What is Zcash? A Bitcoin Based Private Centric Coin

coingyan (46)in #zcash • 7 years ago

Humankind has been blessed with cryptocurrencies for almost a decade now. While many have skyrocketed concerning their market capitalization, many have failed as well in delivering results. Only a few of these digital currencies have backed a punch regarding providing users a higher level of privacy and fungibility.

Bitcoin had its genesis block mined in 2009 and was the first cryptocurrency to achieve scalability. While many people at that time decided to get involved in bitcoin because of its promise of privacy, Bitcoin failed to deliver what was expected of it. The reason for this seems to be (I am not a 100% sure about this ) that all or rather any interested parties can examine the transactions recorded on bitcoin’s blockchain to get a sense of precisely what a person or entity has purchased.

However, the Zcash blockchain launched on October 28, 2016, is a cryptocurrency that anyone can make use of to maintain the anonymity of his or her transactions. It was created as a fork of Bitcoin.

So I think so you guys know by now that we are going to be discussing Zcash in this post. What is Zcash, how does it work and all other fantastic stuff is what we are going to explore today.

What is Zcash

Zcash (ZEC) is a cryptocurrency just like bitcoin but slightly different to bitcoin. The Zerocoin protocol was amended and transformed into the Zerocash system. In 2016, this Zerocash system was converted into the Zcash cryptocurrency by Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn (Founder and CEO of Zcash).

It leverages the power of cryptography to provide enhanced privacy for its users compared to other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.

With Bitcoin, if you are aware of the blockchain address of a particular person, then you can follow this address and see the transactions history of that specific person whosoever he/she may be. Therefore, everyone involved can be aware of the amount of money moving around in the blockchain. However, with ZCash all the information concerning N no. of transactions is encrypted within its network. Therefore, you can rest be assured that not any Tom, Dick or Harry can view your transaction history just like that. Pretty cool. Right?

So with that let’s keep moving forward through this fun journey of Zcash to the next point down below.

How does the platform of Zcash operate on a daily basis

Zcash encodes the subject matter of shielded transactions. Because the payment information is encrypted, the protocol employs a novel cryptographic method for checking the validity of every transaction.

It utilizes a zero-knowledge proof construction known as zkSNARK, created by its team of experienced cryptographers centered on the latest advancements in cryptography. The developments mentioned above assist the network in maintaining a secure ledger of balances without needing to disclose the names of the parties involved or the amount of money transacted. Therefore, rather than openly displaying spend-authority and transaction values, the transaction metadata is encrypted and for proving that nobody is defrauding the system, zk-Snarks are employed.

This cryptocurrency also provides its users the ability to send “free payments” (i.e., transactions without using the private encryption feature) which functions identically like Bitcoin. Although it possesses the characteristics of both shielded and transparent addresses, users can opt to send their Zcash privately or publicly. Payments sent from a shielded address to an open address show the received balance, whereas payments made from a transparent address to a shielded address do not display the received amount on this blockchain. Pretty simple. Eh?

Alright, now if you guys are interested in learning more about Zcash’s zero-knowledge proving scheme for private payments, then please visit this site.