Zcash (ZEC)

Zcash (ZEC) Review – Crypto Coin Judge

Cryptocurrencies are disrupting the existing financial landscape and are revolutionizing the way money moves worldwide. The market cap of cryptos continues to grow at an accelerated pace. These digital currencies are empowered through blockchain—a decentralized digital ledger where crypto transactions are stored. Whether money is spent, sent, or invested, cryptos are changing the way people think about transactions.

The rise of cryptos has become evident as more and morematte digital currencies like Ripple, SALT, NEM etc.are created. Among so many digital currencies, there is one currency that is reintroducing the idea of privacy in the cryptocurrency world. This currency is Zcash, and here is its analysis.

Zcash Analysis

Reviewing Zcash and the radical privacy features its bringing in the crypto landscape

Launched on October 28, 2016, Zcash is the clone of bitcoins; from that, it means this digital currency is forked from bitcoin codebase 0.11. Zcash focuses on maintaining the absolute anonymity behind each transaction along with the parties and the amounts involved in it.

Because of its anonymity feature, Zcash is often referred to as “untraceable.” Like bitcoins, this crypto is powered by a decentralized blockchain. However, unlike any other digital currency, Zcash owners can completely shield all of their transactions. The only thing disclosed here is that something—a transaction, that is—has happened at a specific point in time in the past. Now, here is the innovation that Zcash has successfully reintroduced in the world of digital currencies.

Zcash’s innovation puts security and privacy at the heart of cryptocurrency

Zcash has robust open-source, decentralized features that give its owners the best in terms of privacy and security—these innovatory features have made transactions involving this altcoin fast, quick, and, most importantly, secure. A leading technologist, Mason Borda, once tweeted, “Zcash is the only altcoin (that i know of) designed and built by professional and academic cryptographers. Hard to ignore.”

Point taken as this altcoin has reliable zero-proof protocols that ensure anonymity, privacy, and fungibility. Previously popularized as Zerocoin, Zcash is built on specific cryptographic protocols. These cutting-edge protocols are designed to successfully shield the information about a sender, a receiver, and the total transacted amount between these two parties.

Zcash’s zk-SNARK protocol builds foolproof privacy protection

Also known as zero-knowledge proof, ZK-snarks is the protocol that is behind Zcash’s system. Such proof of construction empowers the coin owners to execute their exchange data and transactions with complete protection. And all of this is done without even disclosing the senders’ and receivers’ identities and the amount involved in the commercial dealing. Well, other digital currencies make a user’s transactions and their history public. The zk-SNARK protocol enables Zcash’s blockchain authenticate and encrypt a specific transaction, making it completely undetectable.

The zero-knowledge proof was developed in 2014 by a team of research cryptographers and scientists working in Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Tel Aviv University, and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. In this protocol, the entire transactional metadata is well encrypted to prove that no coin owner is stealing or cheating. However, Zcash even allows the coin owners to release public payments that work very similar to bitcoins.

Having the support of both transparent and shielded addresses, Zcash coins can be sent both privately and publicly—it actually depends on the user or coin owner. That is, Zcash, by design, is engineered to have optional privacy and anonymity features meant for all those users who are interested in them. 

What problems are solved by Zcash?

Privacy is the top priority

As an innovative blockchain project, Zcash is developing a completely anonymous open-source transaction network leaving zero traces. So the privacy issue, which is sometimes associated with other blockchain-based cryptos, is nonexistent with Zcash. So in terms of privacy, Zcash is not only untraceable but also unbeatable.

Power-efficiency comes to the fore

Zcash miners are concerned about the power invested in mining this digital currency. Which is why, this crypto aims to develop a mining process that is friendly for every involved CPU and GPU. Mining Zcash has to be memory intensive that prevents the process from getting dominated by application specific integrated circuits that are popularly known as ASICs.

Solving the issues of fungibility

Zcash’s model is very similar to the one employed by bitcoins; the only difference is that its transactions can remain anonymous, and that is what helps in solving fungibility issues that are often faced by the owners of other digital currencies. The main issue with having every transaction openly and clearly traceable on public ledgers is that the coins could be easily tainted. For this reason, some leading bitcoin exchanges have the right processes in place to shut down all the accounts that either have tainted coins or are sending funds to gambling sites. As Zcash is an open-source network, its code can be used for fixing the gaps in the current bitcoin protocol as well.

The interesting process of Zcash mining

The basis for developing value in the world of cryptocurrency is the mining procedure — a process that is meant for veteran and major coins. Here, the discussion is on Zcash, or ZEC, that is forked from bitcoins. The difference between bitcoins and Zcash is in the fact that the latter enjoys excellent anonymity.

While in the bitcoin blockchain, any user on the network can easily see the transactions happening between different addresses and can even know the balance of each address. However, Zcash makes it possible to make any number of transactions without ever revealing the balance of a specific wallet. So this digital coin is safe and big on the idea of privacy as well as security.

At the time of writing, Zcash is ranked on the 20th position; with regard to the market cap, this altcoin is more than USD 1 billion. Although this altcoin is mature, it is still to come close to the size and load of ethereum’s and bitcoin’s chains. And that is why the mining of Zcash is more profitable.

Before explaining the process involved in mining Zcash, it is important to note that the sole responsibility of the procedure completely rests with miners. Utmost caution is needed while running a high-powered mining computer system for a very long time. Of course, there has been no case that a miner has burnt the entire mining site down, but these systems tend to be very hot and can certainly smoke too.

Additionally, nobody is guaranteed to witness any profits just because of exchange-rate fluctuations or a change in the difficulty level of mining. The following Zcash mining explanation is about how Zcash is mined in a pool. Plus, if the mining has to be successful, it will need mining software.

Likewise, it is important to know that mining on a personal system is supposed to be performed just for learning purposes. For creating rich profit streams and cooling the heated mining system, it is always better to invest in assembling dedicated machines. Now, here is the 6-step guide to mining Zcash.

Step 1: Resources that matter the most

The Zcash scoop and trends

Investing in a video card having a high configuration makes so much sense. What is more? Investing in more than a single video card is the thing that is needed to make mining profitable. Mining done using a cell phone, an old video card, or a laptop will never pay off.

Step 2: Registration done for a dedicated mining pool

The miners need to visit a website of a dedicated mining pool and sign up on it. Miners cannot mine Zcash if they are not registered on any credible mining pool website. Basically, the miners need to have their respective accounts.

Step 3: Picking a trusted wallet

It is a no-brainer that a wallet will be required for storing all the Zcash coins. Right now, there are a number of GUI wallets available. Also, an exchange can even be used as a wallet to store the funds. There are currently multiple GUI wallets available.

Step 4: Invest in mining software

The next step will begin by finding a trusted mining application and downloading on the computer.

Step 5: Putting the systems to work

In this phase, the actual mining work is done; more and more cryptographic puzzles are solved to create more Zcash coins.

Step 6: Get other applications and add-ons

For every miner, it is recommended to install add-ons and applications such as MSI Afterburner for controlling the card’s fan temperature when it is in the default mode or when the power is low.

Zcash wallet: Storing the coins in the most secured way

Right now, there are multiple wallets available for storing the Zcash coins. Here is an overview of each of the available wallets. 

Internet wallets

Once these wallets are set up, they become the fastest way to accept Zcash. Today, investors can find many third-party applications on the phone for storing and managing these altcoins. However, protect these wallets using strong passwords that enable a 2-factor authentication whenever it is available.

Hardware wallets

This wallet is one of the safest ways to store Zcash coins as like storing bitcoins. While buying a hardware wallet, you actually invest in a physical device having a range of safeguards for preventing thefts. Plus, with Zcash, there are a number of emergency steps that can be taken for recovering the coins once the device is lost.

Exchange wallets

These wallets are the simplest to set up. The investors using these wallets will just need to create their respective accounts with the exchanges supporting Zcash. Once the investors have developed their accounts, they will easily generate their own addresses for sending or receiving or trading Zcash.

How can an investor buy Zcash coins?

Step 1: Get a wallet

Well, the above section is dedicated to getting a wallet. Right now, there are a lot of desktop wallets available for Windows and Mac. Apart from the desktop ones, there are internet and exchange wallets available as well.

Step 2: Find a Zcash exchange

Second, the investors need to get verified or should sign up on an exchange that is supporting Zcash trading. So, first off, the investors need to find a reliable Zcash exchange. Once signed up on the exchange, investors will be able to buy Zcash coins.

Zcash versus bitcoins: The difference is between popularity and protection

Popularity versus protection

The biggest difference between bitcoins and Zcash coins is in terms of popularity and protection, respectively. So if the investors are more concerned about the popularity and the rise of the crypto value, then they should invest in this crypto coin. Likewise, if the investors are focused on making their transactions untraceable, then investing in Zcash makes complete financial sense.

The difference lies in the blockchain

Zcash’s hashing algorithm is different from the one used by bitcoins and many other coins like Dash, Ethereum, Dent, Augur, Cardano That is why Zcash’s blockchain is incompatible with specially designed hardware hashes. Also, on average, Zcash’s block time is 2.5 minutes per block; however, the block time of a bitcoin is up to 10 minutes.

The Zcash scoop and trends

Here are two of the latest news items that are all set to shake up the Zcash world for the better.

Zcash Plans to Implement Blockchain Upgrades in 2018

According to a roadmap that was published in December, the development team at Zcash is planning a series of different network upgrades in 2018. Two milestone upgrades, “Sapling” and “Overwinter,” for Zcash will happen next year. Catch the full story here.

Top Trade Recommendations for Zcash

Here are a few trade recommendations for Zcash. Catch the complete story by reading this piece.

Zcash price and future predictions

At the time of writing this, a single Zcash coin will cost USD 458.23. Well, talking about the future, like every other digital coin, Zcash’s price is volatile and subject to constant changes. As per Poloniex statistics, Zcash had a very good time during its launch. At that time, the high demand of this digital currency led its market value to rise way above two million dollars.

All in all, it is a good digital currency for investors to explore. Nevertheless, this altcoin has a high capability to climb on the exchange with time. So investing in Zcash coins is a good decision—and some bold investors even think that with a few changes in its structure, this digital coin will become the future of cryptocurrencies.

Zcash stats: Figures that matter

Here are some key figures and statistics pointing toward how Zcash has behaved in the past six months.

As it is evident from this table, there is a visible rise in all the values of Zcash coins in matter of just six months. And these values clearly show the bullish nature of Zcash.

Summarizing Zcash: A few final words

As Zcash is addressing the most common privacy issues, this digital coin is all set to become the next big thing in the world of cryptocurrencies. Additionally, there is word that ethereum is partnering with Zcash—so from this partnership, investors can expect the entire crypto community to become more scalable and configurable in the coming time.