ShadowCash
zk-snarks is one of the biggest advancements in cryptography at the moment, especially in relation to anonymity and blockchain compression. Adoption of zk-snarks will finally put the anon debate to rest once and for all. It's even acknowledged as superior by Maurice P, one of the founders of cryptonote.
"[Maurice P]Zerocoin, Zerocash. This is the most advanced technology, I must admit. Yes, the quote above [from the white paper] is from the analysis of the previous version of the protocol. To my knowledge, its not 288, but 384 bytes, but anyway this is good news [the latest trimming of sizes]. They used a brand new technique [sic] called SNARK, which has certain downsides: for example, large initial database of public parameters required to create a signature (more than 1 GB) and significant time required to create a transaction (more than a minute). Finally, they're using a young crypto, which I've mentioned to be an arguable idea:
https://forum.cryptonote.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=19#p55"
-Maurice P.
"Now, notice that since we are still pushing information through a function (our random oracle function), and not using a zero-knowledge system, our system is still not fully zero-knowledge anonymous."
http://monero.cc/downloads/whitepaper_review.pdfShadow already has a working Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) system in place with the latest ShadowLite release, that addresses some of the concerns about the signature; In addition, the proof sizes are even smaller than the ones quoted by Maurice. ShadowCash's approach is quite different to Zerocoin/ZeroCash. All in all the coming weeks will be very interesting for the anon space with Shadow. No doubt the only real investment right now in the anon space is Shadow. Investing in anything else in the anon space right now is pointless, as Shadow will wrapping up the anon debate.
List of 1sts:
Open sourced dual key stealth addresses (ShadowSend)
Android wallet for Proof of Stake (ShadowGo)
iOS wallet for Proof of Stake (ShadowGo)
Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) system for Proof of Stake (ShadowLite)
Modular HTML5 wallet
Anonymous contact discovery for Encrypted Messaging System (ShadowChat)
The list grows and it's clear that the only coin on that list actually progressing crypto forward by original innovation in ShadowCash. Invest in hype or invest in actual development the choice is yours. The only real PoD is Proof of Development and Shadow eclipses every other coin on the list in that department.