Topic: ZCash anonymity (Read 1177 times)

2.5 years in fact:

18 april 2014

https://minergate.com/blockchain/xmr/block/1

and monero it's here more than a year... zcash just launched..
the price is falling hard, the only reason it still high is the slow mining at the start. The  supply is increasing fast and the price will drop.

if you're mining zcash, don't hold. if you were buying, sell them and wait for a month.

Well, look at this:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/what-fraction-of-zcash-are-now-anonymous-notes-1667138

The level of anonymity in ZCASH is, unfortunotely, not very high.  It could *potentially* be very high, but because of the fact that ZCASH is not enforcing anonymity, and people are not using it much in "anonymous mode", the ACTUAL anonymity set offered by ZCASH (namely, those people using the anonymous mode) is pretty small.

For the moment, monero is by far more anonymous in practice than ZCASH.   This is because even though the *initial* anonymity set of monero is relatively small, it grows over time, and monero has already a significant user base which ultimately is the anonymity set.

ZCASH uses better anonymity crypto (in principle), namely ZK proofs, but fucks it up by not imposing it on everybody all the time.

Monero uses ring signatures, which start out with a small anonymity set (but drawn from a much larger pool) and increases this set over time (each time your address is drawn for another transaction somewhere).

In January 2017 the Ring CT will be activated on XMR mainnet. The Ring CT will enable Monero to have the same grade of anonymity as Zcash.
The difference will be negligible but with huge tradeoffs for Zcash (trusted setup, new mathematics).

I think this is a fact only few people are aware of now, but more will be when Ring CT goes online and the price reacts.

If i'm not mistaken Monero also provides a pretty good level of anonymity. Whether that exceeds or doesn't exceed ZCash I don't know. But ZCash is definitely one of the best anon coins out there.

Zcash and the paper it's based on Zerocash (http://zerocash-project.org/media/pdf/zerocash-extended-20140518.pdf) is pretty cutting edge tech but a lot of people have expressed concerns about it's trusted setup or that if it's compromised, someone can invisibly mint coins.

This is where Zcoin which is based on the earlier Zerocoin paper (http://zerocoin.org/media/pdf/ZerocoinOakland.pdf) steps in and plays a role which is based on much more proven and understood technology and provides comparable levels of anonymity.

For further reading:
https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/wiki/A-layman's-explanation-on-how-Zerocoin-works
https://www.reddit.com/r/ZCoinProject/comments/59tefn/zcoin_is_not_a_zcash_fork_get_it_right/
https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/wiki/How-does-Zcoin-compare-to-other-anonymity-methods%3F

ATH: 3299btc (per zec).
it must be a joke... why would somebody pay 2 million dollar in one coin AT LAUNCH?
like has been said by @chennan, if that doesnt tell you what zec is, i dont know what will...

PS: f*ck suprnova... i could be rich right now but i'm just watching the price falling hard.

Let's just put it this way... the only people selling Zcash right now are the devs who have mined it before it's release on Poloniex, and as I'm typing this post right now, 1 ZEC = 700 BTC ... I mean, if that doesn't tell you that you shouldn't trust the "trusted setup" by the ZEC devs; then I don't know what will.  They alone are the only ones manipulating the prices to insane levels due to all the hype and because they are probably the only few who have had the chance to mine Zcash...

Those who believe these devs/investors are "trustworthy" are fools.

Yes, not sure about any new innovations for providing us high level of anonymity from Zcash. Nothing new in my understanding too.
Some people are claiming Zcash as scam with significant pre-mine and now its prime feature also not new and for supporting it, I just doubt about the future of Zcash.

yes, so if so many people are  in for option #2 that means that all the cryptocurrencies are artificially inflated based on speculations and expectations. I wonder what will happen when all these will pass..

zcash is all about marketing...
still a new coin, still in development, still unproven. and with 20% going to devs forever. dont know why people still believe in this.

me? i'll mine some zcash just to dump on first days, all this FOMO will bring some profit.

Well, depends on what you are trying to achieve... It mainly depends on 1) Are you seriously looking for an alternative way from bitcoin to transact value through cryptocurrencies; or 2) Are you looking for a coin to merely speculate, purchase, and dump for profit.

The majority of people who are into alt coins are mainly only here for reason #2; they treat it as another vehicle for investment gambling and nothing else.  That doesn't mean that there aren't some development being made on other coins that seriously improves on the issues Bitcoin faces (confirmation times/blocksizes, fungibility, hashing functions, tail emissions/long term mining incentives, etc.)

If you are in it for a true alternative for bitcoin (#1), then you need to ask LOTS of questions and get those answers your self by researching the white paper for whatever coin it is and if you have other questions, preferably ask questions to the devs or other people active in the community.

But you shouldn't have to look for a reason to support any coin; meaning that I would recommend only really researching a coin that purposes something that would honestly improve a problem that you, and you alone, encounter with Bitcoin all the time and would make life for you that much easier. ... This includes whether you've had issues with confirmation times, Coinbase/Circle canceling your accounts due to Bitcoin "taint", etc. (those are key issues for me personally).

ZCash is a very new currency, following a very new cryptographic algorithm (ZSnarks), that requires you to have "trust" in six people that appointed themselves to be in charge of the generating the genesis block; if they have malicious intent, or even 'unknowingly' had malicious code on the computers they used in generating the block, then they (or the malicious code owner) could have the ability to produce infinite amount of ZCash from now into eternity... there is no way to prove they aren't doing this because of how hidden everything is in ZCash, which can provide some major problems.  Not to mention, that 10% of every block reward goes to these guys.

This is enough to turn me off (personal opinion) of ZCash.  These 6 people have absolute control of the coin itself and have control of the rate of inflation in it's economy.  Is it just me, or wasn't the purpose of going to cryptocurrencies not having to "trust" any small centralized for of 'government' to make these types of decisions? ... *Cough Cough*Federal Reserve*Cough Cough*

Then it would be very helpful to share what is the correct way to look at so many coins popping like popcorn everywhere.
You pointed at the same problem i did, do you have any solution, or a different way to look at things?

Care to provide any white papers or anything to back that up?  What have you found in your research? Or is it just another coin in your portfolio that you are trying to pump?


If you are talking about zcash having more "traction", meaning that it has more marketing and funds being thrown at it for that reason, then that doesn't make it a better coin by any means.

People on this forum get so confused about what makes a "better coin" than another, because the only way they judge if it's better or not is based on 1) price, or 2) marketing efforts ... which is bogus, but I can see the confusion since a lot of people on here see the world through the lenses of an anarcho-capitalist... But as of right now, it is pretty obvious that price doesn't reflect usability... like at all.

Example A) It takes for ever to get a transaction to go through the Bitcoin network due to block size problems, and it has been proven that it can you can be tracked and identified through the Bitcoin network... yet it is worth ~70x more than the next leading altcoin just based on the sole fact that it was the first and has gained it's traction; not to mention be the back bone of all other altcoins...

I'm not really trying to say this to only you; but this goes for a lot of people when they say "X coin" is better than "Y coin", primarily because "X coin" is worth more.

i heard that zcoin, is actually better in anonymoty, it was also built first before zcash, and zcoin was built has a layer of the bitcoin blockchain, but zcash seems to have more traction, there is an inexplicable traction for zcash, and an unusual hype

Check CloakCoin...

In my eyes the real anonymous altcoin in the market!

There is nothing with the same level of anonymity out yet, the Zcash blockchain will be a black hole.  But the problem with that is you cant audit the blockchain and cant see how many coins are in this black hole.

Then how is zcash going to be so special, because a lot of advertisment is going around this feature which is not unique to zcash, how to make sense of all this publicity and facts thrown at us?

Yes, ZCoin is nearly at the same level. If you ask for it, there will probably have someone to post here the link to the comparison.