Zcash

This article is about Zcash (cryptocurrency), not about Zerocoin. For that, see Zerocoin.

Zcash

Zcash logo
Unit
Symbol	ZEC‎
Demographics
Date of introduction	28 October 2016 (2016-10-28)
User(s)	Worldwide
Valuation
Supply growth	edit

WORK IN PROGRESS - please see https://z.cash/ for up-to-date information.

Zcash is a decentralized and open-source cryptocurrency that offers privacy and selective transparency of transactions. Zcash payments are published on a public blockchain, but the sender, recipient, and amount of a transaction remain private. The Zcash currency has the symbol ZEC.

History

The Zcash porject was formally announced by CEO Zooko Wilkox on Jan 20, 2016, as an evolution of the existing Zerocoin project (the work of Matthew Green, Ian Miers, Christina Garman, Aviel D. Rubin, at The Johns Hopkins University Department of Computer Science, Baltimore)

Starting in 2014, the Zcash protocol (briefly know as "Zerocash") was developed through a collaboration between the original Zerocoin researchers at John Hopkins University and a group of cryptographers at MIT, the Israel Institute of Technology, and Tel Aviv University, who together were able to improve upon the original design by making it more efficient and more anonymous. “With the new Zerocash protocol, unlike the old Zerocoin protocol, users can make direct payments to each other with a vastly more efficient cryptographic protocol that also hides the amount of the payment, not just its origin.” (4) This new protocol by Eli Ben-Sasson, Alessandro Chiesa, Christina Garman, Matthew Green, Ian Miers, Eran Tromer, and Madars Virza produced a coin which would no longer be an “Add-On” to the original Bitcoin but instead would be a new full-fledged digital currency.

It is not known exactly when the Zerocash team began collaborating with Zooko Wilcox and his team from "Least Authority" (https://leastauthority.com/) to transition from "Zerocash" into "Zcash", but the very first issue listed on the Zcash Github dates to November 2014 (5) and Wilcox's first public mention of the collaboration was in May of 2015. (6)

As of October 4, 2016, the current version of the Zcash protocol is beta2. In this version, coins are mined on a preliminary network known as the 'testnet'. Currently, no actualy Zcash coins (ZEC) can be mined, but rather a valueless test coin, know as "TAZ".

The first mining of ZEC is due to commence with the release of the 1.0.0 "Sprout" release on October 28, 2016.

See also

• Alternative currency
• Comparison of bitcoin wallets
• Digital gold currency
• Private currency
• World currency
• Comparison of payment systems