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Short article about Zcash halving which is to occur in about 3 days (see here (https://www.nicehash.com/countdown/ZEC-halving-2020-11-17-12:00) for a countdown timer). Originally published on stealthex.io (https://stealthex.io/blog/2020/11/11/zcash-halving-is-coming/)
 

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For those of us who have been out of the loop for the past decade or just learned about cryptocurrencies as well as mining rewards and reward halvings, a block reward halving (or simply halving) refers to the halvening of the reward that cryptocurrency miners, for example, Bitcoin miners, receive when they find something valuable, namely a new block.

With elementary school over, in this short article we are going to shed some light on the first-ever halving of a very particular crypto, Zcash (ZEC), and its major network upgrade dubbed Canopy – the two events that are going to occur at the same time. And this time is quickly approaching, so don’t waste it and read on!

Why Zcash and what makes it so special?

Zcash developers firmly believe that “the future of money is digital, decentralized and private”, and to move one step closer to this future or even invent it, as per famous quote of Alan Kay, they designed Zcash – “a privacy-protecting, digital currency built on strong science”. So let’s now dive deeper into what kind of science they refer to and how it can help protect our privacy with their implementation of a digital currency – in simple words.

Zcash started off in the fall of 2016 as a Bitcoin fork, so it shares plenty of common features with Bitcoin. For example, there can only be 21 million Zcash coins, but most importantly, it also follows Bitcoin’s halvening schedule of approximately 4 years. Yes, you read it correct, 2020 is the year when the first Zcash halving should come about, and, as it stands, we are just one week short of this event.

Similarities aside, you are certainly more interested in differences between Zcash and its progenitor. As you may have already guessed, the major difference is in the privacy department since Zcash specifically aims at facilitating more anonymous and confidential transactions than the godfather cryptocurrency. How does it do that? Meet zero-knowledge proofs that allow transactions to be confirmed without revealing the sender, receiver, or even the amount transacted.

Now you may wonder how it is ever possible to send money that way on a public blockchain, right? This is where the concept of zero-knowledge proofs shines its brightest. Through the use of this tech a transaction on the Zcash blockchain can be fully encrypted (shielded, in the Zcash speak), but still processed and confirmed as an unencrypted, or transparent, one, with the end result being the same – funds sent and received, now completely anonymously.

With that clarified, let’s now focus on what is coming in a few days, which is the next major network upgrade called Canopy and the first-ever Zcash halving.

What is Canopy and why should we care?

Since its inception in 2016, Zcash mining rewards (we hope you successfully graduated from the elementary school in the intro) were divided into two unequal portions. The best part of these rewards (80%) went to, well, miners, and the rest – the so-called Founders Reward – was routed to a number of entities that were behind creation of Zcash. That scheme was considered controversial by some, but it is going to expire in November, 2020, anyway.

The news is that November, 2020, is more or less these days, so there is a need to establish a new funding model to allow for the uninterrupted development of the cryptocurrency as well as to give the market certainty, while its price stability. As the current model of funding has no built-in replacement and will be retired soon, Canopy is an effort to establish a new model with a new fund for the next four-year development cycle.

This effort didn't come to fruition in a matter of days. It was a long road that started in early January, 2019, and took over a year to finish, with a lot of discussion meanwhile. Ultimately, the community agreed on a continuation of the current split in miners’ rewards, which is 80-20. So after the halving 80 percent of block reward will be distributed to miners, and the remainder will make up the bulk of Zcash development funding for the next four years.

To celebrate the successful achievement of consensus on a plan to continue funding of Zcash development, the upcoming upgrade was dubbed Canopy, reflecting the collaborative effort that made this upgrade possible and a friendly ecosystem open to anyone. It’s definitely a good name, especially when we consider the alternative that they certainly had in mind and might have chosen instead, which is Umbrella. You bet we care!

Apart from settling purely financial matters, this upgrade also adds a number of improvements to the underlying Zcash protocol. Most importantly, it further reduces the attack surface introduced by a vulnerability found in the original Zerocash protocol that the first implementation of Zcash, Sprout, used for shielded transactions. It was fixed by the previous upgrade, Sapling, but Canopy takes extra steps toward removing that first implementation altogether.

Lesson to take home

Zcash may not be as popular and prominent as Bitcoin or Ether, in terms of both market share and price, but it still has an active community that is willing to solve issues without being trapped in endless bickering, arguments and disputes as it happened with Bitcoin as well as many other cryptocurrencies, and hurt them so much in the past.

So whether you are a trader capitalizing on Zcash as an investment asset or a user interested in leveraging the privacy this cryptocurrency offers, Canopy is a good news as it proves that the development of Zcash hasn’t stagnated or stalled, while its community is still vibrant and willing to accommodate changes if there is a need for a change.

It seems interesting. Any past price movement history near halving event?

amazing if at the appointed time, I feel happy, because my Zcash assets returned to the same price as before the pandemic or hopefully exceed it. wasn't it before the pandemic the Zcash price was high? I am happy to have this information. for I have been holding it for too long and waiting for the right moment to come.

It will be the first Zcash halving ever

So we can't say anything specific about Zcash price dynamic before the halving event. Regarding other currencies, price can move either way, and it can stay essentially the same. That said, we should also keep in mind that with Zcash it is not technically correct to speak about halving because the block reward will be diminished from 12.5 ZEC to 3.125 ZEC, which is four times if I'm correct. Therefore, we should rather call that double halving, or quartering (or even watering down)

I thought about buying zcach miners but this becomes pointless after halving

Zcash has many events, but the price is still around $ 50 - $ 60, if you look at the project,
this project is still undervalued, especially with the same total supply as Bitcoin, of course 21 million,
of course Zcash is an investment that you have to make, in my opinion this is Hidden Gem is in Big Capitulation.

There are hundreds of crypto projects but only few are highlighted through their hard work, zcash is one of those that have managed to prove their capability in the market and have reached a descent spot. Zcash is a good project for long-term and I believe this halving could bring us joy by tempting the price up, those who are holding now just wait for few more days as the predictions are higher like possibly we can see it till 80$.

I have been associated with cryptocurrency for two years.
 Although I do not fully understand the cryptocurrency.
 I agree with you.
 That's why I said because I have some Zcash hold, I hope I get a good profit.
 Thanks.

zcash pumping is coming. :)

It's not written in stone at all

The coming halving has probably already been priced in, to a degree. As halvings of other coins have shown, it may take some time before the effect of the block reward reduction starts to kick in. On the other hand, as emphasized above, it is not so much halving as quartering, i.e. the adjusted Zcash reward after halving will only be one fourth of what it is now. But this doesn't guarantee pumping either (albeit we are likely to see a few bouts of volatility)

Directly reducing reward to ~4x does not seem good. Mining $Zcash won't be profitable at all and therefore miners won't provide their computational power after this halving. I hope they are also considering to move towards POS.

I don't know exactly what their reasons were

But it shouldn't dramatically affect mining in the long-term as the difficulty will eventually re-adjust to the available hash rate, although it creates a certain window for a 51% attack when the hash rate drops after the halving (provided it is going to drop at all in the first place). Regardless, it is unlikely they are going to move toward the POS model any time soon as it may take a few long years, while they simply lack enough resources for pulling it

I remember that one of my friend offers me to invest on his mining rig to mine this coin on early release of this project. I have a very good ROI before this token listed on big exchange that time like Polo. Zcash has a wide and active mining community before and I don't if the mining community is still the same. This halving might be the turning point for Zcash to gain momentum for it's price recovery and reach its all time high again.

Interesting. I checked the price charts and so far it seems that the upcoming halving did not have a significant impact on the price so far.
When you look at the last halving of BTC then that also didn't have an effect on the price before it occured if i remember correctly.
The price of BTC started to climb a few months after the halving happened, maybe it will be the same with Zcash.

I feel like the halving will come with a prize crash because a lot of miners will have to move to another coin to still make a nice profit. And some of them will sell their coins, so, if a whale like that does his move then say bye to the $64. Halving always bring chaos and some hard moves on the markets.

That's unlikely if you ask me

Zcash is a niche coin, and since it is privacy-oriented (even though you can use transparent transactions instead of shielded ones with it), it is not very reasonable to expect it to be a huge success (synonymous with $5000). First of all, if it gets traction, governments are going to crack down on it. But most importantly, the vast majority of people don't really need this level of privacy for the simple reason any cryptocurrency is primarily used for speculation, not for facilitation of the exchange of goods and services

There is something i am not very clear about regarding halving.

Do all coin have halving event?

If they do, does the halving work the same way the bitcoin and ethereum halving works? To me , i believ all coins don't have same mechanism and business models.

it is time for Zcash to do the halving. because if not, then how long zcash will stand at the price of $ 50. I hope Zcash shows its strength as a crypto for a long time. how not, while other cryptos have already halved. even though they are younger than Zcash.
in case the Zcash halving exceeds $ 100. maybe my assets are enough to buy a new house. :) :)

Zcash actually picks up where Bitcoin leaves (in terms of privacy)

So it uses, or used, Bitcoin's codebase, with some privacy tricks and tweaks here and there. Therefore, it stands to reason that its halving is pretty much similar to the halving of Bitcoin, which we have seen a few already. The only notable difference in this regard is that it is not technically "halving" as the block reward is not halved but rather quartered. Right now it equals 12.5 units of Zcash, and after halving it will be measly 3.125 coins. Some miners may start looking for a better application of their hash power

You are right Bitcoin is now dominating the market so the rest of the altcoins are not getting a chance to turn around. Now relying on good news alone may not be the right decision to buy a coin. When the dominance of Bitcoin continues to decline, these coins are likely to change the trend again. I will wait a few more days to buy this coin. Because I want to invest my money with some certainty.

Zen has its halving also at the same time as ZCASH.

It is based on their algorithms, I think. If they are POW, I think halving will be there. Anyway, it is also a good idea to keep the price well-covered. But again, it can also welcome 51% attack.

if the halving goes well, I'm sure the price of Zcash will also increase over time,
Zcash is an altcoin that still has a chance to get 10x or even 50x when the altcoin season comes, so accumulate

haha, yes I agree and hope Zcash will go up in price as much as Bitcoin has shown over the past few days. ZEC's chart D1 currently has broken down of the bearish trendline and looks like it is about to have a strong pump over the coming months.  I'm also a holder of ZEC so I expect it to go up $ 120 by 2021.

The problem with Zcash is that it failed to attract the very people who wants privacy and i have not seen any website that accepts Zcash even in the darkweb as far as i know. The active community might be there but what is the progress and as far as i know there were many forks in the past and i am not even following how those split coins are doing. Until Zcash could attract serious investors there is nothing interesting going on to pump its price.

I don't really think it is going to help

On the darkweb it has to compete with Monero, which is a by far more popular coin. But popularity means wider acceptance and more usage. But more usage is a prerequisite for true anonymity and privacy. In other words, the greater the number of people using a privacy-oriented crypto, the more anonymous it becomes (all things considered). So Zcash is kinda neither here nor there, in a sense

In my opinion, the first halving moment, predicted at 12:30 UTC earlier, was not entirely correct. This allows Zcash to amass enormous strength. for me the first halving won't be big, still under $ 100. Until recently, Zcash is still looking for a big boost.

track its movements. because it does not rule out Zcash skyrocketing earlier than predicted.

I hope that the impact of the Halving will help reduce the inflation rate that has been happening so far. any impact havling will basically be cut in half along with the block reward. Currently, because it is significantly higher than other cryptos, the annualized ZEC is currently at 26.53%.

Today there should be a halving of the reward to miners for each new mined ZCash block.  This will happen for the first time since, as a fork of Bitcoin that emerged in the fall of 2016, ZCash has only passed the first four years of its journey.  However, in recent days, the price of this coin continues to stand at $ 65.  Cryptocurrency market participants are not sure that this event could lead to a sharp increase in its price, following the example of bitcoin.

Every cryptocurrency participants thats not sure the Zcash halving will  help in the surge in price of Zcash completely dont understand the concepts of halving  and why it cane into the picture because halving is the strategy introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto as a way to control price inflation in crypto so I expect Zec to surpass $65.
With that been said, I heard zcash v4..1.1 was released yesterday.

Halving is the easiest way to slow down the supply growth, so it would positively affect the price. However, not sure if it's going to be a pump like Bitcoin since "no one" uses Zcash. Its only feature is just privacy. If we look at the Monero's price, privacy coins are not getting much appeal compared to ETH, TRX, and other token/DeFi platforms, where users can gamble it in casinos and gamble with tokens.

Today/Wed, 18 Nov 2020 12:42:41 UTC Zcash Halving.
Zcash is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency and was created as a fork of Bitcoin and quite like bitcoin it also has a hard limit of 21 million coins. Zcash started as a fork of the bitcoin blockchain on October 28, 2016. Zcash total supply 21,000,000. Zcash Marketcap $653,978,227. Zcash is good investment coin. I think zcash coin pump soon.

I've never used nor traded zcash, any thoughts on halving influencing the price of it?

of course if we look at the halving that happened to other cryptos, in general we have seen a positive impact on prices before and after, especially with what has happened to Bitcoin, and usually when other cryptos happen halving days it will certainly push up the price of crypto in the market , as well as with zcash, of course the halving day that occurs at Zcash will trigger a decrease in inflation, which will trigger a price hike which is certainly eagerly awaited by investors and traders who hold zcash.

Hmm, I invested some my money in Zcash in early 2017, but then I successfully sold it when cryptocurrency hyip had started in the end 2017 - start 2018 and since that time I hadn`t checked any new regarding this coin and its development. Halving is a historical event for any blockchain and hope this one will influence positively on Zcash price and community mood. Most people don`t know or just forgot this coin. I think we need to change it, because as far as I know, project really has potential

Zcash just halved and there are no unnatural price movement for the coin. It decreased a bit in the last 24 hours but is recovering a bit at the moment but no significant change compared to bitcoin. Though zcash is a popular privacy focused coin, but it's multiple fork to create competitive coins and fierce competition between decentralized and centralized privacy coins have undermined it. And it's always behind Monero when it comes to community and volunteers.

Analyzing the graphs and the information shown, we can say that there is a possibility because between the 10th and 12th of September the daily volume passed from the Billions house showing a possibility of accumulation. We can find these data in coinmarketcap and comparing the fiat chart we can find a breakdown from $93. Now adding the quality of the project with halving plus the supply and demand then that is a great sign. It's worth remembering that it's not speculation but showing the facts.

The good news about the Zcash Halving. That means there is a limit value. this means that only 21 million coins can be mined. like the BTC halving moment in the past. I'm sure the pattern will be the same as the BTC halving moment, the amount of supply and inflation are linked together.

In my opinion, the value of Zcash is sure to have increased in price and I am sure that the parties will certainly have a strategic preparation that will be used to Maximize post-half profits.

Bitcoin halving has a noticeable effect on the entire cryptocurrency market

But the altcoin story is quite different, however. With the only exception of Dogecoin perhaps, altcoins more or less follow the general trend set by Bitcoin, at least when Bitcoin goes down. In other words, the effect of halving is offset by the Bitcoin price dynamic, especially to the downside, and with a vengeance at that. It was clearly demonstrated with the halving of Litecoin. It only had a marginal effect on the price of this crypto, which was very short-lived anyway

Just waiting for  18 hours to  then zcash halving day will happen soon, just like bitcoin, zcash also holds a halving day every 4 years, and this year halving day exactly happens on 18 November and now crypto market conditions are starting to improve at least it can make the zcash price experience a price increase again after the zcash party did the halving day which resulted in a block reduction of about 20% from each existing block, currently the price of zcash is $62 and there has been a price reduction of about 5.7% from the price some time ago, hopefully If the halving day is over, the price of zcash will return to the market.

In my opinion, the Zcash price will slightly increase after the halving, because with the decrease in the block that occurs, so the reduction of the block will certainly make the Zcash supply in the market decrease slightly and this will automatically trigger an increase in market demand and at least be able to slightly increase the market price of Zcash.
isn't that very profitable for those of us currently holding Zcash altcoins and a few hours from now is the perfect time for us to release them for profit.

I also want to point out that, I don't know if zcash will have a big pump after halving or not, but even if it happens it is not going to happen right away and right now, it will take some time before it happens. For example bitcoin had a halving and it took this much to have a pump.

So, be calm about zcash investment if you believe in zcash for the future, this all depends on if you believe in the project or not obviously but even if you think highly of this coin, you should still consider waiting for 6 months to a year before you decide if it would go up or not. Halving is not something that skyrockets the price right away, it is something that takes time to go up and that is why I believe it should take some time for zcash to increase in price after this halving.

It would be interesting to see this reduction and how the market reacts.

The community is impatient with this improvement that is coming ...