Hello everyone,
We’ve been working as a small team on a project we genuinely care about for quite some time.
ZEC Market is a peer-to-peer (P2P) marketplace where people can buy and sell real products and services and pay in Zcash — wallet to wallet.
Why are we building this?
Zcash has some of the best privacy technology in the space. But the question, “What can I actually use Zcash for in everyday life?” is still a very valid one.
We wanted to create a place where people can spend and earn ZEC for everyday needs — electronics, services, digital goods, and more.
We want to make this possible without a middleman holding your money or seeing what you buy.
The platform never takes custody of users’ funds and never has access to their private keys. Prices are displayed in USD, payments are settled in ZEC, and transactions are shielded by default. We also charge 0% fees on trades.
ZEC Market is also a natural companion to Zecmap. zecmap.com
An early lesson
To be completely honest, during the early stages of the project, someone stress-tested the platform and discovered some security weaknesses before we did.
It wasn’t a fun day — but we believe it was probably one of the best things that could have happened to us this early.
We treated it as a serious wake-up call and conducted a comprehensive security review across the entire infrastructure. We closed the vulnerabilities, added rate limiting, hardened accounts and sessions, and implemented proper security measures.
As a result, we came out of the process with a much more serious and robust product than we had before.
What’s live now?
We’ve been working hard on this for quite some time, so this is much more than just a fresh design or visual update. Here’s a comprehensive look at what actually works on the platform today:
The marketplace
- You can list almost anything in just a few minutes — photos, category, condition, physical or digital, and location. You enter the price in USD and the system converts it to ZEC in real time.
- You can search and filter by category, price range, region, type, and condition, with advanced sorting options such as newest, price, and most viewed. You can browse by category or jump directly into featured listings.
- Every listing has a dedicated detail page with an image gallery, price in ZEC and its fiat equivalent, seller information, description, and shipping/payment details.
Paying in Zcash
- Non-custodial by design — payments go directly from the buyer’s wallet to the seller’s wallet. We never hold your funds and never have access to your wallet keys.
- Live ZEC/USD pricing keeps listings up to date. Price data is cached server-side so everyone sees the same quote.
- We charge 0% commission on trades, and creating a listing is completely free.
Trust & reputation
- There is a real order flow: a trade is started, and both sides move through the process together — payment, payment confirmation, shipping, delivery, and completion.
- Reviews can only be created after a completed trade. Users can leave a 1–5 rating and a short note, making it difficult to farm reputation with burner accounts.
- Reputation information is displayed on every profile, including completed trades and rating.
- Sellers can create a business storefront with an optional verified badge.
Communication, buying & saving
- Built-in messaging between buyers and sellers, directly tied to the listing — including ZEC offers.
- Every listing has a public Q&A section.
- You can save listings to your favorites.
Accounts & privacy
- Email verification is required before creating a listing, helping us keep spam under control.
- Users have real profiles they control — username, avatar, bio, and location.
- An invite/referral system is available.
- We collect the minimum amount of data possible and leverage Zcash’s shielded payment infrastructure, so what you buy stays your business.
Moderation & security
- Every listing is reviewed by a moderator before going live — nothing is published directly to the marketplace.
- You can report any listing or account. Behind the scenes, we have a comprehensive moderation console that allows us to take action when necessary.
- Every listing, seller, and page has a shareable link, making it easy to send someone directly to what you want them to see.
Under the hood
- Following the security incident we experienced early on, we carried out a comprehensive hardening pass across the entire platform — including rate limiting, account and session protection, and security safeguards throughout the stack.
- We also implemented monitoring to keep track of system health, along with controlled deployment processes that help keep the platform stable and allow us to safely roll back changes when necessary.
We’re still actively developing and refining the platform, and we’ll continue making improvements right up until the official launch.
What’s next?
We’ve just started working on proper mobile applications and are moving toward a wider public launch.
The platform is currently live and in testing. We’ve opened the server for one week to collect feedback, identify issues, and implement new updates.
We are currently planning to hold the final launch on September 9th.
Where do you come in?
We’ve made it this far as a small team, largely using our own time and resources.
Now, we need support to take the project to the next level.
We’re looking for investors, sponsors, or community support to help fund the next stage — mobile app development, growth, and keeping the platform independent and fee-free for its users.
If this idea resonates with you, or if you simply want to try the platform and tell us what’s broken, feel free to reach out.
The platform is currently live at zecmarket.org.
Thank you for reading, and thank you to this community for being the reason a project like this makes sense in the first place.
— The ZEC Market Team