Rahul Sharma (Editor)

Zcash

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Code
  
ZEC

User(s)
  
Worldwide

Zcash

Date of introduction
  
28 October 2016; 5 months ago (2016-10-28)

Zcash is a decentralized and open-source cryptocurrency developed by the Zerocoin Electric Coin Company (ZECC) 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 trade symbol, ZEC, is not an official ISO 4217. Like Bitcoin, Zcash has a fixed total supply of 21 million units.

Contents

Software

Zcash depends on Berkeley DB 6.2.x, which is licensed under the GNU AGPL. Zcash is in beta stage.

History

Starting in 2014, the Zcash protocol (briefly known as "Zerocash") was developed through a collaboration between the original Zerocoin researchers at Johns Hopkins University and a group of cryptographers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Technion – 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 private.

The Zcash project was formally announced by CEO Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn 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)

"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."

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.

The first mining of ZEC was at 17:10 London Time with the release of the 1.0.0 "Sprout" release on October 28, 2016.

zCash Miner

Currently zCash mining is possible via GPU and CPU. See https://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=ZCash_mining_GPU_Comparison&stable=0&redirect=no for the latest stats and comparisons for SilentArmy, Claymore etc

References

Zcash Wikipedia