Thoughts on Zcash?

[Gahs]

So if I understand correctly, Zcash requires users to trust its developers to a certain degree.
However, developers have not given users a big reason not to trust them but because with Monero, users don't have to trust anyone, that makes Monero better.


Zcash has some advantages that Monero does not have...

[dinofelis]

So if I understand correctly, Zcash requires users to trust its developers to a certain degree.

Not so much the developers.  They have to trust the small group of people that will participate in the trusted setup.

Zcash has some advantages that Monero does not have...

I agree with you that zcash has a potentially extremely powerful idea, which is TOTAL anonymity.  That's better than Monero, which has a limited anonymity set, which is growing over time.  With the ideas in zcash, this anonymity set can be total.
However, this is NOT how it is set up in zcash.  And in order to have this total anonymity, you have to introduce compromises with other aspects, like a trusted setup.

So, the way zcash is set up, I wouldn't prefer it, anonymity wise, over monero.  But it ideas in it that are potentially much better than Monero.

[Azael]

None until it releases so I can see if thrives in a free market or if it was just propped up by sockets.

[c789]

Keep in mind that Monero has just implemented RingCT with version 0.10, which was released 19 September:

https://getmonero.org/2016/09/19/monero-0.10.0-released.html

There is a link to the RingCT whitepaper in the article above. In my opinion, any technical advantage that Zcash may have had over Monero will be rendered null by Monero's implementation of RingCT...and no trusted setup is required.

[Ayers]

So if I understand correctly, Zcash requires users to trust its developers to a certain degree.
However, developers have not given users a big reason not to trust them but because with Monero, users don't have to trust anyone, that makes Monero better.


Zcash has some advantages that Monero does not have...

etheruem is centralized also, yet many invested in it, and many like it, i think don't really care about decentralization, as long as they can have what they want, monero will be a thing of the past with zcash in anonymity terms at least

[canth]

etheruem is centralized also, yet many invested in it, and many like it, i think don't really care about decentralization, as long as they can have what they want, monero will be a thing of the past with zcash in anonymity terms at least

I'm not sure you've really thought this through with statements like that. I'm a big fan of Zooko and Zcash and yet I'm not even thinking about selling my Monero anytime soon. Here's why:

ALL Monero transactions use stealth address, ring signatures and by this time next year, confidential transactions.

v

Zcash has opt-in privacy - the default is non-private transactions. If you want to make a private transaction, it'll take a current computer anywhere from 1-5 minutes to create the transaction. The math is bleeding edge and not battle tested. Hell, not even the Zcash CEO has a strong understanding of exactly how the math works!

TLDR; Monero is not likely to be dethroned in the next few years as the king of privacy-centric money.

[infofront]

I would point out a couple facts and open questions:

1. Much of the dev team is Israeli, and the "Israeli Ministry of Science, Technology, and Space" is one of the sponsors. What is Israel getting out of this? Is it not feasible that at least one of the Israeli team members will covertly keep "the golden key"?
Let me take that one step further. Would you trust the Moussad to keep your transactions private? Would you trust them to not dilute or otherwise compromise the blockchain?

2. This is a smaller issue, but the devs have stated that at launch there will only be a linux miner available. This will be seen as a compromised launch by the community. Every serious coin launch has at least a windows and linux miner available. As a CPU mined coin, it could be widely distributed to anyone with a computer. Instead, it will be mined by a handful of people with Xeon server farms running linux.

[Febo]

I would point out a couple facts and open questions:

1. Much of the dev team is Israeli, and the "Israeli Ministry of Science, Technology, and Space" is one of the sponsors. What is Israel getting out of this? Is it not feasible that at least one of the Israeli team members will covertly keep "the golden key"?
Let me take that one step further. Would you trust the Moussad to keep your transactions private? Would you trust them to not dilute or otherwise compromise the blockchain?

2. This is a smaller issue, but the devs have stated that at launch there will only be a linux miner available. This will be seen as a compromised launch by the community. Every serious coin launch has at least a windows and linux miner available. As a CPU mined coin, it could be widely distributed to anyone with a computer. Instead, it will be mined by a handful of people with Xeon server farms running linux.

zcash is an company. lol. they doing it for profit. whatelse.


Not sure why people even bother with such projects here on this forum. When you have tons of opensource projects.

[canth]

I would point out a couple facts and open questions:

1. Much of the dev team is Israeli, and the "Israeli Ministry of Science, Technology, and Space" is one of the sponsors. What is Israel getting out of this? Is it not feasible that at least one of the Israeli team members will covertly keep "the golden key"?
Let me take that one step further. Would you trust the Moussad to keep your transactions private? Would you trust them to not dilute or otherwise compromise the blockchain?

2. This is a smaller issue, but the devs have stated that at launch there will only be a linux miner available. This will be seen as a compromised launch by the community. Every serious coin launch has at least a windows and linux miner available. As a CPU mined coin, it could be widely distributed to anyone with a computer. Instead, it will be mined by a handful of people with Xeon server farms running linux.

1) The only way that the zcash creation process gets compromised is if NONE of the participants destroy their key. (barring any sort of technical flaw in the implementation of course) If any one of them is honest and capable of destroying their key, then it doesn't matter if every single other individual keeps their 'golden keys' as you put it.

2) Yeah, it'd be nice to see a windows miner available on day one. The good news it that it'll take a month or so to get to the max daily mining emissions so there's some time for a windows miner to be developed before the larger block rewards kick in.

[Wexfgy12]

have they described anywhere how and who will be involved in the trusted setup?

[dinofelis]

1) The only way that the zcash creation process gets compromised is if NONE of the participants destroy their key. (barring any sort of technical flaw in the implementation of course) If any one of them is honest and capable of destroying their key, then it doesn't matter if every single other individual keeps their 'golden keys' as you put it.

This is why I can trust the trusted setup if I'm part of it, and if I can verify that I'm part of it.

If I cannot be part of it, as to "certainty that a certain group is not going to collude 100%", I would start to trust that, from the moment the group contains several 1000 people of totally different backgrounds, on different continents, and if I can verify at least of a few hundred different persons that they did so (in other words, that there haven't been really 5 participants, and 5000 sybils).

Also, the people doing it can be "honest" but the software can have a back door to retrieve the pieces of golden key.  Again, if I'm part of the trusted setup, I can have my ways to make sure that my shard of golden key wasn't delivered, but it should be quite draconian:  I should take the source code on an airgapped computer, compile it there with a method of my choice, generate the random numbers airgapped with a method of my choice, type it in, read the public parts from the screen and write them to paper, and then physically destroy the computer before it could ever connect to a network.

If a few thousand people actually did this, I could start to trust a trusted setup.

[rustynailer]

1) The only way that the zcash creation process gets compromised is if NONE of the participants destroy their key. (barring any sort of technical flaw in the implementation of course) If any one of them is honest and capable of destroying their key, then it doesn't matter if every single other individual keeps their 'golden keys' as you put it.

This is why I can trust the trusted setup if I'm part of it, and if I can verify that I'm part of it.

If I cannot be part of it, as to "certainty that a certain group is not going to collude 100%", I would start to trust that, from the moment the group contains several 1000 people of totally different backgrounds, on different continents, and if I can verify at least of a few hundred different persons that they did so (in other words, that there haven't been really 5 participants, and 5000 sybils).

Also, the people doing it can be "honest" but the software can have a back door to retrieve the pieces of golden key.  Again, if I'm part of the trusted setup, I can have my ways to make sure that my shard of golden key wasn't delivered, but it should be quite draconian:  I should take the source code on an airgapped computer, compile it there with a method of my choice, generate the random numbers airgapped with a method of my choice, type it in, read the public parts from the screen and write them to paper, and then physically destroy the computer before it could ever connect to a network.

If a few thousand people actually did this, I could start to trust a trusted setup.

Very nicely explained, I think if they launch without some of your above mentioned methods then there will always be doubt about a golden key.

[cryptimus prime]

Zcash has anonymity not enforced but you can use it as an option. In Monero it is enforced and you can by option give a view only access to your data.
The second one is simply better.

[rustynailer]

Zcash has anonymity not enforced but you can use it as an option. In Monero it is enforced and you can by option give a view only access to your data.
The second one is simply better.

Zcash offers greater anonymity but they have some problems to solve first.

[Matkurb]

Zcash has anonymity not enforced but you can use it as an option. In Monero it is enforced and you can by option give a view only access to your data.
The second one is simply better.

In the future, the anonimity function should be enforced for the ZCash to be a fully anonymous coins.

[vtr99]

Zcash has anonymity not enforced but you can use it as an option. In Monero it is enforced and you can by option give a view only access to your data.
The second one is simply better.

Zcash offers greater anonymity but they have some problems to solve first.

Agree. It looks like they may not be able to finalize code in time for the set launch date.

Personally I don't understand adopting a coin that doesn't have an easy to use GUI. Much less one that can't run in Windows without Linux emulation.

I can sympathize with the geek appeal, but a coin like SDC makes it simpler for the average person and gives you more advanced features.

Should be interesting to watch how this all pans out...

[someone111]

Hey guys,

I am wondering if I should invest into zcash or komodo. I am considering to invest money and maybe also hashing power.

Can you please try convince me of zcash? Why should I, if there is komodo?

Komodo is a fork of zcash. So it does all that zcash does. Plus more cool stuff. It's security is additionally somehow boosted by being connected to the bitcoin blockchain. They are doing an ICO. So will probably gain more attention and traction. And due to ICO bonus it may be easier to get invested than just trying to compete with professional miners. And if mining gets unattractive, I can just stake it.

https://komodoplatform.com

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1605144.0

[GrossBit]

Do we already have an idea of the initial price / market cap of Zcash ?

[canth]

Do we already have an idea of the initial price / market cap of Zcash ?

https://z.cash/blog/continued-funding-and-transparency.html

"We've taken in another $2M worth of investment to power the next stage of the project. The investors in that round valued the Founders' Reward (along with the accompanying ownership of Zcash Co) at about $15 per Zcash coin."

Now the company's equity should be worth more than just the coin, so it's not exactly $15/coin but that's likely to be the neighborhood for coin pricing.

[TrueAnon]

$15 already?? FOR WHAT?  speculation?  wtf