In my search for interesting projects to analyze in the world of cryptocurrencies I come across one called Zcash (ZEC), which is presented as a decentralized open source currency designed to ensure privacy in all operations performed on its network. Each payment made with Zcash is published in its own blockchain, however both the data of the sender and the amount of the transaction are completely untraceable. Another feature to note about Zcash is the fact that the costs per transaction are among the lowest in the crypto-sphere, at around 0.0001 ZEC.
It is necessary to say that Zcash is based on the protocol of the main cryptocurrency: Bitcoin, and like it also has its own blockchain and cryptocurrency, however this digital currency is designed to ensure privacy and anonymity in each transaction. Thanks to the use of Zero Knowledge Protocols (ZKP), Zcash makes it possible for transactions to be 100% untraceable, thus guaranteeing total anonymity throughout the system.
This project began its journey in 2014 under the leadership of Matthew D. Green who was supported by Ian Miers and Christina Garman, all students at Johns Hopkins University. They gave birth to the Zerocoin Protocol, a project that emerged with the purpose of providing privacy and total anonymity in every transaction. Initially, its operation had some flaws, especially the high cost in computing resources. However, the developers insisted on implementing this protocol in the ZeroVert (ZER) and Zcoin (ZXC) currencies successfully.
Later, in order to solve several of Zerocoin's problems, the Zerocash Protocol was presented, which, unlike its predecessors, uses the zk-SNARKs protocol, with the aim of improving the system's performance and significantly reducing its cost in computing resources. According to the developers of this new protocol, users can make direct payments to each other through this system, which is much more efficient and has the special feature of not revealing the origin and details of the transactions as well as the senders and recipients.
Zcash shows two models of addresses: private (z-addresses) and transparent (t-addresses), differing in that the former begin with a "z" and the latter with a "t". The operations from z to z appear in the block explorer, so that everything that happened in the transaction is known, however the addresses, the amount of the transaction and the memory are encrypted and cannot be visible to the community, something that is only possible through the use of zk-SNARKs.
On the other hand, the owner of an address has the option of making his z-address and the characteristics of the transaction public to third parties. For this modality, use is made of display and payment disclosure keys, thus making it possible for trusted persons to observe our transactions in case of audits. Likewise, transactions between two transparent addresses (t-addresses) are carried out in the same way as Bitcoin, considering that despite having two different addresses, both can be perfectly compatible with each other.
As we can realize with the zk-SNARKs protocol (zero knowledge succinct non-interactive knowledge argument), it is the basis of the whole system, it is responsible for building a space where you can demonstrate the possession of certain information but without revealing the secret, without requiring an interaction between the tester and the verifier.
It is necessary to warn the community that the information shared here does not represent a form of advice or financial advice by the author, you should take the above described as information for analysis and study by the reader interested in this cryptocurrency.
