Zcash - Help me understand

[bitstomake]

I am by no stretch of the imagination a cryptography genius.  I have however been following and speculating on the crypto currency market since Bitcoin was worth a couple of dollars.

Can someone please explain to me why people still think Zcash is a good thing?  Please dispute the following facts, because from my layman understanding of the situation its worthless:

"The ceremony used a multi-party computation protocol with the property that the resulting parameters are secure unless all of the participants were dishonest or compromised during the ceremony."

Anything that relies on trust is fundamentally flawed.

"And by the way, I think we can successfully make Zcash too traceable for criminals like WannaCry, but still completely private & fungible." - Zooko Wilcox, ZCash founder.

The founder talking about making Zcash traceable in certain instances, rendering the whole concept fundamentally flawed.

Alphabay goes down the same moment they were supposedly implementing Zcash.  Whether you believe in coincidences or not, its certainly is very suspicious.

ZCash is run by an American company with American investors.  Conceptually, to me, this is a fundamentally flawed approach to privacy focused digital currency.

[pereira4]

I am by no stretch of the imagination a cryptography genius.  I have however been following and speculating on the crypto currency market since Bitcoin was worth a couple of dollars.

Can someone please explain to me why people still think Zcash is a good thing?  Please dispute the following facts, because from my layman understanding of the situation its worthless:

"The ceremony used a multi-party computation protocol with the property that the resulting parameters are secure unless all of the participants were dishonest or compromised during the ceremony."

Anything that relies on trust is fundamentally flawed.

"And by the way, I think we can successfully make Zcash too traceable for criminals like WannaCry, but still completely private & fungible." - Zooko Wilcox, ZCash founder.

The founder talking about making Zcash traceable in certain instances, rendering the whole concept fundamentally flawed.

Alphabay goes down the same moment they were supposedly implementing Zcash.  Whether you believe in coincidences or not, its certainly is very suspicious.

ZCash is run by an American company with American investors.  Conceptually, to me, this is a fundamentally flawed approach to privacy focused digital currency.

That is the double edged sword of Zcash. In theory, its transactions are truly anonymous and fungible, above everything else including Monero.

But the downside is, you are operating under the assumption that the "ceremony" was done the right way. The entire system could be compromised for all we know, and there's no way to ever know that because of the anonymity of it, which is why I never invested (and also due the disastrous coin release which caused a massive initial bubble)

[bitstomake]

That is the double edged sword of Zcash. In theory, its transactions are truly anonymous and fungible, above everything else including Monero.

But the downside is, you are operating under the assumption that the "ceremony" was done the right way. The entire system could be compromised for all we know, and there's no way to ever know that because of the anonymity of it, which is why I never invested (and also due the disastrous coin release which caused a massive initial bubble)

Many thanks.  I actually posted this originally in a Zcash thread, and literally got 0 responses.  I know for sure there are a large number of Zcash supporters watching this board, so the fact that none of them can refute any of my claims pretty much confirm in my mind they are all true.

So does Monero suffer from the same insecurities Zcash does?  Could you please elaborate a little?

[sebastianpenguen]

Zcash is not totally private if we are comparing it with monero. The transactions can be listed on trackers and this actually causes a problem for privacy. Monero is more anonymus in the transactions, nobody can see yours. 

[bitstomake]

Thanks for the responses.  Even though I agree Monero is far superior, I think that moneroforcash.com might be a bit biased.  Is there a more credible source detailing these facts?

[bitstomake]

You should be able to research for yourself, the website does not hide the potential conflict of interest:

Here is one: https://changelly.com/blog/zcash-monero-difference/

Apologies, you're right.  I have done some research, but wanted to see some other sites my fellow crypto guys might know about, and also spread the word about how Zcash is fatally flawed.

Not a single response to dispute any of the facts, pretty damning evidence if you ask me.

[pereira4]

Zcash is not totally private if we are comparing it with monero. The transactions can be listed on trackers and this actually causes a problem for privacy. Monero is more anonymus in the transactions, nobody can see yours. 

As far as I know... Zcash does provide higher levels of privacy, but it suffers from the trust issues described above, where you must trust that the developers deleted the masterkey that gives access to the total coin supply and basically could make them gods in the system.

I can never trust such a system. And in practice it seems Monero is better, but all of them got their own problems.

[Knepala]

Here is an article that adresses some of these concerns:
https://www.zcashcommunity.com/2017/07/31/zcash-separating-fact-fiction/

[cryptimus prime]

A paper was today published that shows how a part of the Monero transaction amount obfuscation (RingCT) can now be done more elegant and with a lower transaction size. This will enable XMR to use higher RingCT numbers easier (higher then 10), improve the scaling and even further improve the anonymity function of XMR. Hard times for Zcash.

[Febo]

I am by no stretch of the imagination a cryptography genius.  I have however been following and speculating on the crypto currency market since Bitcoin was worth a couple of dollars.

Can someone please explain to me why people still think Zcash is a good thing?  Please dispute the following facts, because from my layman understanding of the situation its worthless:

"The ceremony used a multi-party computation protocol with the property that the resulting parameters are secure unless all of the participants were dishonest or compromised during the ceremony."

Anything that relies on trust is fundamentally flawed.

"And by the way, I think we can successfully make Zcash too traceable for criminals like WannaCry, but still completely private & fungible." - Zooko Wilcox, ZCash founder.

The founder talking about making Zcash traceable in certain instances, rendering the whole concept fundamentally flawed.

Alphabay goes down the same moment they were supposedly implementing Zcash.  Whether you believe in coincidences or not, its certainly is very suspicious.

ZCash is run by an American company with American investors.  Conceptually, to me, this is a fundamentally flawed approach to privacy focused digital currency.

Those that thinks ZCash is a good thing or have no ideas about it or just trust those people are rich enought and would never scam.
But reality is that no one can be sure if whey scam or not so whenever they will be a big sell there will be fear it come from freshly printed coins.

[bitstomake]

Here is an article that adresses some of these concerns:
https://www.zcashcommunity.com/2017/07/31/zcash-separating-fact-fiction/

Thanks for posting this, some interesting points raised.