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ZCash Will Be a Truly Anonymous Blockchain-Based Currency

273 points by mbgaxyz 10y ago

nickff 10y ago
ZCash looks like a promising tool to prevent civil forfeiture and legalized theft. It is interesting how the same (or similar) technologies that have made cash rare, and allowed tracking of transactions and spending, may subsequently enable radical anonymity. P.S. I hope to see an investment market based on anonymous cryptocurrency one day; it would allow many people who currently lack access to investment markets or funding to prosper.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  "ZCash looks like a promising tool to prevent civil forfeiture and legalized theft." How does it prevent civil forfeiture specifically? Can you elaborate?
  - nickff 10y ago
    If you carried your money electronically, the police would have nothing physical to seize. The most common form of civil forfeiture is when the police seize money or other items of value from someone transporting or holding them. More significantly, if you have an anonymous ZCash account, the state has very little idea of how much money you have, where it is, or how you've used it; this means they don't know whether you have anything they want, or how to get it.
    - fleitz 10y ago
      How does it defeat the $5 wrench?
      - livingparadox 10y ago
        Given that the previous comment is referring to state actors, you have the courts to defeat the 5$ wrench. For more direct criminal elements, you can make it difficult enough that its not worth them going through the effort to use the 5$ wrench and wait while you have to fetch the key. Beyond that, you're no worse off than you were versus carrying cash. The only thing electronic cards might have advantage over this is many provide fraud protection which will refund/void fraudulent charges.
        fleitz 10y ago
        Ok, so you're in court, and the courts just gonna be like, 'ok, we'll just ignore our orders to make you pay because it's crypto currency'? I don't think you understand what happens when you defy court orders... Also, mostly this will be used for tax issues, where guess what, the burden is on you to prove that your income was only X, so the more crypto shit you have the easier it is for the prosecution to say you have millions in crypto currency. You really think ZCash is the first company to think of hiding assets from the gov't?
        bryondowd 10y ago
        The point seems to be that the court would actually have to order you to release the funds, as opposed to the current case where law enforcement can seize physical funds without a court order, putting the burden on you to get it back if the seizure wasn't justified. The court reference you replied to is saying that the court system protects you from having a state actor use force to take your property before you've had your day in court. ETA: That said, I don't think you need anonymity for this, so it would apply to any currency you can use as cash and secure with a password. I guess the anonymity just makes it more like physical cash in that nobody can track how much or where you spend/receive it. For tax purposes, it would be no different from cash in terms of ability to work under the table and be called on it or accused of it by the IRS.
        livingparadox 10y ago
        Your question was how do you defeat the 5$ wrench, not how do you tell them tax-man to f himself. If state actors use the 5$ wrench, that's illegal and consequently you have the defense of the courts to counter that behavior. Civil forfeiture is dependent on being able to "prosecute" your stuff, rather than you. So if they can't seize it, they have to go after you directly, which puts the burden of proof on the prosecution to demonstrate that the money is unlawfully possessed. The fundamental principle of the US court system is "innocent until proven guilty", so you don't have to prove what your income is, they have to prove it. You only need to counter their claims.
        10y ago
      - nickff 10y ago
        It depends on what you mean by 'the $5 wrench', but anonymous cryptocurrency would allow the victim to deny or misstate their account balance. It would not protect a victim being slowly tortured to death (a situation for which I cannot imagine a protection), but would protect the victim in situations where the attacker had limited means.
        livingparadox 10y ago
        He's most likely referring to this XKCD comic: https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
      - seansoutpost 10y ago
        Multisignature wallets mean that you can beat the credentials out of a person and still not be able to access the coins. You would have to figure out who else had keys and beat then too. Raising the difficulty a non-trivial level.
        vkou 10y ago
        For the wallet to be useful, the person you are beating will either know who else needs to be beaten, can be compelled to withdraw their funds under duress, or in the case of a centralized counterparty, like a bank, can be trivially compelled by a government bearing a lawful order, to sign off on a money transfer. If none of those means of getting you to pay work out, they can always leave you to enjoy your internet money in jail.
        stale2002 10y ago
        The issue is that they have no idea how much money you 'actually' have. If someone threatens you with a wrench, you simply do what they ask you to do and provide a password to your "account" that conveniently doesnt have much money in it. "yes officer! I have done exactly what you asked me to do. Here is all the electronic money that I own. "
        st3v3r 10y ago
        Ok, but how does that protect ME from that $5 wrench?
        abrkn 10y ago
        You can setup a hardware wallet with plausible deniability[1] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TREZOR/comments/2e8a9i/can_someone_provide_a_stepbystep_tut_to_set_up/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TREZOR/comments/2e8a9i/can_someone_...
        st3v3r 10y ago
        And then they beat me with the wrench anyway for wasting their time. But I suppose the money's ok, which I'll need for hospital bills.
    - mtgx 10y ago
      > If you carried your money electronically, the police would have nothing physical to seize. This type of attack probably won't work on Zcash, but that statement seems to be wrong these days: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/07/02/483394735/device-lets-police-seize-digital-cash-raises-civil-liberties-concerns http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/07/02/483...
    - 235337 10y ago
      Isn't that beside the point? If you have all this money and they only suspect you have it, give you some court order for the money, then even if they can't get hands on the money neither can you. All they have to do is watch you, as a person, and your interaction with systems. That sort of thing is only getting more easy. Furthermore with the push for "Online identity" they could just seize all your data storage and your various account information sets. Maybe your Ident never touched any of your personal hardware, or maybe you opened access to your hardware and pumped so many Idents through your confident they wont be able to figure out which is yours. But they can still out wait you. I mean MAYBE with smart contracts will get us out of that.
  - Spivak 10y ago
    Not familiar with Zcash specifically, but it should work the same as Bitcoin. You cannot initiate a transaction without the (password protected) private key of the wallet containing BTC. If the victim of civil forfeiture refuses to provide the password and private key there is nothing that can be done to acquire the money. This is good because it changes the game from the "government takes your money and you have to sue to get it back" to "government has to prosecute to get your money in the first place". It doesn't prevent some vague yet menacing government agent from breaking your kneecaps in order to get the password, but no security system has been able to plug that hole yet.
    - jbpetersen 10y ago
      Some attempts to plug that hole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniable_encryption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniable_encryption
      - DennisP 10y ago
        So there's an idea: a wallet format that lets you decrypt with any of one or more passphrases, with each passphrase giving a different set of addresses.
        abrkn 10y ago
        This is already in wide use by Trezor users. A user can have an arbitrary number of decoy wallets unlocked by the same root private key, but different passphrases.
        aminorex 10y ago
        Trezor firmware supports Monero. No zcash as of yet.
    - bogomipz 10y ago
      Yes, I see your point. Thanks for the clarification. For anyone who's interested about the practice of "civil forfeiture" in the U.S. and why its so concerning. This is decent introductory read: https://priceonomics.com/how-police-officers-seize-cash-from-innocent/ https://priceonomics.com/how-police-officers-seize-cash-from...
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  In respect of protection against civil forfeiture, how is it different from a regular bank account?
  - wyager 10y ago
    The government can very easily take money out of your bank account. Happened to me one time when the Texas Comptroller made a paperwork error. Even after they fixed it and refunded my money, Wells Fargo charged me $150 for "legal fees". That was a lot of fun.
    - bduerst 10y ago
      Your problem is that you used Wells Fargo instead of a credit union.
      - wyager 10y ago
        After that event I switched to a credit union. Good decision.
hash-set 10y ago
I have a hard time believing that the powers that be will allow it, then, because of "Assassination Politics," avoidance of taxes, etc. We won't kill Skynet without a war.
- nickff 10y ago
  The 'Assassination Politics'/'Assassination Market' problem is an interesting one, and may be one of the parade of horribles, along with extortion, blackmail, identity theft, and others that will be brought against ideas like ZCash. The problem is that a 'ZCash' alternative is almost inevitable, and the best we can reasonably expect is to control the markets for these transactions to reduce or prevent them (as is done with cash/physical currency).[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market
  - FrancoDiaz 10y ago
    I had never heard of "Assassination Market" before. Very dystopian/sci-fi.
mempko 10y ago
We need something better than money. I don't know what that is, but I think focusing on creating new forms of tokens won't enable any radical change.
- nickff 10y ago
  If you want to get rid of money entirely, the first thing you have to do is solve the 'Economic Calculation Problem'.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem
- jbpetersen 10y ago
  I'm convinced that reputation based economics are a natural successor to currency with enough automated means of coordinating transactions. Disclaimer: I may be extremely biased from spending the majority of my time trying to figure out how to put that into practice.
Ar-Curunir 10y ago
The article is a bit inaccurate; SNARKs weren't developed just by Eli; there's an entire group of researchers at the SCIPR lab who worked on this stuff: http://www.scipr-lab.org/ http://www.scipr-lab.org/
- sangfroid 10y ago
  Hi. I'm the author. Thanks for pointing this out. You were not the only one. We've reworked the attributions paragraph to include all of the institutions that had a hand in this particular work. And we also tried to make it clear that the snarks they worked on were specific to the zcash project.
wh0rth 10y ago
The blockchain is slowly going to become a dominant pillar of our transactions. Whether it be information, money, etc., blockchain will probably be a part of it. If we want it to be secure anyway...
- TearsInTheRain 10y ago
  Is anyone working on/does it make sense to have blockchain based voting for elections?
  - wh0rth 10y ago
    I like the idea. There's some funding waiting for that innovation
  - bandrami 10y ago
    It's been looked at (my advisor in grad school was working on it) and it keeps running up against the problem of scaling -- 100 million transactions (800 million if you want to scale up to India) on a single day is going to be hard from a realization standpoint, even if it's theoretically doable. There's also the interesting psychological side to it: while a blockchain system is in a theoretical sense more transparent than anything else, from a popular standpoint it's incredibly opaque compared to a county registrar counting two different stacks of paper ballots.
    - nathcd 10y ago
      We can just use cryptography and forego the blockchain for much more scalable verifiable elections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy... https://vote.heliosvoting.org/ https://vote.heliosvoting.org/
  - Torgo 10y ago
    There are several voting systems built on top of Ethereum.
  - 0xCMP 10y ago
philfrasty 10y ago
Anyone else finds naming important for adoption? Bitcoin sounds pretty elegant to the regular Joey IMO but „ZCash“...I mean...awful. Well lets hope for a rebrand later.
- seansoutpost 10y ago
  This is the rebrand. This project was initially ZeroCoin, then ZeroCash, and now the abbreviated ZCash
  - 77pt77 10y ago
    ZeroCoin and ZeroCash are probably the worst possible names for something like this.
  - nullc 10y ago
    > This project was initially ZeroCoin, ZeroCoin was an entirely different approach based on different cryptography with radically different properties. ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175156.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175156.0 )
- SilasX 10y ago
  I don't know ... to my ear, Bitcoin sounds petty -- the "bit" and "oi" pieces are diminutive. ZCash seems relatively neutral to me, not evoking positive or negative feelings. ZeroCash (from which it comes) is somehwat negative, since it evokes "no more money".
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
  Most villains have no problem with zee name.
  - jcoffland 10y ago
    You mean like Zoro?
    - 10y ago
jandrese 10y ago
I'm failing to see how this is superior to the hundreds of altcoins already available. What makes this better than Bitcoin, Dogecoin, or Kanyecoin? Why should I choose it over the competition?
- Torgo 10y ago
  The answer is in the title of the submission.
- wmf 10y ago
  As it says in the title, it's more anonymous. So ZCash and Monero are competing for the darknet payment market.
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    tl;dr transactions are encrypted so proof of funds work with zero-knowledge proofs
  - jandrese 10y ago
    But it can't really be truly anonymous, not if you want people to actually use it. At the end of the day you need at least some assurance that you're sending the money to the right person in exchange for their good or service. They also need to be able to verify that they have been paid for their work and by whom.
    - 45h34jh53k4j 10y ago
      anonymous in the sense that no tx can be attributed to a particular party. it still uses strong cryptography to authenticate the transaction. the sender and the receiver can always verify that the transaction has occurred. it wouldn't be much of a currency if it relied on anonymous rumours of payment!
    - schoen 10y ago
      Imagine that you went to a restaurant and the restaurant told you where to send a payment. Then they could confirm that you had done so. Now imagine that the restaurant didn't possess any information that it could use to identify you as a result of the payment, and that no payment intermediary possessed information that could be used to identify the parties to the transaction, and that when the restaurant later spent the money, the source of the funds couldn't be associated with your payment transaction (perhaps even by you as the customer). Those are some properties that we could wish for in an anonymous payment system. It doesn't mean that the payee can't tell that a payment was made in response to a particular request, though it might not know "by whom" in any other sense.
mootothemax 10y ago
"But in ZCash, the miners only get to keep ninety percent of those coins. The rest gets dumped into accounts controlled by the ZCash company" This alone makes me extremely sceptical.
- wmf 10y ago
  Unlike Bitcoin, where Satoshi probably mined 5% of all BTC before other people noticed? Or unlike Bitcoin, where developers get paid by layering centralized startups on top?
  - Faaak 10y ago
    Until proven otherwise, Satoshi still didn't touch his original mined coins…
    - hulahoof 10y ago
      IIRC they are supposedly locked in a 'trust' until ~2020 (See: Tulip Trust)
      - uncletammy 10y ago
        This is one of the many claims by a person who came forth and claimed to be Satoshi. Although a few notable people in the community believe(d) him, most don't. This should be treated as a rumor at best.
  - abecedarius 10y ago
    Or Ethereum where the founders reserved 12.5% of the presale to themselves. I had no problem with that, and the Zcash incentives seem better than the Ethereum ones because they're effectively vesting over years.
  - tom_mellior 10y ago
    5% < 10%, last time I checked. Also, "Bitcoin did something fishy" should be a reason to invent some thing less fishy, not more.
RangerScience 10y ago
Here's a question: I can see the value in an anonymized blockchain for use by individuals... ...but, is there a reason that anonymity would be good for use in a blockchain for use by businesses? Or, is it categorically better for a business-centric blockchain to have the most identity possible?
- abecedarius 10y ago
  Zooko's mentioned interest from banks/finance because they need privacy, too. I haven't asked about this because I'm not really into business.
- akanter 10y ago
  They touch on that in the link. "“There are regulatory and commercial and moral reasons for privacy from all sectors,” he says. To give a commercial example: Apple wouldn’t want Samsung to be able to track its transactions and gain valuable competitive intelligence." I agree with this sentiment.
  - peeters 10y ago
    Couldn't you tweak that a bit? "Apple wouldn’t want the government to be able to track its transactions and gain valuable tax revenue."
  - dorfsmay 10y ago
    On the other hand, how do you deal with the for the for proving who the currency belongs to, for example in the case of death (and the person never shared their passwords/keys)?
Animats 10y ago
Another altcoin. This one has a 10% pre-mining cut for the founders: "Zcash's monetary base will be the same as Bitcoin's — 21 million Zcash currency units (ZEC, or ⓩ) will be mined over time. 10% of that reward will be distributed to the stakeholders in the Zcash Company — founders, investors, employees, and advisors. We call this the “Founders Reward”." Here's a list of the other 709 altcoins.[1] 373 of them are still tradeable. 88 have a market cap in excess of $1M. 27 have a market cap in excess of $10M. 4 have a market cap in excess of $100M. PayCoin, which was last year's heavily promoted new cool coin with a "guaranteed floor" of $20, is now at position 415 with a value of $0.002606 and a market cap of $30,247. [1] https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/ https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/
- problems 10y ago
  Yup, it's a clever idea, but wait for someone to be the Litecoin to their Tenebrix.
  - earlz 10y ago
    Given how complicated the technology is that they will be working with (as someone who has attempted to read the zcash whitepaper), I find this extremely unlikely. Sure there will be clones, but no altcoin "developer" will be able to properly maintain this, so bugs won't get fixed, or it'll always be lagging behind Zcash, or worse, they introduce unintentional bugs and completely wreck their blockchain and lose the money of the few fools who thought that the developers/company running it getting some money is bad
    - problems 10y ago
      I wouldn't be so sure of that, there already exist some alternatives which seem better in some ways like Monero. I have very low trust for scam developers like the ZCash ones, I'm sure someone quite capable could take it up.
      - zby 10y ago
        'scam developers'? A bit harsh isn't it?
wyldfire 10y ago
ZCash is one of a few options for anonymity. Cryptonote-based ring-signature coins like Monero have been around for a while. See also https://news.bitcoin.com/meet-top-3-coins-cryptocurrency-anonymity-race/ https://news.bitcoin.com/meet-top-3-coins-cryptocurrency-ano...
choffman 10y ago
ZCash requires a trusted setup, takes a 20% fee from miners, and active mixing requires 8GB of RAM. https://blog.okturtles.com/2016/03/the-zcash-catch/ https://blog.okturtles.com/2016/03/the-zcash-catch/ http://weuse.cash/2016/06/09/btc-xmr-zcash/ http://weuse.cash/2016/06/09/btc-xmr-zcash/ If you are interested in anonymous blockchains, I highly encourage you to look into Monero. It meets or exceeds that of ZCash. And Monero's RingCT is currently implemented and in use on TestNet with a target "go-live" this January.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  8GB of RAM is only required when you want to transact; if you're not making transactions but are simply another node in the network (perhaps mining, or something), then I don't think the work required is any different from Bitcoin.
- urza 10y ago
  Thanks for these articles. Great comparison! Monero looks very good indeed.
- urza 10y ago
  Could you please explain this? _"And Monero's RingCT is currently implemented and in use on TestNet with a target "go-live" this January."_ I couldnt find any relevant infromation on this. Does it mean that from January 2017 bitcoin will have anonymity properties of Monero?
pero 10y ago
ZCash has a myriad of fundamental issues, chief among them: -ZCash is a US-based LLC, and given what is publicly known about the capabilities and past behavior of its intelligence apparatus I don't see how anyone can claim that such an organization can shepherd a 'truly anonymous blockchain', particularly one that is essentially a black box -ZCash's blockchain is a black box and requires you to not only trust them with your anonymity, but also to trust them not to create coins arbitrarily - a successful attacker could also mint coins at will - as there is no way to verify circulation -Anonymous transactions are optional and require tremendous resources to generate -It is an innovative take on a pre-mine where insiders were given opportunity to pre-purchase coins at the expense of future miners I suggest that anyone looking for a truly anonymous blockchain experience take a look at Monero.
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  > I suggest that anyone looking for a truly anonymous blockchain experience take a look at Monero. And I suggest that anyone looking for strong provable anonymity guarantees not look at Monero. The security guarantees of ZCash are stronger than those of Monero, and the trusted setup issue can be mitigated via the MPC protocol detailed in a recent paper. EDIT: compromising the trusted setup does not compromise anonymity; the zero knowledge proofs used enjoy a property known as "perfect zero knowledge".
- ewillbefull 10y ago
  > ZCash's blockchain is a black box and requires you to not only trust them with your anonymity You do not trust anyone with your privacy in our system. Assuming you're talking about our zk-SNARK parameters, if they were not securely generated you still could not violate anyone's privacy.
- tribby 10y ago
  > ZCash is a US-based LLC, and given what is publicly known about the capabilities and past behavior of its intelligence apparatus [...] why does it matter where zcash is incorporated when the apparatus you're describing operates without regard for borders? zcash is the first effort at a cryptocurrency where I have immense respect and trust for its team right out of the gate. not sure where the FUD is coming from (although I'd hypothesize that you are long monero?). >Anonymous transactions are optional and require tremendous resources to generate this is indeed a problem. hopefully temporary.
mmanfrin 10y ago
A month ago I did a deep dive in to etherium and the 'altcoin' universe. The one thing I came out of it all with was a feeling that I had seen so much of the same sentiment and rhetoric about specific altcoins and altcoins in general as I saw with the 'HYIP' sites of two decades ago. HYIPs were plain ponzi schemes, given the fancy name of 'high yield investment portfolio'; they promised things like "1.5% yield/day on investments of egold" but all of them would fold.
brighton36 10y ago
An truly a scam as well. These investment pumps are so obnoxious
OceanPowers 10y ago
Riiiiiiiight....
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jamisteven 10y ago
"truly anonymous".
mappum 10y ago
I am long Zcash: * The founder is Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn, creator of Zooko's triangle, the BLAKE2 hash function, Tahoe-LAFS, and former employee at MojoNation (an early attempt at cryptocurrency/P2P filesharing where another employee, Beam Cohen, went on to create Bittorrent). He knows a thing or two about decentralization/P2P. * This project is NOT a trivial Bitcoin clone with only a new proof-of-work swapped in. The Zero Knowledge Proofs they use to keep transactions private is state of the art crypto. Also their PoW is actually memory-hard (many currencies have used PoW functions which they thought would be memory-hard and ASIC-proof, such as Litecoin with Scrypt, but it turned out not to be the case). * Their "Founders Reward" is less like a premine and more like startup vested equity (it pays out to them gradually over 4 years to incentive themselves not to pump and dump). * The team is extremely helpful in the Zcash Slack and are a relief after dealing with the pedantic, difficult Bitcoin developers.
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  What do you think about Cryptonote projects? Such as Monero, Boolberry, a variety of other similar networks Some advantages Cryptonote has that come to mind: - They are private by default. Zcash requires two states, a state analogous to bitcoin, and the anonymous zcash state which has to be explicitely opted into. Shadowcash also has this, but opted for ring signatures for the anonymous state (like cryptonote coins use by default) instead of the zkSNARKs. The market hasn't focused much attention on Shadowcash. - Cryptonote projects have proof of work algorithms that are durable and so far ASIC-proof. Cryptonite, Wild Keccak still are CPU and GPU friendly. But I'd have to read their respective papers before I say "ASIC Proof because memory hard" - Cryptonote are also auditable if a user wants to reveal information about a transaction. But even then the information is limited, it will show that payments came in and out of specific amounts, but it won't show the sending/receiving address along with those transaction IDs. - Cryptonote projects have nonthreatening names. Many privacy centric projects have names like Dark- Shadow- Anon- whereas noteworthy cryptonote projects have names that at worst simply wouldn't be taken seriously by a "powerful establishment" until so much capital and infrastructure is already built. I think ZCash or "Zerocash" isn't going to get smiles and congratulations from FinCEN. Hyperbole, but I don't think it is an advantage for the project. Its one thing to be optimistic about the founders and their company, but for you to say "long" something that doesn't seem like a better investment, makes me wonder what you see in comparison to some other existing technologies. Looking forward to your thoughts
lisper 10y ago
I'm a big believer in privacy, but anonymity scares me. Anonymity invites bad behavior: look at how bitcoin -- which isn't even all that anonymous -- has enabled the ransomware industry. I agree that it is very important for people to be able to conduct financial transactions without having to disclose them to third parties. It's also important for people to be able to use a mutually-agreed-upon trusted third party to mediate transactions where neither party knows the other's identity. But I'm much less convinced of the wisdom of enabling people to conduct financial transactions with no possibility of knowing who they are doing business with. That seems to me to be fraught with all manner of moral hazard.
- 45h34jh53k4j 10y ago
  we have fully anonymous, working cryptocurrencies now (monero is the best example). You cannot link transactions nor determine the balance of a public key. without the private key and transaction key no court can seize. we have anonymous darknet markets, where you can buy many controlled substances, in visibility of law enforcement. My point is that you can't uninvent these things. They have already changed society, and moralizing on how we shouldn't invent these things has gone way past into heavy production. Use the technology, dont use it; this is really the only choice you can make. Their existence wont go away.
  - lisper 10y ago
    I'm not moralizing about inventing these things, I'm moralizing about using them. Inventing a nuclear weapon is not the same as using one. BTW, I didn't know about Monero. Is there any substantive difference between it and ZCash?
    - hulahoof 10y ago
      By the same token, sending the message to launch is not the same as sending a confidential message.
      - lisper 10y ago
nercht12 10y ago
I can't wait for the arrival iCoin.
moyix 10y ago
I'm kind of confused by the tenor of the comments in here. I'll admit I haven't been following cryptocurrencies closely, but there seem to be a large number of comments suggesting that ZCash is a scam and that Monero is better (without any concrete arguments). Could someone enlighten me as to why that's the case? I know of ZCash via the academic papers on it, and because the people involved – Zooko Wilcox, Matthew Green, etc. – are extremely well known and trusted in the security community. I've heard basically nothing about Monero.
- frakr 10y ago
  Monero is just an over-hyped pumped up alt coin. All of the trade volume is on the exchange Poloniex which claims to be based in the US but provides no details of who owns or operates the site beyond that. They allow margin trading. I highly doubt their legitimacy. The initial rise of Ethereum also occurred on Poloniex. Lots of hype surrounding both of those coins without any real world utility. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/#markets https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/#markets
- hulahoof 10y ago
  I have been reading through and also noticing this. I was looking for a better explanation too - from what I understand basically: Monero uses ringCT algorithm on transfer to mix the payments and obfuscate the sender Monero has a private view key and separate spend key. View key can decrypt transactions made by you to confirm your total balance (Monero balance is unknown to daemon, is calculated as (xmrRecieved - xmrSpent) ZCash has 'zero-knowledge' proofs and while the whitepaper[1] is a bit intense it uses a novel Proof-of-Work explained within. Called zero-knowledge Succinct Non-interactive ARguments of Knowledge (zk-SNARKS). ZCash coins origins obfuscated before recieved by user, reducing need to mix payments together Personally, I think they're both great and it's a healthy time for a privacy-based cryptocurrency face off. Having said that, ZCash theoretically sounds better (to me) yet Monero is proven in the wild - and both have people with money already sunken in. IMO the cryptocurrency world will be much better off when it's userbase is looking for a CURRENCY and not a COMMODITY. [1]: http://zerocash-project.org/paper http://zerocash-project.org/paper [2]: https://github.com/zcash/zips/blob/master/protocol/protocol.pdf https://github.com/zcash/zips/blob/master/protocol/protocol.... [3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/41vg68/monero_vs_zcash_eli5_fundamental_differences/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/41vg68/monero_vs_zc... - decent ZEC vs XMR ELI5 thread edit: formatting
abrkn 10y ago
Privacy coins is the new hot thing in altcoins. There's Monero, ZCoin, ZCash, Dash, ...
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  ZCoin uses an old, weaker research paper by Christina, Ian and Matt, ZeroCoin. ZeroCoin offers weaker security guarantees than Zcash.
CN7R 10y ago
A current problem that I feel blockchain-based currencies face all is the inability to effect large scale changes. Whether it be Bitcoin's infighting or Ethereum's decision to fork, the reliability of transactions by blockchains comes into question. The central conflict is over authority: should the system be in the hands of miners or in a central power? Both of these have pros and cons. Miners have an economic incentive to ensure changes to the system are in favor of users. And in theory, these changes are democratic: representing the opinions of the majority of miners. However, in practice, this is rarely the case; as voting power is allocated based on computing power, the result is a system governed by a few individuals with the economic resources and advantages to cheaply 'outrepresent' others. In effect, they do not represent the majority of miners and users. Look at Bitcoin, where a handful of Chinese companies control the network (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/business/dealbook/bitcoin-china.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/business/dealbook/bitcoin-...) A central power has the ability to enact large scale change affecting the whole system, but is inherently undemocratic. Ethereum, in response to a capital fund being hacked, performed a hard fork earlier this year, mitigating the adverse effects. This rapid collective action would be hard to do in Bitcoin. The benefits of blockchain are anonymity, security, and low costs of transactions. Both of these features need to be upheld if blockchain-based currencies are to be competitive with current credit systems, regardless of which form of authority is adopted. In my opinion, a central power blockchain-based currency would be preferable. Why? Current credit systems charge high fees for transactions to offload the cost of fraud and corresponding insurance. Blockchains don't, but there is no guarantee of security against hackers in a system not run by a central power. Low cost and security of transactions must be maintained. In addition, in a miner-based blockchain, all transactions are not treated equally. For Bitcoin, transactions which give a fee to miners are processed faster (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aYfkjiN534p4zyE5WJNm7rddr84KS_e50EFTYJqj5jQ/edit#gid=1463201895 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aYfkjiN534p4zyE5WJNm...). Any response?
andirk 10y ago
I think the people behind a project mean a heck of a lot to the validity an integrity of the project. So if Zooko Wilcox et al are indeed respected in the P2P and security community, then I am interested in this.
- aminorex 10y ago
  You have to trust them, because if they cheat, they can print infinite zcash. I do not trust Israeli SIGINT people with my secrets.
  - Ar-Curunir 10y ago
    So people like Matthew Green, Alessandro Chiesa, Madars Virza, Ian Miers and Christina Garman, none of whom are Israeli, had absolutely no say in how this project was constructed, right? Eli and Eran are just two members of a much larger research group. They most certainly did not "backdoor" ZCash. There's skepticism, and then there's this stupid crap like your post. No technical foundation, no evidence, nothing, just FUD.
grondilu 10y ago
> Although privacy was a motivating factor for Bitcoin’s flock of early adopters Not quite. I mean surely there were people interested in that, but frankly this is exaggerated. We knew very early that anonymity was far from obvious, even on a purely theoretical point (that is, even if you could anonymise your IP for instance). Bitcoin was approximately anonymous not by design, but by convenience. Who wants to have to bother checking the identity of users? In fact, I'd argue that bitcoin was no more anonymous than any other FOSS project. You usually don't ask for an ID before allowing someone to download your software.
CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
There's a general attitude to some of the comments here. "Another altcoin." "I wouldn't weigh the odds that this specific system really lasting more than 4 years out especially high." ZCash isn't just another fly-by-night cryptocurrency scam. It's a serious engineering effort that was carefully undertaken by some very well-known cryptography and security experts. Matthew Green Daira Hopwood Taylor Hornby Ian Meiers Zooko Wilcox-O'hearn Every one of the names in the preceding list is or was involved in the ZCash project to some capacity. Every one of those names stands alone on their own merits. Ask your cryptography expert friends what they think about ZCash. Yes, the one who are always yakking about side-channel cryptanalysis and which character device to use for generating random numbers. If you don't have any such friends, go to ##crypto on Freenode and say "Hi". It's all uphill form there. Saying the equivalent of "Monero is better" is little better than trolling. Let Monero stand on its own merits; being negative and hostile accomplishes nothing. Saying the equivalent of "Sigh! Another doomed altcoin" is needlessly pessimistic. ZCash represents what every other altcoin should have been doing all along: - It uses a real proof-of-work function. - It offers actual anonymity (an improvement over BitCoin). - It uses an entropy source that won't fail open (like so many BitCoin apps did). - It was designed and implemented by a team of academic cryptographers and industry experts on secure cryptography implementations. - The team took their time bringing a solid implementation to market. - Every design decision was documented and discussed openly. If you have technical concerns about the protocol design or implementation, please don't feel discouraged in sharing them. It's the dismissive attitude that's bothering me.
- tromp 10y ago
  Some slight corrections: It's Ian Miers, not Meiers. The Equihash proof of work, its name notwithstanding, is a real puzzle, not a Hashcash hash function. Each instance can yield 0, 1, 2 or more solutions (though rarely more than 7).
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  This dismissive attitude infests HN; whenever some-one does something, the top comments are from people nit-picking and finding flaws with the work.
TheLilHipster 10y ago
Monero is better tech: * https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/about https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/about * https://github.com/monero-project/monero https://github.com/monero-project/monero
ojiikun 10y ago
This just sounds like a new clone of Dash (née darkcoin) but with pre-mine for the founders and without the cool proposal / voting system. Why would anyone buy into this?
- aminorex 10y ago
  Dash was a premine scam too.
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  Except this work is the result of many years of both theoretical and engineering advances in cryptography; if you can't take even the modicum of effort to read up on the subject matter, maybe you shouldn't be spouting bullshit?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
jbb555 10y ago
This looks good to me. It looks like it is not just another bitcoin clone, it has genuine, and well thought out improvements. I'll probably try it out unlike all the others.
kyrre 10y ago
going to be hard to launch a pre-mined coin when there are thriving alternatives such as monero. good luck.
hasa 10y ago
Takeover AD behind the link. Is this acceptable for a hacker news link ?
ebbv 10y ago
As I said the last several dozen times ZCash hype articles got posted; what's worse than currency controlled by a government AND currency controlled by an unelected group of developers? Currency controlled by a for profit company.
jbb555 10y ago
Bitcoin seems to be going through an issue at the moment where many transactions are taking hours to complete due to a large backlog. This might be transient but when I ask any questions about so what happens if volume doubles, I just get attacked for asking such questions. It seems bitcoin just doesn't scale very well. So my question is does ZCash? How will it cope with current bitcoin volumes? Or 10 times? Or 1000?
alexellisuk 10y ago
If you want an automated build that you can run on any platform (not only Linux/Ubuntu) then check out my Docker guide: http://blog.alexellis.io/mine-zcash-with-docker/ http://blog.alexellis.io/mine-zcash-with-docker/

273 points by mbgaxyz 10y ago

ZCash looks like a promising tool to prevent civil forfeiture and legalized theft. It is interesting how the same (or similar) technologies that have made cash rare, and allowed tracking of transactions and spending, may subsequently enable radical anonymity. P.S. I hope to see an investment market based on anonymous cryptocurrency one day; it would allow many people who currently lack access to investment markets or funding to prosper.

bogomipz 10y ago
"ZCash looks like a promising tool to prevent civil forfeiture and legalized theft." How does it prevent civil forfeiture specifically? Can you elaborate?
- nickff 10y ago
  If you carried your money electronically, the police would have nothing physical to seize. The most common form of civil forfeiture is when the police seize money or other items of value from someone transporting or holding them. More significantly, if you have an anonymous ZCash account, the state has very little idea of how much money you have, where it is, or how you've used it; this means they don't know whether you have anything they want, or how to get it.
  - fleitz 10y ago
    How does it defeat the $5 wrench?
    - livingparadox 10y ago
      Given that the previous comment is referring to state actors, you have the courts to defeat the 5$ wrench. For more direct criminal elements, you can make it difficult enough that its not worth them going through the effort to use the 5$ wrench and wait while you have to fetch the key. Beyond that, you're no worse off than you were versus carrying cash. The only thing electronic cards might have advantage over this is many provide fraud protection which will refund/void fraudulent charges.
      - fleitz 10y ago
        Ok, so you're in court, and the courts just gonna be like, 'ok, we'll just ignore our orders to make you pay because it's crypto currency'? I don't think you understand what happens when you defy court orders... Also, mostly this will be used for tax issues, where guess what, the burden is on you to prove that your income was only X, so the more crypto shit you have the easier it is for the prosecution to say you have millions in crypto currency. You really think ZCash is the first company to think of hiding assets from the gov't?
        bryondowd 10y ago
        The point seems to be that the court would actually have to order you to release the funds, as opposed to the current case where law enforcement can seize physical funds without a court order, putting the burden on you to get it back if the seizure wasn't justified. The court reference you replied to is saying that the court system protects you from having a state actor use force to take your property before you've had your day in court. ETA: That said, I don't think you need anonymity for this, so it would apply to any currency you can use as cash and secure with a password. I guess the anonymity just makes it more like physical cash in that nobody can track how much or where you spend/receive it. For tax purposes, it would be no different from cash in terms of ability to work under the table and be called on it or accused of it by the IRS.
        livingparadox 10y ago
        Your question was how do you defeat the 5$ wrench, not how do you tell them tax-man to f himself. If state actors use the 5$ wrench, that's illegal and consequently you have the defense of the courts to counter that behavior. Civil forfeiture is dependent on being able to "prosecute" your stuff, rather than you. So if they can't seize it, they have to go after you directly, which puts the burden of proof on the prosecution to demonstrate that the money is unlawfully possessed. The fundamental principle of the US court system is "innocent until proven guilty", so you don't have to prove what your income is, they have to prove it. You only need to counter their claims.
        10y ago
    - nickff 10y ago
      It depends on what you mean by 'the $5 wrench', but anonymous cryptocurrency would allow the victim to deny or misstate their account balance. It would not protect a victim being slowly tortured to death (a situation for which I cannot imagine a protection), but would protect the victim in situations where the attacker had limited means.
      - livingparadox 10y ago
        He's most likely referring to this XKCD comic: https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
    - seansoutpost 10y ago
      Multisignature wallets mean that you can beat the credentials out of a person and still not be able to access the coins. You would have to figure out who else had keys and beat then too. Raising the difficulty a non-trivial level.
      - vkou 10y ago
        For the wallet to be useful, the person you are beating will either know who else needs to be beaten, can be compelled to withdraw their funds under duress, or in the case of a centralized counterparty, like a bank, can be trivially compelled by a government bearing a lawful order, to sign off on a money transfer. If none of those means of getting you to pay work out, they can always leave you to enjoy your internet money in jail.
        stale2002 10y ago
        The issue is that they have no idea how much money you 'actually' have. If someone threatens you with a wrench, you simply do what they ask you to do and provide a password to your "account" that conveniently doesnt have much money in it. "yes officer! I have done exactly what you asked me to do. Here is all the electronic money that I own. "
      - st3v3r 10y ago
        Ok, but how does that protect ME from that $5 wrench?
        abrkn 10y ago
        You can setup a hardware wallet with plausible deniability[1] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/TREZOR/comments/2e8a9i/can_someone_provide_a_stepbystep_tut_to_set_up/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TREZOR/comments/2e8a9i/can_someone_...
        st3v3r 10y ago
        And then they beat me with the wrench anyway for wasting their time. But I suppose the money's ok, which I'll need for hospital bills.
  - mtgx 10y ago
    > If you carried your money electronically, the police would have nothing physical to seize. This type of attack probably won't work on Zcash, but that statement seems to be wrong these days: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/07/02/483394735/device-lets-police-seize-digital-cash-raises-civil-liberties-concerns http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/07/02/483...
  - 235337 10y ago
    Isn't that beside the point? If you have all this money and they only suspect you have it, give you some court order for the money, then even if they can't get hands on the money neither can you. All they have to do is watch you, as a person, and your interaction with systems. That sort of thing is only getting more easy. Furthermore with the push for "Online identity" they could just seize all your data storage and your various account information sets. Maybe your Ident never touched any of your personal hardware, or maybe you opened access to your hardware and pumped so many Idents through your confident they wont be able to figure out which is yours. But they can still out wait you. I mean MAYBE with smart contracts will get us out of that.
- Spivak 10y ago
  Not familiar with Zcash specifically, but it should work the same as Bitcoin. You cannot initiate a transaction without the (password protected) private key of the wallet containing BTC. If the victim of civil forfeiture refuses to provide the password and private key there is nothing that can be done to acquire the money. This is good because it changes the game from the "government takes your money and you have to sue to get it back" to "government has to prosecute to get your money in the first place". It doesn't prevent some vague yet menacing government agent from breaking your kneecaps in order to get the password, but no security system has been able to plug that hole yet.
  - jbpetersen 10y ago
    Some attempts to plug that hole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniable_encryption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniable_encryption
    - DennisP 10y ago
      So there's an idea: a wallet format that lets you decrypt with any of one or more passphrases, with each passphrase giving a different set of addresses.
      - abrkn 10y ago
        This is already in wide use by Trezor users. A user can have an arbitrary number of decoy wallets unlocked by the same root private key, but different passphrases.
        aminorex 10y ago
        Trezor firmware supports Monero. No zcash as of yet.
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    Yes, I see your point. Thanks for the clarification. For anyone who's interested about the practice of "civil forfeiture" in the U.S. and why its so concerning. This is decent introductory read: https://priceonomics.com/how-police-officers-seize-cash-from-innocent/ https://priceonomics.com/how-police-officers-seize-cash-from...
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
In respect of protection against civil forfeiture, how is it different from a regular bank account?
- wyager 10y ago
  The government can very easily take money out of your bank account. Happened to me one time when the Texas Comptroller made a paperwork error. Even after they fixed it and refunded my money, Wells Fargo charged me $150 for "legal fees". That was a lot of fun.
  - bduerst 10y ago
    Your problem is that you used Wells Fargo instead of a credit union.
    - wyager 10y ago
      After that event I switched to a credit union. Good decision.

hash-set 10y ago

I have a hard time believing that the powers that be will allow it, then, because of "Assassination Politics," avoidance of taxes, etc. We won't kill Skynet without a war.

nickff 10y ago
The 'Assassination Politics'/'Assassination Market' problem is an interesting one, and may be one of the parade of horribles, along with extortion, blackmail, identity theft, and others that will be brought against ideas like ZCash. The problem is that a 'ZCash' alternative is almost inevitable, and the best we can reasonably expect is to control the markets for these transactions to reduce or prevent them (as is done with cash/physical currency).[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market
- FrancoDiaz 10y ago
  I had never heard of "Assassination Market" before. Very dystopian/sci-fi.

mempko 10y ago

We need something better than money. I don't know what that is, but I think focusing on creating new forms of tokens won't enable any radical change.

nickff 10y ago
If you want to get rid of money entirely, the first thing you have to do is solve the 'Economic Calculation Problem'.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem
jbpetersen 10y ago
I'm convinced that reputation based economics are a natural successor to currency with enough automated means of coordinating transactions. Disclaimer: I may be extremely biased from spending the majority of my time trying to figure out how to put that into practice.

Ar-Curunir 10y ago

The article is a bit inaccurate; SNARKs weren't developed just by Eli; there's an entire group of researchers at the SCIPR lab who worked on this stuff: http://www.scipr-lab.org/ http://www.scipr-lab.org/

sangfroid 10y ago
Hi. I'm the author. Thanks for pointing this out. You were not the only one. We've reworked the attributions paragraph to include all of the institutions that had a hand in this particular work. And we also tried to make it clear that the snarks they worked on were specific to the zcash project.

wh0rth 10y ago

The blockchain is slowly going to become a dominant pillar of our transactions. Whether it be information, money, etc., blockchain will probably be a part of it. If we want it to be secure anyway...

TearsInTheRain 10y ago
Is anyone working on/does it make sense to have blockchain based voting for elections?
- wh0rth 10y ago
  I like the idea. There's some funding waiting for that innovation
- bandrami 10y ago
  It's been looked at (my advisor in grad school was working on it) and it keeps running up against the problem of scaling -- 100 million transactions (800 million if you want to scale up to India) on a single day is going to be hard from a realization standpoint, even if it's theoretically doable. There's also the interesting psychological side to it: while a blockchain system is in a theoretical sense more transparent than anything else, from a popular standpoint it's incredibly opaque compared to a county registrar counting two different stacks of paper ballots.
  - nathcd 10y ago
    We can just use cryptography and forego the blockchain for much more scalable verifiable elections: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_sy... https://vote.heliosvoting.org/ https://vote.heliosvoting.org/
- Torgo 10y ago
  There are several voting systems built on top of Ethereum.
- 0xCMP 10y ago

philfrasty 10y ago

Anyone else finds naming important for adoption? Bitcoin sounds pretty elegant to the regular Joey IMO but „ZCash“...I mean...awful. Well lets hope for a rebrand later.

seansoutpost 10y ago
This is the rebrand. This project was initially ZeroCoin, then ZeroCash, and now the abbreviated ZCash
- 77pt77 10y ago
  ZeroCoin and ZeroCash are probably the worst possible names for something like this.
- nullc 10y ago
  > This project was initially ZeroCoin, ZeroCoin was an entirely different approach based on different cryptography with radically different properties. ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175156.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175156.0 )
SilasX 10y ago
I don't know ... to my ear, Bitcoin sounds petty -- the "bit" and "oi" pieces are diminutive. ZCash seems relatively neutral to me, not evoking positive or negative feelings. ZeroCash (from which it comes) is somehwat negative, since it evokes "no more money".
0xdeadbeefbabe 10y ago
Most villains have no problem with zee name.
- jcoffland 10y ago
  You mean like Zoro?
  - 10y ago

jandrese 10y ago

I'm failing to see how this is superior to the hundreds of altcoins already available. What makes this better than Bitcoin, Dogecoin, or Kanyecoin? Why should I choose it over the competition?

Torgo 10y ago
The answer is in the title of the submission.
wmf 10y ago
As it says in the title, it's more anonymous. So ZCash and Monero are competing for the darknet payment market.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  tl;dr transactions are encrypted so proof of funds work with zero-knowledge proofs
- jandrese 10y ago
  But it can't really be truly anonymous, not if you want people to actually use it. At the end of the day you need at least some assurance that you're sending the money to the right person in exchange for their good or service. They also need to be able to verify that they have been paid for their work and by whom.
  - 45h34jh53k4j 10y ago
    anonymous in the sense that no tx can be attributed to a particular party. it still uses strong cryptography to authenticate the transaction. the sender and the receiver can always verify that the transaction has occurred. it wouldn't be much of a currency if it relied on anonymous rumours of payment!
  - schoen 10y ago
    Imagine that you went to a restaurant and the restaurant told you where to send a payment. Then they could confirm that you had done so. Now imagine that the restaurant didn't possess any information that it could use to identify you as a result of the payment, and that no payment intermediary possessed information that could be used to identify the parties to the transaction, and that when the restaurant later spent the money, the source of the funds couldn't be associated with your payment transaction (perhaps even by you as the customer). Those are some properties that we could wish for in an anonymous payment system. It doesn't mean that the payee can't tell that a payment was made in response to a particular request, though it might not know "by whom" in any other sense.

mootothemax 10y ago

"But in ZCash, the miners only get to keep ninety percent of those coins. The rest gets dumped into accounts controlled by the ZCash company" This alone makes me extremely sceptical.

wmf 10y ago
Unlike Bitcoin, where Satoshi probably mined 5% of all BTC before other people noticed? Or unlike Bitcoin, where developers get paid by layering centralized startups on top?
- Faaak 10y ago
  Until proven otherwise, Satoshi still didn't touch his original mined coins…
  - hulahoof 10y ago
    IIRC they are supposedly locked in a 'trust' until ~2020 (See: Tulip Trust)
    - uncletammy 10y ago
      This is one of the many claims by a person who came forth and claimed to be Satoshi. Although a few notable people in the community believe(d) him, most don't. This should be treated as a rumor at best.
- abecedarius 10y ago
  Or Ethereum where the founders reserved 12.5% of the presale to themselves. I had no problem with that, and the Zcash incentives seem better than the Ethereum ones because they're effectively vesting over years.
- tom_mellior 10y ago
  5% < 10%, last time I checked. Also, "Bitcoin did something fishy" should be a reason to invent some thing less fishy, not more.

RangerScience 10y ago

Here's a question: I can see the value in an anonymized blockchain for use by individuals... ...but, is there a reason that anonymity would be good for use in a blockchain for use by businesses? Or, is it categorically better for a business-centric blockchain to have the most identity possible?

abecedarius 10y ago
Zooko's mentioned interest from banks/finance because they need privacy, too. I haven't asked about this because I'm not really into business.
akanter 10y ago
They touch on that in the link. "“There are regulatory and commercial and moral reasons for privacy from all sectors,” he says. To give a commercial example: Apple wouldn’t want Samsung to be able to track its transactions and gain valuable competitive intelligence." I agree with this sentiment.
- peeters 10y ago
  Couldn't you tweak that a bit? "Apple wouldn’t want the government to be able to track its transactions and gain valuable tax revenue."
- dorfsmay 10y ago
  On the other hand, how do you deal with the for the for proving who the currency belongs to, for example in the case of death (and the person never shared their passwords/keys)?

Animats 10y ago

Another altcoin. This one has a 10% pre-mining cut for the founders: "Zcash's monetary base will be the same as Bitcoin's — 21 million Zcash currency units (ZEC, or ⓩ) will be mined over time. 10% of that reward will be distributed to the stakeholders in the Zcash Company — founders, investors, employees, and advisors. We call this the “Founders Reward”." Here's a list of the other 709 altcoins.[1] 373 of them are still tradeable. 88 have a market cap in excess of $1M. 27 have a market cap in excess of $10M. 4 have a market cap in excess of $100M. PayCoin, which was last year's heavily promoted new cool coin with a "guaranteed floor" of $20, is now at position 415 with a value of $0.002606 and a market cap of $30,247. [1] https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/ https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/

problems 10y ago
Yup, it's a clever idea, but wait for someone to be the Litecoin to their Tenebrix.
- earlz 10y ago
  Given how complicated the technology is that they will be working with (as someone who has attempted to read the zcash whitepaper), I find this extremely unlikely. Sure there will be clones, but no altcoin "developer" will be able to properly maintain this, so bugs won't get fixed, or it'll always be lagging behind Zcash, or worse, they introduce unintentional bugs and completely wreck their blockchain and lose the money of the few fools who thought that the developers/company running it getting some money is bad
  - problems 10y ago
    I wouldn't be so sure of that, there already exist some alternatives which seem better in some ways like Monero. I have very low trust for scam developers like the ZCash ones, I'm sure someone quite capable could take it up.
    - zby 10y ago
      'scam developers'? A bit harsh isn't it?

wyldfire 10y ago

ZCash is one of a few options for anonymity. Cryptonote-based ring-signature coins like Monero have been around for a while. See also https://news.bitcoin.com/meet-top-3-coins-cryptocurrency-anonymity-race/ https://news.bitcoin.com/meet-top-3-coins-cryptocurrency-ano...

choffman 10y ago

ZCash requires a trusted setup, takes a 20% fee from miners, and active mixing requires 8GB of RAM. https://blog.okturtles.com/2016/03/the-zcash-catch/ https://blog.okturtles.com/2016/03/the-zcash-catch/ http://weuse.cash/2016/06/09/btc-xmr-zcash/ http://weuse.cash/2016/06/09/btc-xmr-zcash/ If you are interested in anonymous blockchains, I highly encourage you to look into Monero. It meets or exceeds that of ZCash. And Monero's RingCT is currently implemented and in use on TestNet with a target "go-live" this January.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Ar-Curunir 10y ago
8GB of RAM is only required when you want to transact; if you're not making transactions but are simply another node in the network (perhaps mining, or something), then I don't think the work required is any different from Bitcoin.
urza 10y ago
Thanks for these articles. Great comparison! Monero looks very good indeed.
urza 10y ago
Could you please explain this? _"And Monero's RingCT is currently implemented and in use on TestNet with a target "go-live" this January."_ I couldnt find any relevant infromation on this. Does it mean that from January 2017 bitcoin will have anonymity properties of Monero?

pero 10y ago

ZCash has a myriad of fundamental issues, chief among them: -ZCash is a US-based LLC, and given what is publicly known about the capabilities and past behavior of its intelligence apparatus I don't see how anyone can claim that such an organization can shepherd a 'truly anonymous blockchain', particularly one that is essentially a black box -ZCash's blockchain is a black box and requires you to not only trust them with your anonymity, but also to trust them not to create coins arbitrarily - a successful attacker could also mint coins at will - as there is no way to verify circulation -Anonymous transactions are optional and require tremendous resources to generate -It is an innovative take on a pre-mine where insiders were given opportunity to pre-purchase coins at the expense of future miners I suggest that anyone looking for a truly anonymous blockchain experience take a look at Monero.

Ar-Curunir 10y ago
> I suggest that anyone looking for a truly anonymous blockchain experience take a look at Monero. And I suggest that anyone looking for strong provable anonymity guarantees not look at Monero. The security guarantees of ZCash are stronger than those of Monero, and the trusted setup issue can be mitigated via the MPC protocol detailed in a recent paper. EDIT: compromising the trusted setup does not compromise anonymity; the zero knowledge proofs used enjoy a property known as "perfect zero knowledge".
ewillbefull 10y ago
> ZCash's blockchain is a black box and requires you to not only trust them with your anonymity You do not trust anyone with your privacy in our system. Assuming you're talking about our zk-SNARK parameters, if they were not securely generated you still could not violate anyone's privacy.
tribby 10y ago
> ZCash is a US-based LLC, and given what is publicly known about the capabilities and past behavior of its intelligence apparatus [...] why does it matter where zcash is incorporated when the apparatus you're describing operates without regard for borders? zcash is the first effort at a cryptocurrency where I have immense respect and trust for its team right out of the gate. not sure where the FUD is coming from (although I'd hypothesize that you are long monero?). >Anonymous transactions are optional and require tremendous resources to generate this is indeed a problem. hopefully temporary.

mmanfrin 10y ago

A month ago I did a deep dive in to etherium and the 'altcoin' universe. The one thing I came out of it all with was a feeling that I had seen so much of the same sentiment and rhetoric about specific altcoins and altcoins in general as I saw with the 'HYIP' sites of two decades ago. HYIPs were plain ponzi schemes, given the fancy name of 'high yield investment portfolio'; they promised things like "1.5% yield/day on investments of egold" but all of them would fold.

brighton36 10y ago

An truly a scam as well. These investment pumps are so obnoxious

OceanPowers 10y ago

Riiiiiiiight....

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jamisteven 10y ago

"truly anonymous".

mappum 10y ago

I am long Zcash: * The founder is Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn, creator of Zooko's triangle, the BLAKE2 hash function, Tahoe-LAFS, and former employee at MojoNation (an early attempt at cryptocurrency/P2P filesharing where another employee, Beam Cohen, went on to create Bittorrent). He knows a thing or two about decentralization/P2P. * This project is NOT a trivial Bitcoin clone with only a new proof-of-work swapped in. The Zero Knowledge Proofs they use to keep transactions private is state of the art crypto. Also their PoW is actually memory-hard (many currencies have used PoW functions which they thought would be memory-hard and ASIC-proof, such as Litecoin with Scrypt, but it turned out not to be the case). * Their "Founders Reward" is less like a premine and more like startup vested equity (it pays out to them gradually over 4 years to incentive themselves not to pump and dump). * The team is extremely helpful in the Zcash Slack and are a relief after dealing with the pedantic, difficult Bitcoin developers.

cloudjacker 10y ago
What do you think about Cryptonote projects? Such as Monero, Boolberry, a variety of other similar networks Some advantages Cryptonote has that come to mind: - They are private by default. Zcash requires two states, a state analogous to bitcoin, and the anonymous zcash state which has to be explicitely opted into. Shadowcash also has this, but opted for ring signatures for the anonymous state (like cryptonote coins use by default) instead of the zkSNARKs. The market hasn't focused much attention on Shadowcash. - Cryptonote projects have proof of work algorithms that are durable and so far ASIC-proof. Cryptonite, Wild Keccak still are CPU and GPU friendly. But I'd have to read their respective papers before I say "ASIC Proof because memory hard" - Cryptonote are also auditable if a user wants to reveal information about a transaction. But even then the information is limited, it will show that payments came in and out of specific amounts, but it won't show the sending/receiving address along with those transaction IDs. - Cryptonote projects have nonthreatening names. Many privacy centric projects have names like Dark- Shadow- Anon- whereas noteworthy cryptonote projects have names that at worst simply wouldn't be taken seriously by a "powerful establishment" until so much capital and infrastructure is already built. I think ZCash or "Zerocash" isn't going to get smiles and congratulations from FinCEN. Hyperbole, but I don't think it is an advantage for the project. Its one thing to be optimistic about the founders and their company, but for you to say "long" something that doesn't seem like a better investment, makes me wonder what you see in comparison to some other existing technologies. Looking forward to your thoughts

lisper 10y ago

I'm a big believer in privacy, but anonymity scares me. Anonymity invites bad behavior: look at how bitcoin -- which isn't even all that anonymous -- has enabled the ransomware industry. I agree that it is very important for people to be able to conduct financial transactions without having to disclose them to third parties. It's also important for people to be able to use a mutually-agreed-upon trusted third party to mediate transactions where neither party knows the other's identity. But I'm much less convinced of the wisdom of enabling people to conduct financial transactions with no possibility of knowing who they are doing business with. That seems to me to be fraught with all manner of moral hazard.

45h34jh53k4j 10y ago
we have fully anonymous, working cryptocurrencies now (monero is the best example). You cannot link transactions nor determine the balance of a public key. without the private key and transaction key no court can seize. we have anonymous darknet markets, where you can buy many controlled substances, in visibility of law enforcement. My point is that you can't uninvent these things. They have already changed society, and moralizing on how we shouldn't invent these things has gone way past into heavy production. Use the technology, dont use it; this is really the only choice you can make. Their existence wont go away.
- lisper 10y ago
  I'm not moralizing about inventing these things, I'm moralizing about using them. Inventing a nuclear weapon is not the same as using one. BTW, I didn't know about Monero. Is there any substantive difference between it and ZCash?
  - hulahoof 10y ago
    By the same token, sending the message to launch is not the same as sending a confidential message.
    - lisper 10y ago

nercht12 10y ago

I can't wait for the arrival iCoin.

moyix 10y ago

I'm kind of confused by the tenor of the comments in here. I'll admit I haven't been following cryptocurrencies closely, but there seem to be a large number of comments suggesting that ZCash is a scam and that Monero is better (without any concrete arguments). Could someone enlighten me as to why that's the case? I know of ZCash via the academic papers on it, and because the people involved – Zooko Wilcox, Matthew Green, etc. – are extremely well known and trusted in the security community. I've heard basically nothing about Monero.

frakr 10y ago
Monero is just an over-hyped pumped up alt coin. All of the trade volume is on the exchange Poloniex which claims to be based in the US but provides no details of who owns or operates the site beyond that. They allow margin trading. I highly doubt their legitimacy. The initial rise of Ethereum also occurred on Poloniex. Lots of hype surrounding both of those coins without any real world utility. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/#markets https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/#markets
hulahoof 10y ago
I have been reading through and also noticing this. I was looking for a better explanation too - from what I understand basically: Monero uses ringCT algorithm on transfer to mix the payments and obfuscate the sender Monero has a private view key and separate spend key. View key can decrypt transactions made by you to confirm your total balance (Monero balance is unknown to daemon, is calculated as (xmrRecieved - xmrSpent) ZCash has 'zero-knowledge' proofs and while the whitepaper[1] is a bit intense it uses a novel Proof-of-Work explained within. Called zero-knowledge Succinct Non-interactive ARguments of Knowledge (zk-SNARKS). ZCash coins origins obfuscated before recieved by user, reducing need to mix payments together Personally, I think they're both great and it's a healthy time for a privacy-based cryptocurrency face off. Having said that, ZCash theoretically sounds better (to me) yet Monero is proven in the wild - and both have people with money already sunken in. IMO the cryptocurrency world will be much better off when it's userbase is looking for a CURRENCY and not a COMMODITY. [1]: http://zerocash-project.org/paper http://zerocash-project.org/paper [2]: https://github.com/zcash/zips/blob/master/protocol/protocol.pdf https://github.com/zcash/zips/blob/master/protocol/protocol.... [3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/41vg68/monero_vs_zcash_eli5_fundamental_differences/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/41vg68/monero_vs_zc... - decent ZEC vs XMR ELI5 thread edit: formatting

abrkn 10y ago

Privacy coins is the new hot thing in altcoins. There's Monero, ZCoin, ZCash, Dash, ...

Ar-Curunir 10y ago
ZCoin uses an old, weaker research paper by Christina, Ian and Matt, ZeroCoin. ZeroCoin offers weaker security guarantees than Zcash.

CN7R 10y ago

A current problem that I feel blockchain-based currencies face all is the inability to effect large scale changes. Whether it be Bitcoin's infighting or Ethereum's decision to fork, the reliability of transactions by blockchains comes into question. The central conflict is over authority: should the system be in the hands of miners or in a central power? Both of these have pros and cons. Miners have an economic incentive to ensure changes to the system are in favor of users. And in theory, these changes are democratic: representing the opinions of the majority of miners. However, in practice, this is rarely the case; as voting power is allocated based on computing power, the result is a system governed by a few individuals with the economic resources and advantages to cheaply 'outrepresent' others. In effect, they do not represent the majority of miners and users. Look at Bitcoin, where a handful of Chinese companies control the network (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/business/dealbook/bitcoin-china.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/business/dealbook/bitcoin-...) A central power has the ability to enact large scale change affecting the whole system, but is inherently undemocratic. Ethereum, in response to a capital fund being hacked, performed a hard fork earlier this year, mitigating the adverse effects. This rapid collective action would be hard to do in Bitcoin. The benefits of blockchain are anonymity, security, and low costs of transactions. Both of these features need to be upheld if blockchain-based currencies are to be competitive with current credit systems, regardless of which form of authority is adopted. In my opinion, a central power blockchain-based currency would be preferable. Why? Current credit systems charge high fees for transactions to offload the cost of fraud and corresponding insurance. Blockchains don't, but there is no guarantee of security against hackers in a system not run by a central power. Low cost and security of transactions must be maintained. In addition, in a miner-based blockchain, all transactions are not treated equally. For Bitcoin, transactions which give a fee to miners are processed faster (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aYfkjiN534p4zyE5WJNm7rddr84KS_e50EFTYJqj5jQ/edit#gid=1463201895 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aYfkjiN534p4zyE5WJNm...). Any response?

andirk 10y ago

I think the people behind a project mean a heck of a lot to the validity an integrity of the project. So if Zooko Wilcox et al are indeed respected in the P2P and security community, then I am interested in this.

aminorex 10y ago
You have to trust them, because if they cheat, they can print infinite zcash. I do not trust Israeli SIGINT people with my secrets.
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  So people like Matthew Green, Alessandro Chiesa, Madars Virza, Ian Miers and Christina Garman, none of whom are Israeli, had absolutely no say in how this project was constructed, right? Eli and Eran are just two members of a much larger research group. They most certainly did not "backdoor" ZCash. There's skepticism, and then there's this stupid crap like your post. No technical foundation, no evidence, nothing, just FUD.

grondilu 10y ago

> Although privacy was a motivating factor for Bitcoin’s flock of early adopters Not quite. I mean surely there were people interested in that, but frankly this is exaggerated. We knew very early that anonymity was far from obvious, even on a purely theoretical point (that is, even if you could anonymise your IP for instance). Bitcoin was approximately anonymous not by design, but by convenience. Who wants to have to bother checking the identity of users? In fact, I'd argue that bitcoin was no more anonymous than any other FOSS project. You usually don't ask for an ID before allowing someone to download your software.

CiPHPerCoder 10y ago

There's a general attitude to some of the comments here. "Another altcoin." "I wouldn't weigh the odds that this specific system really lasting more than 4 years out especially high." ZCash isn't just another fly-by-night cryptocurrency scam. It's a serious engineering effort that was carefully undertaken by some very well-known cryptography and security experts. Matthew Green Daira Hopwood Taylor Hornby Ian Meiers Zooko Wilcox-O'hearn Every one of the names in the preceding list is or was involved in the ZCash project to some capacity. Every one of those names stands alone on their own merits. Ask your cryptography expert friends what they think about ZCash. Yes, the one who are always yakking about side-channel cryptanalysis and which character device to use for generating random numbers. If you don't have any such friends, go to ##crypto on Freenode and say "Hi". It's all uphill form there. Saying the equivalent of "Monero is better" is little better than trolling. Let Monero stand on its own merits; being negative and hostile accomplishes nothing. Saying the equivalent of "Sigh! Another doomed altcoin" is needlessly pessimistic. ZCash represents what every other altcoin should have been doing all along: - It uses a real proof-of-work function. - It offers actual anonymity (an improvement over BitCoin). - It uses an entropy source that won't fail open (like so many BitCoin apps did). - It was designed and implemented by a team of academic cryptographers and industry experts on secure cryptography implementations. - The team took their time bringing a solid implementation to market. - Every design decision was documented and discussed openly. If you have technical concerns about the protocol design or implementation, please don't feel discouraged in sharing them. It's the dismissive attitude that's bothering me.

tromp 10y ago
Some slight corrections: It's Ian Miers, not Meiers. The Equihash proof of work, its name notwithstanding, is a real puzzle, not a Hashcash hash function. Each instance can yield 0, 1, 2 or more solutions (though rarely more than 7).
Ar-Curunir 10y ago
This dismissive attitude infests HN; whenever some-one does something, the top comments are from people nit-picking and finding flaws with the work.

TheLilHipster 10y ago

Monero is better tech: * https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/about https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/about * https://github.com/monero-project/monero https://github.com/monero-project/monero

ojiikun 10y ago

This just sounds like a new clone of Dash (née darkcoin) but with pre-mine for the founders and without the cool proposal / voting system. Why would anyone buy into this?

aminorex 10y ago
Dash was a premine scam too.
Ar-Curunir 10y ago
Except this work is the result of many years of both theoretical and engineering advances in cryptography; if you can't take even the modicum of effort to read up on the subject matter, maybe you shouldn't be spouting bullshit?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jbb555 10y ago

This looks good to me. It looks like it is not just another bitcoin clone, it has genuine, and well thought out improvements. I'll probably try it out unlike all the others.

kyrre 10y ago

going to be hard to launch a pre-mined coin when there are thriving alternatives such as monero. good luck.

hasa 10y ago

Takeover AD behind the link. Is this acceptable for a hacker news link ?

ebbv 10y ago

As I said the last several dozen times ZCash hype articles got posted; what's worse than currency controlled by a government AND currency controlled by an unelected group of developers? Currency controlled by a for profit company.

jbb555 10y ago

Bitcoin seems to be going through an issue at the moment where many transactions are taking hours to complete due to a large backlog. This might be transient but when I ask any questions about so what happens if volume doubles, I just get attacked for asking such questions. It seems bitcoin just doesn't scale very well. So my question is does ZCash? How will it cope with current bitcoin volumes? Or 10 times? Or 1000?

alexellisuk 10y ago

If you want an automated build that you can run on any platform (not only Linux/Ubuntu) then check out my Docker guide: http://blog.alexellis.io/mine-zcash-with-docker/ http://blog.alexellis.io/mine-zcash-with-docker/