What is ZenCash?

So by now you’ve might have heard about ZenCash, but what is it? And what makes it different than other cryptocurrencies?

Privacy Coin for Secure Transactions
ZenCash is a privacy coin. Privacy coins allow users to send secure, off-the-grid transactions to other users. So if I wanted to send you 1 Zen, I would just send it to your address from mine. Zen also has the capabilities to include private messages with their transactions. So users can include messages with their transactions. These messages can add context to payments.

Secure Anonymous Publishing Platform
ZenCash can also be used for secure and anonymous publishing. End-users can provide private communications on blockchain, enabling worldwide anonymous publishing. This allows users to safely and anonymously create posts, without revealing their identity. In my opinion, I think this avenue for anonymous posting is one of the features that will be critical to ZenCash’s success.

Minable Cryptocurrency
ZenCash is a minable cryptocurrency or a POW (Proof of Work) cryptocurrency. That means when I send you ZenCash, it needs to be verified on the blockchain. The miners do the work behind that by connecting their mining rigs to the ZenCash network to verify transactions and solve the equihash algorithm on the blockchain. They essentially run the network for ZenCash. In exchange for the mining and contributed computing power, they receive block rewards. For every block that is solved, pieces of Zen go to a mining pool where people who built the GPU miners and who are connected to the ZenCash network, receive a small token of ZenCash for their work. The work is essentially outsourced (which allows the network to be decentralized) and then the work is paid for. This decentralization is a key component of cryptocurrency.

Now that you know a little about ZenCash and how to use it, let’s get into some of the history and what makes it different than other coins.

History of ZenCash
ZenCash is essentially the great grandson of Bitcoin. Bitcoin, the OG of crypto, was the originator of cryptocurrency. ZenCash was derived from ZClassic (ZCL), which was forked from ZCash (ZEC), which was ultimately a clone of Bitcoin (BTC). ZenCash was created essentially to birth a new crypto that could meet their goals and ideologies under their control.

Ultimately, ZenCash is Bitcoin with added security and anonymity components, a different goal, and a development team behind it.

So why do we need it when there’s already Bitcoin and ZCash?
One noteworthy difference is that ZenCash takes 8.5% of each block mining reward to back operations, development, and marketing of Zen to the rest of the world. This is crucial; some currencies don’t realize it takes a ton of time and money to develop and market a product. If no one knows about a currency, it has no use or value and it’s never going to take off.

3.5% of each block mining reward also goes to secure nodes. Secure nodes are very complex and in-depth, but essentially they are what form the foundation for what makes a widespread, encrypted communications network. The 3.5% goes to the people who host those nodes, allowing the network to be secure, stable, anonymous, and decentralized.

ZenCash also has a very active and talented team, but don’t take my word for it. Head over to ZenCash’s slack and talk the team yourself and join over 2,250 members in the ZenCash community.

Hopefully this gave you a good breakdown of what is ZenCash, how it works, what it can be used for, and what makes it unique. The widespread adoption of something like ZenCash could really change the world and how we communicate in it. This is going to take off no matter who is leading it, but I think ZenCash has a great team and the capabilities to do so. By getting on the currency now, you could support a mission like that.

There’s a lot to learn about ZenCash. If you’d like to learn more, check out some of the following or stay tuned for more ZenCash related posts:

ZenCash Website
ZenCash Blog
ZenCash on Bitcointalk
ZenCash on Youtube
ZenCash on Reddit
ZenCash on Facebook
ZenCash on Slack