Spotlight on Cryptocoins -- ZClassic/ZCL -- 3rd feature "private" coins
Hello Steemians,
In this series of articles I want to put a spotlight on a specific cryptocurrency and write about the details in all these aspects:
Aim of the currency
Technical details
Market position
Forecast
The cryptocurrency in focus currently will be one of the so called "private" coins. Coins that create the possibility to be more or less in private while doing transactions. How private you are is one of the main questions to be answered in this articles.
In this 3rd article of the series, the spotlight will be on ZClassic
Aim of the Currency
What is this currency about? What does it do differently than the rest?
Where is the unique selling point and at what audience is this coin targeted.
All that questions and more will be answered in the following paragraph.
Well if you remember the article I wrote about ZCash not that long ago you already know a lot about ZClassic. Because ZClassic is a fork of ZCash with not that much parameters changed. So just like the big brother it aims at delivering privacy in transactions, so you can send ZClassic encrypted over the internet without anyone knowing how many you sent to where.
ZClassic also eliminates a few parts of ZCash that have been in the critics ever since ZCash was brought live.
We will see exactly what that is in the next chapter.
Technical Details
One of the most important changes is that the Founder's fee that is active in ZCash is not active in ZClassic which in the end gives more Revenue to the miners. What also has been changed is the Slow Start mechanism that ZCash featured for the first 20000 Blocks which created artificial scarcity.
They are really relying on the community to either finance the development or contribute by themselves.
ZClassic as well bases on the code of Bitcoin, but with a lot of additions especially in the cryptography section.
So like Bitcoin and ZCash, ZClassic is PoW (Proof-of-Work) Coin, meaning that the new blocks are getting mined by using computational power. The mining uses an algorithm called Equihash, which is deemed ASIC-Proof and can best be mined with modern GPUs (graphic processing units).
It is still possible to have a positive ROI when mining ZClassic, prices have gone up during the last month so please see for yourself on Whattomine.com.
It also shares the same maximum amount of coins, 21 Million ZClassic can be mined.
The main difference between ZClassic and Bitcoin is basically the possibility to send or receive money in a private way. This means that all of this transaction data is stored encrypted on the blockchain, only readable by the sender and the receiver.
Market Position
At the time of writing this article(12/04/2017) ZClassic is placed 394th in market capitalization, with the total value of 4.022.009 $. So this coin is quite low valued currently. The 24h Volume was $136.607 which is quite ok for a small coin.
Even though it is quiet around ZClassic the price in the last month has stabilized itself and is back to 2.20 Dollars.
This movement can be clearly seen by taking a look at the 1-month chart.
If we are looking back further we see that there are some heavy pumps going on especially at October 20th where the 24h volume suddenly was at 7 Million Dollar, but generally, the coin is somehow stabilizing.
Forecast
The idea of having fast and private transactions over the internet is valid and for sure has a lot of potential. Therefore it does not seem odd that we are having quite a lot of coins nowadays that have this possibility. ZClassic is absolutely interesting because its a coin that really relies on the people around it and is absolute community-based. At the same time, this can be seen as a drawback, because the team might not be as orchestrated as it should be.
It all depends on the community and it has grown silent around the coin, the last tweet was somewhere in August.
Conclusion
ZCash was the first cryptocurrency in which you are able to hide transaction details and encrypt the entries on the blockchain. This is a huge advantage compared to Bitcoin, where all transaction details are stored readable on the blockchain.
ZClassic now is the open source brother to ZCash giving you more rewards because it cuts away the Founders Fee, but also comes with the problem of relying on the community.
If the community behind ZClassic can hold up the developments and is stabilizing itself we may see a lot more movements in the price.
Last but not least there are also some drawbacks and they should not be unmentioned:
PoW Coin, mining can be seen as a waste of energy.
Development relying on the community, last entries in ANN show some concerns.
Privacy of transaction has been also viewed with criticism.
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