ZEC to XMR, Measured: Fee Ladder, a 60-ZEC Cap, One-Way Routing

A corridor that only exists in one direction. Zcash and Monero are the two privacy assets most people actually hold, and the path between them is narrower than either community assumes. At 14:02 UTC on 2026-11-10 the site catalogue listed 458 assets on 65 networks - and exactly one Zcash entry (zec-zec, native Zcash) and one Monero entry (xmr-xmr). I quoted ZEC→XMR at eleven amounts between 14:03 and 14:06 UTC, plus the reverse XMR→ZEC leg and the ZEC→USDT-TRX exit, and cross-checked against a CoinGecko spot of $1,169.50 per ZEC and $552.11 per XMR (a raw ratio of 2.117589 XMR per ZEC). Every number below comes from that window; quotes move, so the live order page governs. (XMR to USDT exit)

The ladder, from the floor to the cap. The usable window is 0.02163526 to 60.13912929 ZEC - both numbers come free in the 400 error body when you probe with 0.01 or with 100,000. The ladder, all inside one window: 0.05 ZEC returned 0.07422427 XMR (an implied 1.4845 XMR per ZEC), 0.1 returned 0.17825498 (1.7825), 0.2 returned 0.3875643 (1.9378), 0.5 returned 1.01369443 (2.0274), 1 returned 2.05722098 (2.0572), 2 returned 4.1439095 (2.0720), 5 returned 10.40208759 (2.0804), and from 10 to 61 the per-ZEC rate sits between 2.0768 and 2.0827. Fitting a line through the 2 and 5 points gives a slope of 2.08606 XMR per ZEC and a fixed deduction of effectively zero - unlike the USDT corridor's ~$11 (and the USDT→ZEC direction measured about $16.8 on 2026-10-24). The small-amount loss is therefore all rate, not fee: every ZEC→XMR quote carries a validUntil - the locked-quote premium - and it decays with size. 0.05 ZEC retains 71% of the plateau rate, 0.2 retains 93%, 1 retains 98.6%, and from 5 ZEC up you are at the plateau. (XMR to USDT exit)

Same amount, one minute apart. I quoted the three small rungs twice, about a minute apart: 0.05 went 0.07422427 → 0.07396400 XMR (per-ZEC 1.4845 → 1.4793, minus 0.35%), 0.1 went 0.17825498 → 0.17766903 (minus 0.33%), 0.2 went 0.3875643 → 0.38507907 (1.9378 → 1.9254, minus 0.64%). On a USDT order that drift would be noise on top of a stable rate; here the whole per-ZEC rate moves, because the small-order quote is a locked premium quote and the premium reprices with the pool. The top of the ladder inverts the picture: 30 ZEC quoted 62.33694349 (2.0779 per ZEC), 61 quoted 126.68624441 (2.0768) - by 30 the per-ZEC rate has stopped growing, so the 60.14 cap costs almost nothing in rate terms. The corridor simply cannot carry more than about $70,000 of ZEC in one order. (XMR to USDT exit)

One route out, two routes back. Every ZEC→XMR quote that afternoon - eleven amounts, plus 1 ZEC→USDT-TRX (1,137.37508 USDT) - returned routes=1 and advantageBps=0: a single pool prices this direction, with no competition. The reverse XMR→ZEC leg is a different market: 1 XMR returned 0.4674903 ZEC with routes=2 and advantageBps=369, 0.5 XMR showed 668 bps of gap between the two routes, 5 XMR 171 bps, 10 XMR 150 bps. The locked direction also carries a validUntil about 120 seconds ahead on every probe, while the two-route direction returns null and floats with the market. Practical consequences: on ZEC→XMR there is no second pool to save you if the single quote is bad - re-quote and watch, or split the order across time. The asymmetry is the norm, not a glitch: depth into ZEC is thinner than depth out. (XMR to USDT exit)

Pricing the corridor against the dollar rail. One ZEC sold for 1,137.37508 USDT-TRX at 14:04 while 1 XMR bought 547.016 USDT on two routes; chaining those gives an implied 2.07899 XMR per ZEC through the dollar rail, against the direct quote of 2.05080365 - the direct path delivers 1.36% fewer XMR than hopping through USDT. The round trip adds both ends' toll: 1 ZEC → 2.05080365 XMR → back to ZEC returned 0.94267659 ZEC at 14:06, a 5.73% round-trip cost; quoting the exit leg against the same-minute entry rate gives 0.95756, or 4.24%. Against spot you pay on both ends too: 2.05722098 XMR per ZEC implies $1,135.81 per ZEC (2.87% below the $1,169.50 spot), and 1 XMR bought 0.4674903 ZEC, an implied $546.74 per XMR (0.97% below $552.11). (XMR to USDT exit)

What the chains themselves charge. The quote's toll is separate from the two transfer fees. Sending the ZEC deposit costs 10,000 zats (0.0001 ZEC, about 12 cents) whether you send it transparent or shielded. The XMR arrival side: Monero relay enforces a 20,000-piconero-per-byte floor, so a typical one-input-two-output transaction of about 1,534 bytes costs around 0.00003 XMR - about 2 cents - and the site credits the order after 10 confirmations, which at the 120-second block target is about 20 minutes on average from broadcast to payout. Total friction on a healthy order: roughly 2.8% at the small end (the locked premium), converging to about 1.7% below spot at 5 ZEC and up (2.0826 x $552.11 = $1,150.0 against $1,169.50) plus a few cents of chain fees. Neither chain charges by amount, so the ladder above is entirely the corridor's own pricing. (how Monero fees work)

Shield before you send. The catalogue has one ZEC entry, but your wallet has at least three address kinds. A transparent ZEC transaction is about 310 bytes and fully visible; a fully shielded one runs from about 9 KB yet pays the same 10,000-zats conventional fee. Roughly 3.2 million ZEC - about 19% of the roughly 16.8 million supply - sits in the shielded pool, and the Zcash project has been moving node software off the deprecated zcashd toward Zebra, with shielded-by-default tooling. The deposit address the order page gives you is generated by the pool and used once, so what leaks is your side: if you fund the deposit from a transparent address whose history includes exchanges, that history is now attached to a swap into Monero. Shield inside your own wallet first (a Sapling or Orchard address), then send from the shielded address; the privacy of the XMR side only starts once the ZEC leg has arrived. (how Monero fees work)

Boundary and snapshot. This corridor's numbers are a snapshot of 2026-11-10 14:03-14:06 UTC: minimum 0.02163526, cap 60.13912929 ZEC, a plateau rate of about 2.077-2.083 XMR per ZEC against a 2.117589 raw spot ratio, one route out, two routes back. The return leg has its own boundaries - 0.04238728 minimum and 126.576 XMR maximum - in case you are pricing the exit. Rates, boundaries and route counts all move with the pools; the live order page is the authority. What does not move: check which address kind you are sending from on the ZEC side, expect this corridor's fixed toll to sit inside the rate rather than on a fee line, and size the order above 1 ZEC - ideally above 5 - before the corridor makes sense at all. (how Monero fees work)