ZCash: What's the point?

[thejaytiesto]

From what I've read, Zcash (formerly ZeroCoin) generates a masterkey that the devs have access to, that allows access to the complete blockchain, so you are trusting that the devs don't take advantage of this and delete the masterkey.

How retarded is that? Who would trust such technology?

[bbc.reporter]

From what I've read, Zcash (formerly ZeroCoin) generates a masterkey that the devs have access to, that allows access to the complete blockchain, so you are trusting that the devs don't take advantage of this and delete the masterkey.

How retarded is that? Who would trust such technology?

They have not released anything official yet so let us see what is in store for the future. I believe they have mentioned that they could still change the algorithm and the implementation for zcash. So having the trusted set up could not be a final proposal from them.

[dinofelis]

From what I've read, Zcash (formerly ZeroCoin) generates a masterkey that the devs have access to, that allows access to the complete blockchain, so you are trusting that the devs don't take advantage of this and delete the masterkey.

How retarded is that? Who would trust such technology?

You are somewhat over simplifying.  The devs are supposed not to have a master key ; the whole problem is how to generate the public parameters without someone holding the masterkey.  It is problematic, but it is not as blunt as you put it ; I agree however that what I understood of the way they generate it, that it is sufficient that the whole set of celebrities supposed to generate the key, collude over keeping the key (or that there's a back door in the system they use that can bring together all the shards of the golden key), to have the golden key that can generate an unlimited number of coins.  It cannot de anonymise however.

I think more work is needed on this "trusted setup" before it can be trusted, but it is not as blunt as you put it.

[jacafbiz]

The market is there for taken, most of these tokens are still on trial phase and we are still not sure which one of them will solve scaling problem. 

[exstasie]

From what I've read, Zcash (formerly ZeroCoin) generates a masterkey that the devs have access to, that allows access to the complete blockchain, so you are trusting that the devs don't take advantage of this and delete the masterkey.

How retarded is that? Who would trust such technology?

You are somewhat over simplifying.  The devs are supposed not to have a master key ; the whole problem is how to generate the public parameters without someone holding the masterkey.  It is problematic, but it is not as blunt as you put it ; I agree however that what I understood of the way they generate it, that it is sufficient that the whole set of celebrities supposed to generate the key, collude over keeping the key (or that there's a back door in the system they use that can bring together all the shards of the golden key), to have the golden key that can generate an unlimited number of coins.  It cannot de anonymise however.

I think more work is needed on this "trusted setup" before it can be trusted, but it is not as blunt as you put it.

Yes this is the basic idea. There is no "master key" to alter the blockchain. But the launch of the protocol requires a "trusted" setup by "trusted" actors. There is no way to verify that the public parameters = 21 million coin supply. Zcash supply is 100% impossible to audit because of this.

There are ways to do it. I think Zooko and company felt pressured to launch (especially after delaying past the last expected launch date) and won't be addressing this at all.

[ehtlove]

Zcoin ( http://zcoin.tech ) and ZCash are the only two cryptocurrencies that use zero-knowledge proofs to guarantee complete financial anonymity. ZCoin and ZCash seem to supplement each other quite nicely, and a good way to describe it would be sibling cryptocurrencies.

They are related in the sense that the academic community often see ZCoin as the stabler, more secure, and more proven cryptocurrency – whereas ZCash is seen as the more experimental coin using more dangerous and risky cryptography. For example, ZCoin uses the Zerocoin paper, which has been cited about 200 times by academic scholars, according to Google Search. And ZCash is cited about only half as many times. So ZCoin has about twice as much support from cryptography scholars as ZCash, because it’s based on much more stable and proven cryptography. On the other hand, ZCash has a lot fewer cryptography citations because it is based on something called ZK-Snarks, which only a few people in the world have researched.

Because ZCash is based on more risky cryptography, ZCash has this critical problem that ZCoin doesn’t face. ZCash attempts to conceal the amount of money sent in a transaction. By doing this, if ZCash has a major bug or double-spending problem, it would be unnoticed and someone could drain tens or hundreds of millions of dollars away from the ZCash market cap without anybody noticing a double spend.

Any project that involves new cryptography, including projects like ZCash, faces vulnerabilities. As we’ve seen with the Ethereum DAO project, about two hundred million dollars was drained away. Luckily, that money was recovered through a bailout because it was noticed and viewable on the public blockchain. But if ZCash faced a bug, it could potentially see hundreds of millions of dollars drained from its market cap and ZCash would be worth a lot less for speculators. In terms of practical differences, the only main differences are that zerocash is a version of the zerocoin protocol that conceals the amount in the transaction.

It uses different cryptographic schemes, but the end result is that the other information is all completely hidden through zero-knowledge proofs. Which guarantee 0 information about transaction recipient and sender.

However, that hiding of quantity sent in a transaction has the vulnerability of speculators potentially losing a lot of money through double-spends / other bugs that go unnoticed because of the hidden quantity. So I think ZCoin ( http://zcoin.tech ) could be a good supplement investment / hedge to ZCash.

[Spoetnik]

Yeah, inherently zero-knowledge is superior to anything else but if you investigate Zcash its like a bitcoin sidechain with zerocoin, they even copied the bitcoin core, nothing evil about that but this means you have 2 systems: one with the trusted-setup to generate anonymous transaction (which take several minutes and need 8 GB RAM or more btw) and the transparent bitcoin system, also 20% of mining goes to the founders. I will wait for the future if some smart guy figures out how to make this without trusted setup and without the transparent bitcoin core.

Sounds like FreeTrade + MemoryCoin 

[thejaytiesto]

Yeah, inherently zero-knowledge is superior to anything else but if you investigate Zcash its like a bitcoin sidechain with zerocoin, they even copied the bitcoin core, nothing evil about that but this means you have 2 systems: one with the trusted-setup to generate anonymous transaction (which take several minutes and need 8 GB RAM or more btw) and the transparent bitcoin system, also 20% of mining goes to the founders. I will wait for the future if some smart guy figures out how to make this without trusted setup and without the transparent bitcoin core.

Sounds like FreeTrade + MemoryCoin 

Yeah, 20% of mining for the founders... what the fuck? I mean that's ridiculous for god's sake. Why? and what's the point? Aren't they rich enough from getting in early? Im sure they will be holding decent amount of coins... this sounds worse by the second, but I still might buy to profit from a pump and dump, the problem is the coin is already near 0.1 BTC...

https://www.bitmex.com/app/trade/ZECZ16

it's already getting traded without a blockchain lol, but a price is set, now the question is if we will see a flash dump as soon as it gets on Poloniex. Lots of coins have a similar graph where it insta dumps as soon as it hits the exchange (ICOers and miners dumping)

[bbc.reporter]

Yeah, inherently zero-knowledge is superior to anything else but if you investigate Zcash its like a bitcoin sidechain with zerocoin, they even copied the bitcoin core, nothing evil about that but this means you have 2 systems: one with the trusted-setup to generate anonymous transaction (which take several minutes and need 8 GB RAM or more btw) and the transparent bitcoin system, also 20% of mining goes to the founders. I will wait for the future if some smart guy figures out how to make this without trusted setup and without the transparent bitcoin core.

Is this true? Then why not go back to the original idea of zerocoin built on top bitcoin or as a sidechain? Maybe they do not think it is technically possible to do? I am not a programmer so it would be good for someone to comment on this.

[numismatist]

Yeah, 20% of mining for the founders... what the fuck? I mean that's ridiculous for god's sake. Why? and what's the point? Aren't they rich enough from getting in early? Im sure they will be holding decent amount of coins... this sounds worse by the second, but I still might buy to profit from a pump and dump, the problem is the coin is already near 0.1 BTC...

https://www.bitmex.com/app/trade/ZECZ16

it's already getting traded without a blockchain lol, but a price is set, now the question is if we will see a flash dump as soon as it gets on Poloniex. Lots of coins have a similar graph where it insta dumps as soon as it hits the exchange (ICOers and miners dumping)

Nudge your brain, try to remember this
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/lisk/#charts

[bbc.reporter]

For a starting of $15 per coin we will surely see a lot of dumping. The powers that be behind zcash surely set a high price to give them some room for profits when they start dumping.

"now the question is if we will see a flash dump as soon as it gets on Poloniex. Lots of coins have a similar graph where it insta dumps as soon as it hits the exchange "

We surely will. Almost all of the cryptocoins are dumped the minute they are listed in the exchanges. But the development team of zcash already planned ahead and set a high price. It is overvalued now at Bitmex at .1 BTC.

[dinofelis]

Yeah, inherently zero-knowledge is superior to anything else but if you investigate Zcash its like a bitcoin sidechain with zerocoin, they even copied the bitcoin core, nothing evil about that but this means you have 2 systems: one with the trusted-setup to generate anonymous transaction (which take several minutes and need 8 GB RAM or more btw) and the transparent bitcoin system, also 20% of mining goes to the founders. I will wait for the future if some smart guy figures out how to make this without trusted setup and without the transparent bitcoin core.

Is this true? Then why not go back to the original idea of zerocoin built on top bitcoin or as a sidechain? Maybe they do not think it is technically possible to do? I am not a programmer so it would be good for someone to comment on this.

Indeed, they should have forked bitcoin, instead of starting a new chain.

[pizza77]

For a starting of $15 per coin we will surely see a lot of dumping. The powers that be behind zcash surely set a high price to give them some room for profits when they start dumping.

"now the question is if we will see a flash dump as soon as it gets on Poloniex. Lots of coins have a similar graph where it insta dumps as soon as it hits the exchange "

We surely will. Almost all of the cryptocoins are dumped the minute they are listed in the exchanges. But the development team of zcash already planned ahead and set a high price. It is overvalued now at Bitmex at .1 BTC.

With 20% premine under the dev's control the temptation to dump will be too strong for him. He should at least put the coins in multisig escrow that will only be released to him slowly.

[sui_generis]

I, for one, would like to thank Zooko and his investors. The community will take the technology that they've been kind enough to fund, and use it to launch projects which are free of premines. Zcash will pump, and then inevitably dump, as few will be stupid enough to support a project with such unfair conditions.

[rapazev]

I, for one, would like to thank Zooko and his investors. The community will take the technology that they've been kind enough to fund, and use it to launch projects which are free of premines. Zcash will pump, and then inevitably dump, as few will be stupid enough to support a project with such unfair conditions.

i think we will see only the dump part... the prices right now are ridiculous. a coin being launched at 0.1? doesnt sound bullish to me... i'll buy some at 30k sats.

[jacafbiz]

I, for one, would like to thank Zooko and his investors. The community will take the technology that they've been kind enough to fund, and use it to launch projects which are free of premines. Zcash will pump, and then inevitably dump, as few will be stupid enough to support a project with such unfair conditions.

i think we will see only the dump part... the prices right now are ridiculous. a coin being launched at 0.1? doesnt sound bullish to me... i'll buy some at 30k sats.

Can you truly find the price that low, 30Ksat

[electronicash]

I also don't see if there is the need for Zcash still when there are already coins such as Monero, DASH, SDC, NAV and the rest such as CLOAK.
as far as i know Zcash don't even have any feature that might be helpful to the community.

[European Central Bank]

the point is to make themselves money. and maybe we'll see how little the rest of the world cares about actually having control over their own money. it might make a depressing spectacle.

[thepo1m]

the point is to make themselves money. and maybe we'll see how little the rest of the world cares about actually having control over their own money. it might make a depressing spectacle.

Agreed crypotocurrenies market is in a bullish trend and the market is willing to pay for it since money is there to be made. Steemit and DAO are  good examples

[Ayers]

i don't understand yet how this is work or will work, but he delete that key your fund are gone? if yes and he can not steal directly your fund, then what is the worry about? there are many centralized coin how there, everything that has a big premine is in reality a centralized coin