Zcash Genesis Block is about to be born, and the futures price is higher than Bitcoin

The Zcash genesis block, which has attracted the attention of the entire cryptocurrency community, will be born today.

Compared with Bitcoin, the biggest feature of Zcash is anonymity. Transactions can automatically hide the transaction parties and the amount on the blockchain, and only those who hold the key can see the specific transaction information. Of course, users can choose who has this permission.

Why is Zcash able to achieve true anonymity and privacy protection? Simply put, Zcash uses two technologies:

zk-SNARK zero-knowledge proof technology: Even if the source and flow of currency information are completely confidential, zero-knowledge proof technology can still verify that the user who spends money does indeed own the currency.

Public blockchain: Zcash uses a public blockchain for transaction display, but it automatically hides the transaction amount. ZEC (token in the Zcash system) holders can observe the associated information by viewing the key.

The total amount of Zcash is 21 million, and it uses the POW model. Miners have been eager to try it out. This year, the Zcash team announced that it will start the "slow start mining" phase of the project. "Slow start mining" means that the initial mining rewards are relatively slow, and then gradually increase. In the first 20,000 blocks (about 34 days), only 125,000 ZEC will be created, and the output of a single block will increase to 12.5 ZEC; on December 1, 2016, the block reward will be restored to 12.5 ZEC per block; on January 1, 2017, the total supply will reach 348,200 ZEC. It is said that this is to ensure that miners can get a fairer experience during the distribution of Zcash tokens.

Of course, some people question whether the team holds too much of the shares. In the first four years, as mining continued, 20% of the miners' mining income was automatically allocated to the Zcash team and its investors, which is 10% of the total. In response to this, many people in the community have announced that they will fork Zcash and provide a version with a lower proportion reserved by the development team.

The Zcash official website lists many investors in the project, including Pantera Capital, Digital Currency Group, and Distributed Capital, which focuses on digital currency and blockchain investment. Individual investors include well-known angel investors Li Xiaolai and Roger Ver. Former Bitcoin Core chief developer Gavin Andresen and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin are both consultants for the project.

Why is the new currency with anonymity as its biggest feature so popular? Who really needs absolute anonymity and privacy protection? The first application areas that come to mind are undoubtedly the dark web and money laundering. Of course, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox also talked about the two main reasons why banks and financial institutions require blockchain privacy:

1. Banks hope to use blockchain technology to reduce costs, but they also understand that the technology will disrupt the financial industry. The idea of ​​saving costs is tempting, but the disruptive power of public ledgers forces financial services companies to pay close attention to the blockchain ecosystem.

2. Financial institutions understand that the ubiquitous lack of privacy in shared ledgers is an obstacle to the application of this technology in the financial industry. All meaningful financial use cases, including transactions and settlements, require resilient privacy protection so that individuals or institutions can obtain transaction-related data.

Currently, the cryptocurrency community knows that there are more anonymous projects than just Zcash. Others include Dash, which uses coin mixing technology to increase the difficulty of tracking, and Monero, which uses ring signature technology to hide the identity of the signer. Some time ago, Monero received a lot of attention because it may be used on the dark web.

The exchanges that are preparing to list Zcash include Yunbi.com, Yuanbao.com, ETCWin, Poliniex, and BitMEX. The community’s pursuit of Zcash has reached an extremely hot level. Before Zcash is launched, the price on the futures trading platform has exceeded one Bitcoin.

Community Reviews

In addition to the attention of miners and investors, many well-known community figures also gave positive comments:

Yunbi.com COO Lao Mao:

The anonymity of Zcash is its greatest value. I agree with some people who say that anonymity is not a need for everyone, but from the perspective of human pursuit of freedom, true anonymity is as important as being able to have a space to be alone. For an ordinary person, it may not be important most of the time, but when you really need it, you have to have this choice. It is important to have the right to choose, just like when I buy a can of drink from a vending machine, I have to choose that it doesn’t know who I am. This is very important.

Shen Bo from Distributed Capital:

Privacy is a very important challenge facing current blockchain technology, but existing solutions, such as private chains, do not really solve this problem. The technology behind Zcash can solve this problem.

Bitcoin Jesus Roger Ver:

Zcash is the strongest at Bitcoin’s weakest link; it gives users the ability to maintain financial privacy. If there is a project that can compete with Bitcoin, Zcash will be it.

Edward Snowden, the protagonist of the "Prism Gate" incident:

Zcash could solve Bitcoin's surveillance risk problem.

Of course, there are also voices of opposition. On the one hand, there are doubts about the team holding 10% and having too much power to operate the company. On the other hand, there is too much anonymity and may encounter problems with anti-money laundering.

Anonymity is undoubtedly a good attempt, but whether the current price truly reflects the value and whether the price has soared to more than Bitcoin before the block is produced is a technical potential or speculation, all require investors to carefully evaluate. After all, no one wants to see a situation where "only miners can profit from it, and others will only lose their pants."