.

Whether this is a short-term shift or the beginning of a permanent change, Zcash has made a comeback. Monero now trails by less than $200 million, and Litecoin sits barely a billion ahead.

If the current momentum continues through the next trading cycle, the next reshuffle in the top 20 may be led by a privacy coin.