Actually, zerocash is significantly different than other altcoins, in that it replaces digital signatures with zero knowledge proofs. It's technically very interesting, and seems like a believable next direction for Bitcoiners. The other direction would be some variant of ethereum.<p>If you don't believe that a general purpose one-size-fits-all blockchain technology can be easily and safely created, but you would prefer more privacy and security, Zcash is a frankly compelling idea, and deserves a look.<p>Monero uses a different scheme (ring signatures, essentially mixing in fake and real digital signatures) for privacy. To my knowledge, they don't duplicate the 'blinding' type of hiding about bucket recipients and ownership that zcash does.<p>Note also that BIP47 and the like are trying to add some of these privacy features into Bitcoin core, so there's lots of angles on improved privacy.
Hi folks! I'm the Founder and CEO of the Zcash company. It's really great to have this much interest in a project that we just released in alpha "Technology Preview" form two weeks ago.<p>There are a lot of good questions in here, some of which I answered in an AMA a few days ago: <a href="https://forum.bitcoin.com/ama-ask-me-anything/i-m-zooko-wilcox-ceo-of-the-zcash-company-ask-me-anything-t5413.html" rel="nofollow">https://forum.bitcoin.com/ama-ask-me-anything/i-m-zooko-wilc...</a><p>I can't wait to release the next iteration of the Zcash software, in — fingers crossed — just a couple of weeks. We'll continue to have lots of blog posts and technical discussions from us along the way. This is only the beginning!
For anyone interested in how Zcash (formely Zerocoin) works and who understands German, I've written my Bachelor thesis about it in 2013: <a href="http://www.math.uni-bremen.de/~jhasse/Kryptografische%20Grundlagen%20von%20Bitcoin.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.math.uni-bremen.de/~jhasse/Kryptografische%20Grun...</a> (see Part IV)
<i>> We believe that privacy strengthens social ties and social institutions, protects societies against their enemies, and helps societies to be more peaceful and more prosperous.</i><p>It's time to have a serious conversation about whether this is actually true when it comes to <i>financial</i> privacy.<p>Our society is governed by money. Money governs our production directly, and it governs our regulations indirectly since votes can be purchased. Governments derive their power from the consent of the governed, but we use money that doesn't allow us to withdraw our consent without opting out of the economy entirely. Your complaints about money in politics or unstoppable violent cartels around the world are complaints about tyranny, and we should be fighting that tyranny.<p>Anonymous currencies go in the other direction. I'm glad people are building them, but we need to start talking about the implications of using them. Everything about our society will be decided by the people with the most money if people accept anonymous currencies. Democracy isn't possible when you can't hope to detect when influence is being purchased.<p>We're already most of the way there: dollars are anonymous to everyone except the governments that regulate banks. Since those governments have been purchased, those regulations can only really be used against those who haven't already purchased strong representation in the government already.<p>I think we need to go in the opposite direction. We need currencies that everyone can track so individuals can decide whose power they'd like to submit to. If I know someone is buying influence and I want to reject their power to do so, I can stop accepting any money they've used in that way. People accept money to influence politics because other people will accept that money. If other people stop accepting that money, it won't be possible to buy influence anymore. The people who sell their goods, services, and labor will set the rules by their decisions about what money to accept. Wealth won't govern our society, production will.<p>This is merit capitalism. I think it's closer to the world we want to live in. I hope you'll join me in reconsidering whether financial privacy is actually a good thing.<p><a href="http://meritcapitalism.com/" rel="nofollow">http://meritcapitalism.com/</a>
I hope I'm wrong, but if ZCash delivers on the technical promise the blowback from legislators and law enforcement is sure to result in a net loss of privacy for everyone. Enabling illegal profiteering from the very real pain and suffering of others almost always results in government actio (appropriately so); but also legislative over-reaching (eg. mandated sentencing legislations, zero tolerance policies, warrantless wiretapping) because ZCash's message of economic and societal benefits will be utterly lost amid stories of how the tech hurt people.<p>ZCash is very impressive. Brilliant even. But for those who want better privacy... elect leaders who share the concern. Donate to the EFF and ACLU. Advocate for a 'privacy czar' as a cabinet/ministerial level position.
For those of you concerned about pump and dump, they've specifically addressed it in a blog post [1]. And they are open sourcing a ton of stuff. But that's addressed in their blog. So to me, the lay man, it seems like they won't be doing a pump and dump. I say lay man because I'm really not qualified to assert that my statements are indeed correct.<p>[1] <a href="https://z.cash/blog/funding.html" rel="nofollow">https://z.cash/blog/funding.html</a>
Here's some stuff on zerocash:<p>Zerocash: Decentralized anonymous payments from Bitcoin: <a href="http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/Zerocash:%20Decentralized%20anonymous%20payments%20from%20Bitcoin%20(extended%20version)%20-%202014-05-18.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/Zerocash:%20Decentra...</a><p>Zerocoin: anonymous, distributed e-cash from bitcoin: <a href="http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/Zerocoin:%20anonymous%20distributed%20e-cash%20from%20bitcoin.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/Zerocoin:%20anonymou...</a><p>How to explain zero knowledge protocols to other people's children: <a href="http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/snarks/How%20to%20explain%20zero%20knowledge%20protocols%20to%20other%20people's%20children.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/snarks/How%20to%20ex...</a><p>GGPR paper, NIZKs without PCPs: <a href="http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/snarks/Quadratic%20span%20programs%20and%20succinct%20NIZKs%20without%20PCPs%20-%20GGPR.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/snarks/Quadratic%20s...</a><p>Snarks for C: Verifying program execution succinctly and in zero knowledge: <a href="http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/snarks/SNARKs%20for%20C:%20Verifying%20program%20executions%20succinctly%20and%20in%20zero%20knowledge.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/snarks/SNARKs%20for%...</a><p>Secure sampling of public parameters for succinct zero knowledge proofs: <a href="http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/snarks/Secure%20sampling%20of%20public%20parameters%20for%20succinct%20zero%20knowledge%20proofs.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/bitcoin/snarks/Secure%20samp...</a><p><a href="https://github.com/scipr-lab/libsnark" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/scipr-lab/libsnark</a><p>FWIW I think that confidential transactions and even SNARKs will eventually make their way into Bitcoin.
How can the state trace transactions as to collect tax
on transactions made with Zcash? If the state cannot trace the transactions and this becomes black economy 2.0 then will it not face banning and seizure from the authorities?<p>Ie how can we build roads and schools in a Zcash economy?
No links in the article but I found an ArchLinux AUR package for ZCash:<p><a href="https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/zcash-git/" rel="nofollow">https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/zcash-git/</a><p>Builds from source, pulling from Github.
Correct me if I'm wrong but this is a for profit company telling me to use the currency, no commodity, they created and control in order to have privacy?<p>How about I just stick to actual money?
It bothers me that there are "investors" for this and a CEO.<p>What happens if it takes off? There's one or two founders and a couple investors that essentially control the flow of money in the system. Bitcoin was appealing precisely because it lacked a center control.<p>Is there something I'm missing here?
Nothing new here. Add it to the pile of hundreds of other altcoins.<p>Why is this here? Feels like the pump-and-dump world of altcoins is being done here to pump up this post.