The Battle for Blockchain Privacy: Zcash

Welcome back! This article continues my series on blockchain privacy. In recent articles, I’ve argued that privacy protocols are essential for token fungibility and crypto adoption and have provided a comprehensive analysis on the top privacy coin by market cap, Monero.

In this post, I’m planning to dive a little deeper on another top-three privacy coin: ZCash. Also, following this article, I’m planning to wrap up the series by discussing the Dusk protocol, which is an exciting project that is attempting to bring privacy to STOs. If you’re enjoying these posts and want future posts sent to your email, please subscribe to my distribution list! Alright, enough of the overview, let’s dive in.

Zcash

So where does Zcash stack up in the privacy coin battle? As of 1/4/19, the coin was ranked as the 20th largest cryptocurrency by market cap and the third largest privacy coin by market cap (behind Monero and Dash). In this post, I’m going to briefly walk through the history, mechanics, and pros/cons of the protocol. As always, feel free to skip around if any of those sections sound particularly interesting!

A Brief History