Review on Zcash by Kenan Chalabi

Zcash (ZEC) is one of the most famous privacy cryptocurrencies. It uses advances in cryptography to provide users with optional anonymity during transactions.

Before Zcash, cryptocurrencies were primarily designed as "pseudo names" such as Bitcoin (BTC), which means that data about the number of user transactions, the address from which they send funds, and the address to which they receive funds are always posted to the block. On chain, for all to see.

So while you may hear people promoting cryptocurrencies to protect privacy, it is not by default. Data can (and sometimes is) associated with the person conducting the transaction, be it a business, government, or malicious actor.

Zcash was launched in 2016 to provide a higher level of privacy by introducing "blocked addresses" that are designed to encrypt transactions and address data stored on its blockchain.

Nevertheless, Zcash allows users to choose the level of anonymity they want, providing two types of addresses: transparent addresses (appearing on the blockchain) and protected addresses (no).

users can also send transactions between the two types of addresses, although this will bring additional privacy considerations. What is

Zcash? Chapter

Who created Zcash? The history of

Zcash can be traced back to the release of the Zerocoin white paper in 2013 (written by Professors Matthew Green and Eli BenSasson, including a large group of cryptographers and scholars).

The author believes that the design of Bitcoin compromises user privacy, so they provide a new solution. However, the project has its limitations. On the one hand, Zerocoin is designed for Bitcoin, which requires a series of complex changes to its blockchain.

This work was later advanced by cryptographer Zooko Wilcox in 2015, when she founded a startup to explore how to use the ideas behind Zerocoin to create new cryptocurrencies.

Zcash was announced in 2016 and released to the public in October of that year. How did

Zcash get online? Let's talk a bit about how to get Zcash online. These are my experiences and the briefest way for buying Zcash but think twice before buying that if you need it or not.

To achieve its cutting edge crypto, the Zcash blockchain must be set up differently than other cryptocurrencies. This process (known as "Zcash Ceremony" or "Zcash Trust Configuration") continues to be the key to much criticism of the project.

First, it requires the creators of Zcash to trust people around the world to use private key fragments to cooperate and create the master public key of their blockchain.

participants were then ordered to destroy the remaining data to prevent it from being tampered with in the future. (More details can be found here.)

The disadvantage of this method is that, although it is theoretically safe, no one can prove that the ceremony was performed as expected. (Opinions on this issue are still mixed.)

As of 2020, Electric Coin Company, which is headed by CEO Zooko Wilcox, has hired a large team of cryptographers dedicated to the development of the Zcash blockchain. This work was further supported by the non-profit Zcash Foundation.

Both groups have obtained part of the funds by issuing new ZECs through the Zcash agreement.

What makes Zcash private? The secret component of

Zcash is a cryptographic technology. Anyone with private data can use this technology to convince anyone who tries to verify the authenticity of the data without revealing any information except true and false statements.

To achieve this, Zcash uses a zero-knowledge proof variant called zkSNARK to perform protected transactions.

This ensures:

The verifier knows nothing except the truth of the data

The size of the test is small enough to be verified in milliseconds.

No communication between tester and verifier

No tester can make verifier accept false information.

The certifier cannot certify information unless there is verifiable information to prove.

By providing these attributes, it can be said that Zcash protection transactions between addresses provide users with a strong guarantee of anonymity.

How does Zcash work?

Except for the privacy features, Zcash operates similarly to other cryptocurrencies.

Shielded and unshielded Zcash transactions are verified by nodes and recorded on the blockchain. The blocks are aggregated over an open computer network using an algorithm called Equihash, which calculates the amount of RAM used by miners to protect the blockchain.

This design is designed to reduce the impact of special mining equipment, allowing small computers to better compete for rewards. (However, as of 2018, large mining companies have developed dedicated mining machines for Zcash.) Another rare attribute of Zcash is the way its cryptocurrency is distributed.

In the first four years of blockchain operations, 80% of your block rewards were scheduled for miners, with 20% allocated to the Electric Coin Company, the Zcash Foundation, and some of their employees and key stakeholders.

The subsidy was supposed to expire in 2020, when the agreement experienced its first "halving", that is, the supply of new ZECs that could be produced under the agreement was reduced.

How does Zcash work?

Except for the privacy features, Zcash operates similarly to other cryptocurrencies.

Shielded and unshielded Zcash transactions are verified by nodes and recorded on the blockchain. The blocks are aggregated over an open computer network using an algorithm called Equihash, which calculates the amount of RAM used by miners to protect the blockchain.

This design is designed to reduce the impact of special mining equipment, allowing small computers to better compete for rewards. (However, as of 2018, large mining companies have developed dedicated mining machines for Zcash.) Another rare attribute of Zcash is the way its cryptocurrency is distributed.

At the beginning of 2020, there was no vote to extend the reward distribution to these companies.