Short article about Zcash halving which is to occur in about 3 days (see here for a countdown timer). Originally published on stealthex.io
 

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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.

Думаю, не стоит делать из этого особой трагедии

Одобрение палкой битка реально влияет на его практическое использование – в положительную сторону, а вот какие-то незначительные, чисто косметические улучшения в коде – едва ли. Пейпал практически создает еще одну область применения крипты (там они еще лайт вроде до кучи добавили), поэтому я бы был осторожнее в суждениях и не стал бы грести все под одну гребенку ("хотя никаких технологий и вообще хоть чего-то нового здесь нет")

There's nothing off-topic here

Both XRP and Dogecoin are supported on Wolf.bet, and discussing them in the context of gambling (which is the case here) is appropriate and completely justified. As I see it, Dogecoin is a better choice over XRP for the reasons outlined, especially if you are in it big time. But ultimately, if anyone wants to stick with XRP, it is their choice provided they are fully aware of the risks that holding XRP or gambling with it entails

They already have a few high-profile clients

If we are talking about soccer specifically, their customer list now includes such grand names as Barcelona, Juventus, Atletico, Paris Saint-Germain, among others. And as I'm inclined to think, in these dark times many more clubs are going to utilize this novel model of interaction with their fans. I can't really say that I'm a big soccer fan myself, but if I were I would be interested in this thing. In case of Barcelona, for example, 600k fan tokens were sold out in less than two minutes during the so-called Fan Token Offering in June 2020. The takeaway is that they shouldn't have a shortage of clubs lining up

Well, some people seem to be in disagreement with this view


But it doesn't really matter

It would matter but for the reasons stated in my post. We don't know whether they are going to dump their coins or not after all, but even if they never will, it is not going to save them from governments clamping down on them one day. In fact, even if just the US government decided to shut down Ripple, under whatever guise, pretense or claim, its days would be numbered. That alone should keep any sane person from investing in XRP

И о чем это говорит?

Правильно, о том, что деревья не растут до небес. И если исходить из того, что "опытные трейдеры" не будут сидеть дольше чем нужно, то вся нынешняя скупка битка перечисленными в теме конторами (Грейскейл, Сквэар и т.д.) направлена исключительно на фиксацию прибыли где-то в будущем, возможно уже совсем близком. А иначе зачем им биток, что они собираются с ним делать?

That's definitely the case

I mean decentralized being immutable and irreversible, on the one hand, and centralized fixable and accommodating, on the other. But this is the price we have to pay if we don't want to have third party risks, which often come down to someone ignoring all the rules or arbitrarily changing them in the process as they see appropriate (and it remains to be see which is worse). As I suspect, we can't have it both ways

This reputation can be ruined within seconds

And not due to some malicious intent on Ripple's part (like pulling an exit scam or something to that effect). XRP is a private money, and while a government, even an influential one, would only make a fool of itself by outlawing a decentralized cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin or Ether (some already tried and see how much they fared), this is an entirely different matter with respect to private currencies. Put simply, if XRP is outlawed by a major power like the American government, that will be the end of it, that will be an instakill

Добавлена статья о перспективах использования блокчейна в индустрии спорта: Blockchain And Sport Industry: Are They An Effective Team?

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Настоящий пессимист не говорит, что стакан наполовину пуст, он говорит, что стакан уже не тот

Communism will never work - it has too many red flags

Okay, 1 Canadian is worth less than 1 million Nigerians despite being wealthier. But what about 1000 Canadians vs 1 million Nigerians if Canadians are collectively worth x100 more than Nigerians in simple monetary terms?


I would agree with you if it were about real use in real life. Then it would be a markedly different development. But since it all boils down to speculation so far, a million people won't and can't have a bigger impact on the market than just one man if he is worth more. In this case, it is simple math and nothing else

A new article about blockchain and sport industry posted: Blockchain And Sport Industry: Are They An Effective Team?

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Can blockchain team up with the sport industry to make sports better overall? Here's my take on this. As always, don't forget to share your thoughts, ideas, and criticisms in the comments below. Originally published on stealthex.io

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In Brief

The blockchain tech can be instrumental in many problematic areas of the sport industry. For example, one of such areas is ticketing, more specifically ticket scalping and counterfeit tickets. And this is exactly where it has already proved quite useful as the real-life use cases demonstrate. Another interesting area of application is fan tokens, which are to make fans and clubs closer to each other

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In Full

In one of our previous articles on a mutually beneficial relationship between blockchain and the gaming space, we came up with the number of gamers in the world reaching a whopping 2.5 billion people. But even this number pales in comparison with the popularity of just one sport – association football, commonly referred to as soccer.

Its fanbase is estimated to be around 4 billion people, which is, for a moment, more than half of the Earth’s current population. In this manner, the entire world can be considered a target audience for the sport industry, barring infants and a negligible number of haters. So how can blockchain team up with this industry to make sports more entertaining and exciting?

Building a better experience with blockchain

To get us started, let’s briefly recall what the sport industry essentially is and what it strives to achieve. Fundamentally, it belongs to an entertainment sector of the economy, and as such, it pursues the aim of entertaining the public and, hopefully, the participants as well in one way or another through competitions, tournaments, sporting events, and related activities like fan conventions and gatherings. It may take different forms, which came to be known as, well, sports, professional and amateur, that are appealing to different types of fans and, more broadly, viewers and spectators.

In this fashion, it all eventually comes down to “user experience”, and if blockchain can make this experience better overall and more rewarding to interested parties, be it fans, athletes, teams, or clubs, we can then rightfully consider its job well done. With that established, we can now look for the areas of the sporting world where blockchain can produce a difference, and still better a real change. But even without delving into specifics and particulars, we can say beforehand that blockchain will most certainly turn out useful in the industry’s most problematic areas.

Not convinced? Perhaps an example or two will help. Sporting event ticketing has always been a huge pain in the neck for the entire industry. In fact, the problem is, in the very least, twofold. The first primary source of pain for an inveterate sports fan is counterfeit tickets. Before blockchain, the best advice out there was to only purchase tickets from a reputable source. As advances in technology enabled the superior quality of fake tickets, an average consumer is no longer able to check the authenticity of tickets and verify whether a ticket is legitimate or counterfeit.

The second source of intense suffering lies in authentic tickets resale, colloquially known as ticket scalping. If you are not someone with necessary connections or part of the inner circle of a famous athlete or club, if you are just a regular fan like the guy next door, you are unlikely to buy an admission ticket to a major sporting event at its face value. To add insult to injury, the event is quickly announced "sold out" once the tickets are no longer available through the official box office, which allows the avid and unscrupulous resellers to inflate prices in hopes to make a killing and rake in some serious profits.
 
And what do you think? Blockchain effectively deals with both of these issues and offers immediate benefits in this department. If event organizers are using a blockchain platform for ticketing and there are only so many tickets to be sold on it, no room is left for counterfeit tickets as you can’t counterfeit the entire blockchain. Well, technically, you can, but in that case looking for counterfeiting tickets will be your least concern as it might turn prohibitively expensive and counterproductive.

If you put a little more effort into it, you can easily leverage the blockchain tech for fighting off ticket scalping as well. The solution that the blockchain ticketing startup from Amsterdam called GUTS uses to address this activity is simple and straightforward. Every ticket is now associated with the buyer’s mobile phone, and if an event organizer prohibits reselling, tickets can’t be resold, as simple as it gets. On the other hand, if it is allowed, you can only resell tickets at the original selling price, which again leaves no room for scalping.

As you can see, blockchain can markedly alleviate the life of a simple sports lover and thus add to his positive experiences, making the sport industry as a whole a little better overall. Now UEFA is going to sell its tickets via a blockchain-enabled mobile application – after the coronavirus pandemic has been dealt with. Until then, we will explore other important areas where blockchain and the sport industry can make an effective team.

How to make an effective team

We started this exposition by mentioning that there are 4 billion fans of association football. This is a huge fanbase by any metric, and it comes as no surprise that it gave rise to blockchain-based platforms trying to harness the distributed ledger technology and tap into this immense market. Online sports-oriented platforms like Chiliz.net and Socios.com are looking to change the ways fans and clubs interact enabling more intense connection between the fans and their favorite teams. So how is it possible? Enter fan tokens.

As it turns out, the fanbase of the biggest soccer clubs in the world, say, Spanish Barcelona and Atletico or Italian Roma and Juventus, is scattered around the world, and most fans have never visited in person even a single match of their beloved teams. Fan tokens are a way to meaningfully engage this global fanbase. Having a fan token is supposed to give its holders certain voting rights in club-specific polls and thus produce a feeling of belonging, apart from directly supporting the club financially by buying these tokens.

Technically, fan tokens are regular ERC-20 tokens on an Ethereum Proof-of-Authority sidechain. The platform also designed its own Chiliz token operating on this blockchain, with which it is possible to trade fan tokens of different clubs indirectly against each other at a market price based on demand and supply. In other words, Chiliz and its clients are trying to leverage the blockchain to monetize the fanbase in exchange for fan-centric activities that possession of each fan token allows.

Another avenue of monetizing the global fanbase via blockchain involves officially licensed digital cards of players. The fantasy football platform Sorare, created in early 2019, by now have entered agreements with over 100 clubs including Paris Saint-Germain, a top-tier team from France, to produce virtual cards for players. Every card is a digital collectible – most certainly an NFT under the hood. Fans can collect, trade, and use them for different gaming activities, and they can even hold fantasy football tournaments. So CryptoKittish.

On the other side of the pond, a couple of NBA teams decided not to fiddle with the blockchain tech but instead embrace cryptocurrencies as a whole by allowing their fans to pay for tickets and other stuff with Bitcoin. In fact, one of these teams, the Sacramento Kings, have been doing this since 2014, while the other team, the Dallas Mavericks, started to accept the cryptocurrency in 2019. Litecoin is also welcome in America – a year ago it was named the official cryptocurrency of the Miami Dolphins, an NFL team from Florida.

We're an effective team!

It is somewhat ironic how the coronavirus pandemic forced lots of sport clubs across the world to seek out new ways of interacting with their fanbase. Blockchain turned up quite handy in times like these and enabled diminishing the social distancing brought about by forces mostly out of our control. Is this the beginning of a mutually beneficial partnership?

As they say, there is no cloud without a silver lining, and it looks like blockchain and the sport industry can make a superb team once there is a will coupled with a necessity, the mother of invention. And let’s hope that this team will make happy its supporters from both camps – the blockchain community and the sporting world, and not just for the time being.

Yeah, it was me who raised this issue


I don't really think it's a valid point

Indeed, Bitcoin or Ether gambling with just 10 dollars pretty much looks and feels like an exercise in futility (albeit to each their own), and that's why I was curious about the crypto used. However, $10 worth in Dogecoin (which is around 4k doges) can offer you a decent gambling experience at Wolf.bet given that you can start off with the lowest possible amount. And that has nothing to do at all with how well off you are beyond gambling

Bitcoin mixers are there to help you out

However, you can't know in advance which of them are real ones and which are only honeypots to get people like you caught red-handed. With that said, if you are already smart enough to steal from an exchange a few dozen bitcoins or something to that tune, you must be smart enough as well to cash out these coins safely, without attracting too much attention (beyond what you will be receiving anyway). That would most certainly mean splitting your spoil into smaller portions and using different avenues for cashing out in order to cover your tracks

I could see another motive

People may just feel the drive to gamble in the international waters like making fools of the state government, albeit that government itself may be covertly promoting such a service. In other words, there can be many layers of hidden reasons why every party involved acts the way it does and which are not visible to a stranger not familiar with the whole shebang

The devil is in paying precious attention to detail

Or, as Mark Twain put it (actually, it was Benjamin Disraeli), there are three types of lies, among which statistics are the most insidious form. More specifically, it is not just the number of users that counts, but also how much of the total coin supply they have accumulated in their wallets. In other words, if 1 million Nigerians hold 1 satoshi each, that doesn't make Nigeria a top dog in the cryptocurrency pit. I think the same is equally applicable to India, Pakistan and Colombia

Say what you like about waitresses, but they bring a lot to the table

Bitcoin can be easily traced

On the other hand, more anonymous cryptocurrencies like Monero or Zcash simply lack the required volume to make them really useful for large-scale criminal operations, even though they are indeed used on the Internet for a lot of minor illegal activities. Gold is good as a store of value, but low-profile criminals are spenders, not savers. Therefore, cash is the best payment option in these circumstances and will most certainly remain that in the foreseeable future

In that case, your distinction, well, similarity, simply doesn't hold

At first you say that staking and investing are fundamentally the same. Now you proceed to say that "investing is when you expect some profits". I'm okay with that, so let's stick to this definition of yours. However, staking cannot be investing because you don't know how profitable this activity will turn out to be, and, most importantly, you can't even expect profits. If you rake in some monies, good for you, you have invested wisely (in hindsight). But if you booked only losses, then it is not investing, and therefore you can't say that they (investing and staking) are the same thing