Zcash Up/Down order book microstructure on Polymarket

• 291 ZEC Up/Down markets - the smallest crypto series in the archive
• Average market spread of 0.4271 (median 0.3900), about 37 times wider than Bitcoin's
• Average top-of-book liquidity of roughly $2,044 per market over three days
• 0.10% of the last 24 hours of ZEC book snapshots were crossed - the lowest rate of the eight assets
• All 291 markets settle on chainlink_twap reference prices

The archive holds 291 Zcash Up/Down markets as of 2026-10-17 - fewer than half of even Dogecoin's count: 202 at 5 minutes, 82 at 15 minutes and 7 at 4 hours. Zcash is the thinnest series measured, which makes every statistic on this page noisier than the majors'.

101 ZEC markets have resolved, split 51 up to 50 down (50.5% up), the closest to a pure coin flip in the basket. For such a small sample that near-even split is unsurprising and does not indicate a grading leaning in either direction.

Zcash quotes the widest book in the dataset by a large margin: a 0.4271 average spread with a 0.3900 median. On a 0-1 contract that is a 39-cent touch at the median - you are effectively crossing a third of the contract's notional to enter and exit.

Depth is correspondingly minimal. Three-day average top-of-book liquidity is about $2,044 per ZEC market, a tenth of Dogecoin's and about 3.6% of Bitcoin's. Total recorded volume across the 291 ZEC markets in the archive is only $283, which underscores how rarely these contracts trade at size.

import requests

BASE = "https://api.polyorderbooks.com/v1"
HEADERS = {"X-API-Key": "your-key"}

slug = "zec-updown-5m-1787486400"
r = requests.get(
    f"{BASE}/markets/{slug}/books",
    headers=HEADERS,
    params={"start_ts": 1787486400, "end_ts": 1787486460, "resolution": "1s"},
)
r.raise_for_status()
first = r.json()["data"]["Yes"][0]
print("best bid:", first["bids"][:1], "best ask:", first["asks"][:1])

ZEC has the lowest crossed-book rate of any asset: 101 of 96,959 snapshots in the last 24 hours, or 0.10%. That is more than 25 times rarer than on Bitcoin - a direct consequence of how infrequently the Zcash book reprices.

For a backtest the implication is inverted from the majors: there is almost nothing to filter, but there is also almost nothing to trade. The barrier on ZEC is the spread, not the data quality, and any strategy that assumes it can transact near the mid is effectively assuming a market that does not exist.

All 291 Zcash markets settle on a Chainlink TWAP reference price. ZEC's reference capture, like BNB and HYPE, begins at 11:52 UTC on the measurement day and holds 35,552 observations - a shorter series than the early cohort.

Because Zcash is so thin, the reference feed is often more reliable than the market's own price series for grading. If you are studying Zcash settlement, anchor on the TWAP observations rather than the last book mid, which can sit far from any executable price.

The Starter plan is free, includes order books, prices, and metrics at 250ms resolution, with 3 days of history, 60 requests/min, 1,000/day, 1 free AI backtest, and 3 strategy backtests. No credit card required.

Paid data windows from $19/mo extend history to 30–120 days at higher throughput. Backtest AI add-on is +$19/mo or standalone at $29/mo.

• Polymarket ZEC data
• Crypto microstructure data
• Order book API guide