Hi investors, Dean (@deanliu) and Dan (@tradealert) are back and today we're talking about an intriguing privacy platform called ZenCash.

In a Nutshell.

ZenCash is, in its current form, a permission-less platform for privately sending money and messages.

You can think of it as a mix between Zcash (privacy coin) and Telegram (encrypted messaging).

The ZenCash team is also working on two additional applications:

• ZenPUB: which will allow users to privately publish content on the network;
• ZenHIDE: which will allow domain fronting.

The platform is secured by a network of aptly named Secure Nodes (7027 of which are in operation at the time of writing) which communicate through end-to-end encrypted channels making the network extremely privacy-respecting and resilient.

The ZenCash network is actually the largest privacy network in operation in the whole cryptosphere.

Finally, ZenCash is powered by the ZenCash token which is a fork of Zclassic, making it a distant relative to both Zcash and Bitcoin.

So why exactly should you care about ZenCash?

I- Passive Income.

As we mentioned before, the Zencash network is secured by nodes called SecureNodes (SN). SN are simply computers that run a ZenCash wallet (called a Swing Wallet) and make decisions on the ZenCash network such as locking transactions or (in the future) participating in the governance of the platform.

A SN can be set up by staking 42 ZenCash coins as collateral into a Swing Wallet which is available on the project's website. At current price a SN will cost you around $1400.

Secure nodes don't have as high a ROI as most other MN coins as they only get rewarded 3.5% of the total mining reward divided between the total number of secure nodes. However as the project will gain in traction (and gain in price) it might soon become very expensive to own a full SN so $1400 might not actually be that big of an investment especially considering the price of other masternodes, most of which are run by anonymous developers who routinely abandon projects.

This takes us to the ZenCash team.

II- The Team.

Just like the network, the team is distributed across the globe and now includes well over 50 members (not all represented in the image below), which is very impressive for a grass root project which didn't have an ICO.

The chief scientist of the project is Rob Viglione, a Phd in cryptofinance, ex-Bitshares but also a somehow new figure in the space. You might also recognize Charles Hoskinson from IOHK (the company behind the development of Cardano) listed as an adviser for the project.

Unlike many projects, here there seems to be an actual relationship between the project and its adviser as Charles and Rob have been seen together in multiple podcasts such as this one:

The team seems well managed and you can follow their work thanks to biweekly updates where key members of the project take turn to talk about their progress.

III- Not an ICO coin.

Another important aspect of the project is that it didn't spawn from an ICO. This aspect is in our opinion particularly important for three reasons:

• ZenCash coins are not likely to be considered securities with regard to the SEA of 1934 (unlike 99% of ICO coins) which means that they are (in theory) relatively shielded from being de-listed from major US (and foreign) exchanges once more stringent regulations around crypto investment and trade will start being implemented;

• Unlike ICO tokens which are (at best) accessory to the real project they help fund, the ZenCash coin is the core asset of the platform. This mean that the interest of the team is aligned with the interest of the community of holders and this will become even more the case once the treasury system is implemented but we'll get back to that a little bit later;

• Therefore you can see owning ZenCash akin to owning equity on the ZenCash network itself unlike ICO tokens which are mere glorified utility tokens sales and don't allow "investors" to touch equity.

IV- The Roadmap.

We've kept the best last because this is by far the most exciting part of the project. The team is working on a great deal of items which you can follow the development on their Trello Page

Among the most interesting items on their road map are:

• a Treasury system developed in cooperation with IOHK which will allow the team more independence and the community to democratically fund projects based on the ZenCash protocol without the need to crowdsource or (God forbid) have an ICO;

• a LEDGER integration which will allow you to store your ZenCash securely on a hardware wallet;

• a DAG (think IOTA) architecture for solving the scalability problem which could bring instant and fee-less transactions to the network;

• InterPlanetaryFileSystem (IPFS) deployment on Secured nodes for boosting the publishing capabilities of the platform;

• and many more neat features to discover...

So that's it for today guys, if you'd like to know more about the project, you can head over to their website, join their (very active) Discord or read their whitepaper.

We hope you've learned something new and don't forget to re-steem, upvote and follow @tradealert and @deanliu if you like our featured content.
Cheers,

Dan & Dean.