Zcash, a cryptocurrency focused on privacy and anonymity, is currently available to trade on Okcoin – “with some of the lowest fees around.”
Customers are able to “deposit, withdraw, and trade ZEC against USD on Okcoin.”
All Okcoin clients may perform transactions with Zcash including those in the United States, ‘except for residents of the EU, the UK, Singapore, and Brunei.”
What’s Zcash?
Zcash is a digital currency focused on privacy. It was “originally launched in 2016 and was developed out of Bitcoin’s code.”
Like Bitcoin, it can be “mined, has a fixed supply of 21 million coins, and is secured by the proof-of-work SHA-256 algorithm.” As noted in the update from OKCoin, Zcash “differentiates itself from other cryptos, however, by being a so-called ‘privacy coin.'”
As mentioned in a blog post:
“What’s the need for a privacy coin? Well, contrary to what a lot of people think, most cryptocurrencies on the market are not anonymous, but pseudonymous. This means that even though they don’t reveal their users’ identities, it’s possible to learn a lot about their transactions. Combined with current blockchain analysis techniques, it’s often possible to decipher who’s behind a certain address or transaction. The whole point of Zcash, on the other hand, is to offer the option of transacting fully privately.“
Going on to explain how Zcash works, the OKcoin team wrote that Zcash’s innovation is its use of a technology known as “zk-SNARK”. The z and the k stand here for “zero-knowledge”. That’s because zk-SNARKs are “an encryption technique allowing nodes on the network to verify transactions without leaking private information,” the update noted.
Zcash can be used in two different modes:
- Transparent: Similar to Bitcoin, transparent Zcash transactions are sent “between public addresses and are recorded on the blockchain.” They do not “explicitly mention the user’s identity but they reveal the amount sent and the sending and receiving addresses.” Coupled with the latest techniques of blockchain analysis, this data can “help connect a transaction to a real-world identity, making it difficult to transact privately.”
- Shielded: Thanks to zk-SNARKs, Zcash can “settle transactions by only recording on the blockchain the fact that the transaction happened, without revealing the amount or the sending and receiving addresses.” This “allows ZEC shielded transactions to be completely anonymous.”
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