Crypto Academy Week 16 - Homework Post for Professor @levycore

Hello Everyone,

It's another beautiful week we have not experience before, I wish us a wonderful week ahead. The class for this week by my lecturer @levycore is all about Privacy Coin which I will be answering some questions given to me as my homework. Before I start with the questions, I would like to give a break down of the meaning of the topic itself Privacy coin.

Firstly, what do we mean by the word privacy? Privacy can said to be when someone or something does not like others interfering in his/her matters or can also be define as a state in which one is not observed or disturbed by other people. If we should now attach coin to privacy that what makes it Privacy coin.

The word Coin in the topic is reffers to cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is a digital currency created as an alternative to traditional currency i.e. Naira, Dollar and Soo on. Cryptocurrency can also be reffers to as visual cryptocurrency that uses a decentralized system with high level of transparency.

Privacy Coin

Source

Privacy coin can be define as a class of cryptocurrencies that power private and anonymous blockchain transactions by obscuring their origin and destination. Says by coinmarketcap. The word anonymity in the definition means unknown. It makes the true identity of it users to be anonymous and untrackable. It prevents the third party from using blockchain analysis to track the trail of the transaction.

Furthermore, Privacy coin as the name implies can be define as a currency that hide it user's identies. It allow it users to trade without showing the identity of the trader like the personal information, the amount of crytocurrency traded and the held wallet. in some cases users wallet address are changed in regular bases for security and privacy purpose and also allow mixing address transactions together for the transaction to be untraceable. There is different types of private coin in the crypto world but I will be listing some below.

1. Monero
2. Zcash
3. Dash
4. Beam
5. Horizen
6. Verge
7. Bytecoin and more

Advantages of Privacy Coin

• Most privacy coins are coin with large market caps, which makes them to be easily to trade on the market.

• Privacy coin prevents third party from using blockhain analysis to track the trail of the transaction. it provide a high level of security to their users.

• It transaction is known to be more private and not public one.

• Privacy coin gives full authority to user's to decide when and how transaction should be done.

• Privacy coin gives a sense of security by keeping identities of both it's origin and destination source.

Disadvantages of a Privacy Coin

• Privacy is mostly use for money laundering by fraudsters and hackers which we all know is illegal.

• Is a coin that is untraceable for government to calculate taxes.

• Privacy coin has a slower i.e. very slow transaction rate with high transaction fees.

• Privacy coins are not transparent because they private. It transaction is only made known to the first and second parties.

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Question 1

Choose a Privacy Coin and perform a detailed fundamental analysis of the coin.

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To answer the questions above, I will be choosing one of the privacy coin listed in the above privacy coin explanation, "Zcash".

Source

It was lunched and developed in october 2016 by top cryptographers, Zcash is one of the top private coin that share the same root with Dash, which is Bitcoin. It is headed by Electric Coin company, Zcash uses the energy intensive PoW meachanism to confirm transactions. It's a private coin that offers to hide transaction through privacy and untraceable mechanisms called shelded transaction and zk-SNARKs. The protocol is based on the research of scientists from MIT, Technion, Johns Hopkins, Tel Aviv University and UC Berkeley.

Also, ZCash is a coin that uses Equihash, a proof-of-work algorithm to mine ZEC. The Proof-of-work is dependent on nodes, or miners,to validate a coded transaction between a sender and receiver.

However, I will be writing below the result of my research on Zcash to make us understand more about Zcash in a tabular form. I hope you find it knowledgeable.

Fundamental Analysis

Fundamental analysis is an approach used by investor to determine if a particular assest or business is overvalued or undervalued. It is refers to as (FA) in the crypto market and it main activity is to study charts and price of assest on the financial market. It study everything about the assest.

Research	Analysis
Tricker symbol	ZEC
Website	Z.cash
Initial release	28 October 2016; 4 years ago
Development status	Active
Project Fork of	Bitcoin core
Code repository	Link
White paper	Link
Written in	C++ and Rust (zcashd), Python (zcashd test suite), Rust (zebra), Kotlin (Android SDK), Swift (iOS SDK), Go(lightwalletd)
Project Fork of	Bitcoin core
Operating system	Linux, window, Macos.
Developers	Electric coin company(zcashd) and zcash foundation(zebra).
Lincense	MIT (main zcashd code); MIT/ApacheMIT (main zcashd code); MIT/Apache (zebra and some support libraries).
Issuance schedule	Similar to Bitcoin, with "slow start" and different block interval.
Block reward	6.25 ZEC (5 ZEC to miners; 1.25 Founders' Reward), from Blossom upgrade until first halving.
Block explorer	explorer.zcha.in

Market details

ICO	NO
Market Dominance	0.11%
Market Rank	#54
Price Change in 24h	$5.25
24h Low / 24h High	$141.38 /$159.58
Trading Volume in 24h	$569,531,671.08
Current Price	$153.93
Market Cap	$1,815,994,513.66
Fully Diluted Market Cap	$3,207,538,173.73
Minable	Yes
Max Supply	21,000,000 ZEC
Total Supply	11,891,331 ZEC
Circulating Supply	11,891,331 ZEC

Management Team

In Zcash, we have different section of management team and I will be listing them with their roles accordingly. They are the back bone for Zcash. Also, Zcash management team can be accessible here and I will also be listing them below.

Zcash Founder & CEO

Zooko Wilcox-OHearn

Employees

S/n	Name	Post/Role	Twitter
1.	Andre Serrano	Business Development Manager	@cryptoserrano
2.	Andy Murray	CFO	-
3.	Brad Miller	Engineering Manager	@BradleyDMiller
4.	Daira Hoopwood	Engineer and Protocol Designer	-
5.	David Campbell	COO	@alchemyDC
6.	Elena Giralt	Product Marketing	@elenita_tweets
7.	Francisco Gindre	iOS Developer	-
8.	Jack Grigg	Engineer	@str4d
9.	Janie Swingle	HR Assistant / Growth Coordinator	-
10.	Joseph Van Geffen	Design Lead	@geffenz
11.	Josh Swihart	VP Growth	@jswihart
12.	Kevin Gorham	Android Developer	@anothergmale
13.	Kristopher Nuttycombe	Senior Software Engineer	-
14.	Margaret Baily	Business Operations Manager and Assistant to the CEO	-
15.	Marshall Gaucher	Engineering Manager	-
16.	Nathan Wilcox	CTO	@least_nathan	-
17.	Sean Bowe	Engineer	@ebfull
19.	Steven Smith	Director of Engineering	@reldev
20.	Taylor Hornby	Senior Security Engineer	@DefuseSec
21.	Wil Moore III	Developer Relations Engineer	-
22.	Ying Tong Lai	Software Engineer	@therealyingtong
23.	Zooko Wilcox	Founder and Chief Executive Officer	@zooko
24.	Charlie O'Keefe	Engineer	@charlieok

Board of Directors

S/n	Names
1.	Alan Fairless
2.	Andrew McLaughlin
3.	Christina Garman
4.	Zooko Wilcox

Scientific Advisory Group

S/n	Name	Blockchain	Twitter
1.	Arthur Breitman	Tezos	@ArthurB
2.	Gordon Mohr	Thunkpedia	@gojomoMaller
3.	Mary Maller	-	-
4.	Vitalik Buterin	Ethereum	@VitalikButerin
5.	Zaki Manian	Tendermint	@zmanian

Zcash Founding Scientists

S/n	Name	Role/Post/School	Twitter
1.	Alessandro Chiesa	UC Berkeley	-
2.	Christina Garman	Johns Hopkins University	@CryptoGPS
3.	Eli Ben-Sasson	Technion	@EliBenSasson
4.	Eran Tromer	Tel Aviv University	-
5.	Ian Miers	Johns Hopkins University	@secparam
6.	Madars Virza	MIT	@MadarsV
7.	Matthew Green	Johns Hopkins University	@matthew_d_green

Outside Counsel

S/n	Name	Role/Post/School	Twitter
1.	Brian Klein	Litigation Counsel	@brianeklein
2.	Chris Hazlitt	Corporate Counsel	-
3.	Dana Syracuse	Cryptocurrencies and Financial Regulation	-

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Question 2

Describe the steps in creating a wallet for the Privacy Coin of your choice. (Screenshot required)

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How to create Zcash wallet

I will be describing the steps in creating a wallet for Zcash. There many digital wallet which can help keep our Zcash cryptocurrencies safe, private and in our control. But I will be describing how to create just one wallet, "Zecwallet lite". It is a fully featured shilded wallet for Zcash and also a full support for incoming and outgoing, z-address and t-address.

There are many cryptocurrencies in the cryto world, each and everyone of them have there own wallet. To create a Zcash wallet if you don't have play store App on your phone or desktop, you can click here to download from browser. I will be using Play store to explain how we can create a wallet for Zcash.

On play store, type "ZECwallet lite" in the search browser so that we can install it to our browser.

As we can see in the screenshot above, it display some names similar to the name of wallet I have typed on the search menu "Zecwallet lite". Click on Zecwallet lite,

Click on install and give it sometime to load. After when it as load, it will take you to Zecwallet lite page .

It will ask you if you want to create a wallet or maybe you have an account before and you want to restore.

I clicked on create because I want to create a wallet. The next page it will take you now if you are creating is the "seed page". Crypto wallet generally is like a bank which you must put optimum best to make it safe and the best way to keep it safe is by keeping the wallet seed because, it will still be your password to your account even if you lost your device. So, please make sure you keep your wallet seed and make it private for security purpose.

As you can see in the screenshot below I have successfully created Zecwallet lite for Zcash.

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Question 3

Provide an explanation of the reason you chose the Privacy Coin. (List the advantages and disadvantages)

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Why I choose Zcash

Zcash is different unlike most crytocurrencies which make every trasaction detail public. Zcash is a coin that gives confidentiality to protect user's privacy and financial history. It is a coin that can be spent, receive, and sent through mobile phone, computer or digital wallet. Transaction can be complete or confirmed quickly with low transaction fees. It gives equal right all of it user's. It's also a coin that is similar to Bitcoin and it is based on Bitcoin's codebase.

As we all know that Bitcoin is the leader of all coin in the crypto market but there are ways that Zcash is similar to Bitcoin. Some is as follows;

1. In the mining process, Zcash cloud mining is currently the same with Bitcoin.
2. The reward for Bitcoin mining is currently set at 12.5 per block. Zcash has the same reward per block.
3. Both coins have the same total cap of 21 million.

Advantages of Zcash

• Zcash Transactions can be confirmed with low fees.
• It gives confidentiality to protect user's privacy and financial history.
• Ability to view incoming and outgoing transaction details without revealing private keys.
• Zcash can be spent or receive in many ways. Through mobile phone, computer or digital wallet.
• Zcash as flexible option to shield transactions and hide the identity of the sender and receiver on the blockchain.
• It has potential uses beyond payment transactions.

Disadvantages of Zcash

• lack of fungibility
• Zcash Transaction expire after a specific number of blocks if not mined.
• Crowded privacy coin market. Zcash is a coin that is facing stiff competition in the privacy coin niche from other popular cryptocurrencies such as Dash, Verge, Monero and so on.
• Zcash has a limited privacy storage options.

Conclusion

Zcash is also a digital/virtual currency with a very strong privacy features unlike most crytocurrencies. It transact safely and effectively.

Am so happy to be a participant of this week lecture by @levycore and I want to use this medium to thank and appreciate Prof. @levycore for always lecturing us a very knowledgeable and practical Topics. I also want to say a very big thank you to those that will be reading my homework. I hope you find it knowledgeable?

Thank you!