Скачать или смотреть Zcash - Anonymous Coin?

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So you’ve been told crypto is perfect for concealing your identity when transacting? A lot of people think cryptocurrencies are inherently anonymous. But this is not entirely true. Most are rather pseudonymous. Take Bitcoin for example. One can track all transactions associated with an address. Bitcoin transactions are linked to a specific address which makes up an “identity” of sorts, much like an IP address.

However, there are multiple solutions for those seeking enhanced privacy. Monero, Dash and Zcash, for instance. Today we’re going to be breaking down the latter.

Zcash is a Bitcoin fork. As a result it has the same total supply of coins, and each is made up of smaller units called zatoshis in reference to Bitcoin’s satoshis.

Zcash’s genesis block was mined back in 2016, but there was no ICO or premine. But let’s first take a look at the people who created this coin and are maintaining its infrastructure.

0:59 Zcash Team

There’s an officially registered entity developing Zcash – the Zerocoin Electric Coin Company.

Zooko Wilcox is the creator of the coin and CEO of the company. He boasts 20 years of experience in cryptography and distributed ledgers. He’s always been a fan of Bitcoin, but he wished for more discretion.

Another prominent member of the Zcash team goes by the name of Matthew Green. He’s a cryptographer and security technologist at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute.

There are a number of other scientists from Berkeley and Tel Aviv University, but who are also important to mention are Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum, Gavin Andresen of Bitcoin Core and Tezos founder Arthur Breitman.

1:36 Technolgy Behind Zcash

ZCash employs a cryptographic tool called zk-SNARK which stands for Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge aka Zero Knowledge Proof for short. It verifies transactions without giving away its participants (their public addresses) and the amount being transferred. If you opt for it, that is, because there’s an option to reveal all that data to whomever you see appropriate. And it keeps this data on the blockchain fully encrypted which renders a transaction virtually intractable.

As a side note, the protocol was really developed in the 1980s by researchers of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

2:10 Mining

The hashing algorithm used by Zcash is a type of proof-of-work algorithm called Equihash and it was introduced specifically for this cryptocurrency in 2016. It is memory-oriented which is different with Bitcoin.

And even though graphics cards are still a viable option for mining Zcash, numerous ASIC devices have emerged that eventually broke the whole purpose of integrating Equihash.

One block generates within 2.5 minutes, and 12.5 ZEC are issued per one block. But here’s something to take into account. 80% of the mined coins go to the miner, while the remaining 20% go to a special pool referred to as "founders' reward". It is shared between investors, developers, and the Zcash Foundation.

2:50 Pros & Cons

This cryptocurrency isn’t perfect, of course, and arguably not even the best among its counterparts, but there are a few upsides that we’d like to highlight.

#1 Anonymity due to the blockchain only recording timestamps of transactions, when users select to use all the privacy features to the fullest degree. And the level of transactions’ transparency is customizable.

#2 Fungibility. Every single unit of the currency isn’t marked, so you can’t determine if, where and when it’s been used before. Some merchants will not accept Bitcoin that have previously been used for some illegal purposes.

#3 Efficient mining relative to Bitcoin. Graphics cards don’t consume as much energy as ASICs do, if again you choose to go for the card option.

Now let’s touch upon some drawbacks of Zcash.

#1 Speed. It takes 2.5 minutes to generate one block, and one second to process 6-25 transactions. For comparison, Dash, another anonymous coin, can do so much better due to its InstantSend feature.

#2 Its privacy-oriented technology needs to be tested by time. There was an occurrence last year that filled many Zcash fans with doubt about its reliability when paying on the darkweb. We’re talking about Seizure of AlphaBay by law enforcement agencies just days after the announcement it would accept Zcash.

As a separate point we’d like to bring up the price dynamics. The average rate in October 2018 was $116 which is a huge decline since the first day of the coin’s existence when it was worth over $4,200. On the bright side, it’s become so popular now that you can purchase it on most of the top-rated marketplaces such as Binance, Bithumb, Bittrex and Bitfinex.

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