FXWirePro: “A look at “cool” project Zcash - one of the top 20 crypto tokens"

Zcash is a decentralized open source crypto especially for privacy and anonymity. It is based on BTC and major difference is Zcash has option to encrypt the details of transactions. Zcash payments are published on a public block chain but the sender, the recipient and amount of transaction remains private. If Bitcoin is like http for money, Zcash is https -a secure transport layer. It is in 19th rank with market cap of $740 million.

Way Zcash works:

Zcash uses advanced cryptographic techniques zero knowledge cryptography known as as zk-SNARKS.

They have constructed decentralized anonymous payment schemes (DAP schemes). A DAP schemes lets users pay each other directly and privately hiding payment’s origin,destination and amount. It bridges the existing transparent payment scheme used by Bitcoin with a shielded payment scheme secured by zero knowledge Succint Non-Interactive Argument Of Knowledge (zk-SNARKS).

Zcash uses two address z address (shielded) and t-address (transparent) address. A t-addr is similar to Bitcoin address which can be viewed publicly. In contrast z-address is a full private address that uses zero knowledge proving system to shield a transaction Zcash payments sent from a shielded address to a transparent address reveal the received balance and payments from a transparent address to a shielded address protect the receiving value.

zk-SNARKS system:

It is a form of cryptography that enables an action to be proven without revealing all the details of the particular action.

This system has two parties 1. the prover 2. verifiers. “Zero Knowledge” proofs allow the prover to prove to another that a statement is true, without revealing any information beyond the validity of the statement itself.

In simple terms, Zero-knowledge proofs mean that two parties have the ability to verify to the other that they have a specific set of information, without revealing the information and content.

“Succinct Non Interactive Argument” can be verified within milliseconds without any interaction between the prover and verifier. So this has reduced timing to verify the transaction which needs more 5 to 7 rounds of checks previously.

Zcash Mining:

Zcash uses Equihash as the Proof-of Work for block mining. Equihash algorithm has been devised by Alex Biryukov based on cryptography concept called the Generalized Birthday Problem. It is a memory oriented Proof-of-work which highly relies on high RAM requirements which means that how much mining you can do is mostly determined by how much RAM we have.

Recent news and updates:

Coinbase is exploring the addition of new assets such as

Zcash

Cardano (ADA)

Stellar Lumens (XLM)

Basic Attention Token (BAT)

0x (ZRX)

In their announcement, Coinbase states that the distinction between Zcash’s “transparent” and “shielded” transaction is “analogous to the distinction between unencrypted HTTP and encrypted HTTPS.”

Sapling:

The next major upgrade of Zcash is Sapling, is scheduled to activate in October 2018. Sapling is an updated version of the protocol to improve the performance and functionality of shielded transactions. Currently, Zcash transactions use the transparent address that function in the same way as Bitcoin as shielded address require over 3 gigabytes of memory.

In Aug 10th Zcash foundation has released its weekly update. The team has stated that the 2.0.0 release schedule for this Monday (Aug 13th) is most likely going to slip to later this week. The 2.0.0 will be the first sapling compatible release with hardcoded sapling activation height.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has once again praised Zcash saying the project is cool. He has commented in his official twitter that

Technical:

Zcash has lost more than 80% from the high of $878. The pair hits low of $149.14 and is currently trading around $159.80. The near-term resistance is around $170.50 (10 day MA) and any break above targets $190.31-$193 (daily kijun-Sen). Any close above $193 will take the pair till $233 (Jul 26th 2018 high)/$264.50.

The near-term major support is around $149 and any break below targets $124 (127.2% fib).

It is good to buy on dips around $150 with SL around $140 for the TP of $170/192.