I'm confused.
I can't find any note, that there will be an ICO for Zcoin.
Zcoin will launch the mainnet on september 28.
no word about any ICO.
There is no ICO for this coin but you should still be careful because zcoin uses the "trusted set up". There is already a debate going on about how bad this is for the coin, zcash where it is cloned from. Please do your research on the "trusted set up" before attempting to be involved with this coin. With the trusted set up, it means the people who hold the keys could connive and play the role of central bank.
what is trusted set up?, the only concern i have is the huge premine they have for this coin, and that the coin is heavily centralized from what ic an tell other than that i like the algo and everything else
Zcoin is NOT a clone of Zcash. This has been explained countless times and based on different papers altogether and being promoted by people who don't know what they're talking about. The trusted setup in Zcoin and Zcash are also different and a trustless mechanism is being worked on.
https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/wiki/Parameters-in-set-up-phase-for-Zerocoin-in-ZCoinThere is also further no premine, just a founder's reward spread over 4 years. These are very different.
Zcoin uses Zerocoin technology from the Zerocoin paper. This is a very well peer reviewed paper with over 200 citations.
Zcash instead uses the Zerocash paper.
Although Zerocash is a development from Zerocoin meant to address certain perceived shortcomings of Zerocoin, they are not simple forks of each other and rely on different protocols.
Zerocash was meant to improve on Zerocoin on these issues:
a) Zerocoin still requires a basecoin to convert back before being allowed to spend. Zerocash has no more basecoin
b) Zerocash's proofs are much more efficient and smaller than Zerocoin's
c) Zerocoin uses fixed denominations to mint (1, 25, 50, 100) while Zerocash is not subject to such limitations
d) Greater privacy with Zerocash since sender/receiver/amount are all obscured.
However Zerocoin's advantage over Zerocash are as follows:
a) While still retaining the basecoin and a lot of the Bitcoin core code, it is a lot easier to integrate to existing Bitcoin merchants/etc.
b) Although Zerocoin's proofs are larger and occupies more storage space, the computational requirements to generate a private transaction are many times faster. Zcash requires large amounts of RAM and minutes of computational time. Zerocoin requires seconds to use and is not memory intensive. Basically Zerocoin uses more storage space but is computationally much less intensive.
c) Parameter generation for both Zcoin and Zcash requires a trusted setup but Zcoin's parameters are arguably less controversial. (
https://github.com/zcoinofficial/zcoin/wiki/Parameters-in-set-up-phase-for-Zerocoin-in-ZCoin). A zero trust parameter setup is also within our roadmap.
d) Most importantly is that in Zcoin, total supply is still visible so if there's a flaw and someone is secretly creating coins for themselves, this can be much more easily detected. With Zcash, if a flaw is exploited, it may be almost impossible to detect as someone can mint coins for themselves without being detected.
e) Zerocoin's tech is much more reviewed and better understood than Zcash's. Zcash's use of zero knowledge proofs uses ZK-Snarks is much more experimental and only a handful of people understand it.
You may also read more at the blog post here
http://blog.zcoin.tech/zcoin-and-zcash/