Steemit Crypto Academy S2Week8 || Privacy Coins || submitted to @levycore

Am delighted to be your student this week @levycore.

On this week topic, we will be exploring looking at Privacy Coins, types and many more.

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Privacy Coin as the name implies are coins just like many other cryptocurrencies that are able to hide the identity of users both senders and recieves identity,during a transaction between the his two parties. There are series of Privacy in the cryptocurrency ecosystem but we would be talking about ZCash (Zec) Privacy Coin in this series.

ZCash has been described as the decentralized, Open-source blockchain which seeks to provides privacy for its users and their transactions within the cryptocurrency ecosystem. It's a cryptocurrency just like Bitcoin, Etherum etc, but has a unique characteristics which is its ability to keep users information (both sender and receiver) private and also fungible as well. It is worthy to note that ZCash is built on the Bitcoin network and is very much like Bitcoin in some of its characteristics.

The origin of Zcash can be traced to its protocol first creation, the Zerocoin which was one of the first cryptocurrency designed to successfully true cryptographic privacy to transactions regarding the blockchain. In 2016,the Zerocoin launched its Zcoin known as XZC and was spare headed by Johns Hopkins University professor Matthew D. Green, Christina Garman, Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn, and several others, who together formed the Zerocoin Electric Coin Company. Further development and improvement were then made on the Zerocoin which led to the discovery:

Zerocash reduces proof size by 98% and allow for privacy payment that hide payment amount, this all led to the creation of the Zerocash and white paper was released.
ZCash which is development of the Zerocoin came onboard in October 2018 with a total supply of 21,000,000 tokens of which 10% was given to the developers of this great project and the remaining coins are been released through mining etc. source

Now moving to Zcash Technology, While most cryptocurrency validate transactions by linking two address (usually the sender and receiver) and its connected values, Zcash uses what is called the Zero knowledge cryptography or the Zero knowledge proof which will give users the option to either hide or open their transactions. This is Zero knowledge proof making it successful to hide transactions is called zK-SNARK which is able to verify transactions on a blockchain Leger without necessarily displaying or showing every important information.

According the the Whitepaper:

The acronym zk-SNARK stands for “Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge,” and refers to a proof construction where one can prove possession of certain information, e.g. a secret key, without revealing that information, and without any interaction between the prover and verifier.”source

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Furthermore, Zcash provides two types of keys namely the View key and the Spend key. The spend key allows you to transfer funds to anyone while the view keys allows you see you transactions, can be used for audit and sharing information from one person to another when the need arises. It also provide 2 types of addresses and for its transactions which are Privates address and the Public addresses, the Private address (z-address) are used to shield or hide transactions and the Public address (t-address) are used for more advanced transactions which when searched, can be viewed by anyone.

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Mining isn't as difficult as other cryptocurrencies using complicated mining rigs and equipment as Zcash adopted Equihash in 2016 and its proof of work system. Zcash can easily be minned using hardware powered by GPUs which is extremely popular among gamers. It is memory based, meaning that the amount of Ram available on the system determines the mining speed and capacity, thank to its Proof of Work alogaritm.

Most Exchanges support Zcash trading. We might have very few wallets supporting Zcash.

First we visit Zcash official website as shown below.

We are presented with more than 2 types of wallet on the Zcash website, screenshot shown below:

Since I will be using the mobile app, I will download it on Google play store

After downloading my wallet, I open application, create new wallet by copying the seed phrase.

Wallet is ready for use. Very easy steps.

There are series of Privacy Coins in the cryptocurrency ecosystem but I choosed Zcash, here are my reasons:

1)Wonderful track record: it has a reputable track record and at the time of this write-up had not witness any bug, cyber attack or security bridges. It has not experienced any downtime or security breaches.

2)Cheap and easy accessible mining: As stated earlier, Zcash uses the POW alogaritm, mining can be done using PCS as long as there is enough ram space to accommodate. Unlike like other cryptocurrency which require large components, power which makes mining very difficult and expensive. Zcash cas easily be mined as equipment are readily available and equipments readily available.

3)It Less prone to Privacy timing attacks: Zcash has the ability to hide the various times of transactions, because of this it is less prone to time attacks as hackers cannot determine exactly the timing of a new minted coin.

4)It promotes Optional Privacy

5)Very low transaction cost when compared to other Privacy Coins.

A system is not 100% efficient and will therefore have some disadvantages:

1)Privacy Adoption: Privacy is an excellent venture, but adoption is a problem. The question we ask is this: are Privacy Coin legal or illegal? The answer is Yes and No depending the jurisdiction and area. So adoptions are limted dues to a particular region and could be blacklisted at anytime.

2)Decentralization is questioned: The question whether it is truly decentralized comes to play because since 10% of the total supply is held privately by members of the development team.

3)Competitions on the Privacy Coin market:They are other Privacy Coin competing for the same positions, coins like Monero, Grin etc, fall in this category. So there is serious competition within this coin to stay on top.

4)There is Limited privacy storage options: Wallets storing Zcash are quite very Limited and most wallets do not support it as a cryptocurrency. There is currently no mobile wallets supporting the storage of Zcash.

Conclusion
Zcash like other cryptocurrencies has very bright potential especially with its privacy options as it can shield and protect users informations. It has being discovered that it is different from other Privacy Coins like Monero and other because it's options to stay shielded (hidden) or open during its transactions. Adoption is quite slow as most wallets are not currently supporting storage of Zcash privacy coin.

Zcash has gone into Patnership to strengthen their cords, like Apples, etc. Zcash is currently trading as 54th cryptocurrency in the world according to CMC and currently trading in about 5 exchanges. The future seems to be bright for the Zec Privacy Coin.