A lot of people have been working on ZCash for quite some time, but they expect it to be even longer before it reaches the level where it can be seen as flourishing. This has been on a lot of people’s minds and it is safe to say that this is an exciting movement.
These comments come from Zooko Wilcox, who is the founder of the ECC. This is the same firm who is behind the currency ZCash. He has made comments about the trajectory of ZCash and this was during a conversation that was made at the RadialXChange conference. This took place in February and Zooko was just about to set off on a world tour at the time. He had a promotional tour in East Asia and he was also planning on visiting Tokyo. He has also admitted that in the two years that they have been running, they have not been adding any substantial changes regarding privacy. They have also stated that they started their service as a privacy focused section of Bitcoin. In October they also underwent a huge protocol and this was named Sapling. They believe that Sapling is one of the biggest improvements when it comes to the protocol and the whole thing is absolutely huge. It makes privacy way more accessible and it also opens up the door for a ton of mobile applications. This is a moon-shot project and it was done by the Electric Coin Company. It then succeeded and ever since it has gone on to become a huge deal.
Wilcox believes that there is going to be another 3 or so years before the project really takes off and this is because they want to try and develop the currency in ways that are not really specific to privacy. They are in favor of some very ambitious scalability movements and they also believe that they need high levels of trust too. This will help them to reach the mission of empowering people and it will also help them to achieve economic freedom too. This will enable them to take advantage of a huge range of freedom and even opportunity as well.
Even though they believe that layer two is somewhat cool and that it has a lot of potential, they also believe that they need a somewhat scalable layer that can be utilized as being layer one. That is what they are pushing for in their company right now and at times they believe that they are in reach. There are other proposals at hand however. Wilcox has noted this and he has also stated that he wants to somehow extend ZCash so that it can be used as a programmable unit. This would make it a lot like ETH. Of course, the way that they would really like to do this would be for them to have zero knowledge, so that execution is completely private and even off the chain. All of these things would have to pass through something known as a community review and it would also leave them very open to a debate too. This is called the ZCash Improvement Proposal. Cincinnati have told CoinDesk that for the very first time, the ZIPS are going to be reviewed by the ECC and that they are also going to be making even more changes in the future. Of course, the initial implementation of ZCash is completely up to the grant giving organization. The foundation have stated that they have taken a lot of steps so that they can be more actively engaged in the protocol and they are also trying to run it alongside the ECC too. The metaphor that you need to take note of here is that he wants them to exist in a two multi-signature government and that the ECC holds the key to this. Broader decisions are going to be made about ZCash and these all have to be mutually agreed upon. This is going to be done by the Foundation and it is also going to be done by the ECC too. The upgrade network is going to be done by the ECC and this is going to be activated in April, 2020. Every single ZIP is going to undergo a review process, and this will be done by the ZIP editors. Both of these editors are going to have to agree on what features are going to be accepted. At the end of the day, it is not about what agreement should be done, it is more about agreeing that there should be in fact a general consensus.
Both of them also have to agree on what they see as being ZIPS. It’s not as much about agreeing what should be included because they need to take other things into account as well. The deadline for any ZIP proposal is to try and make sure that they are reviewed properly and they have to do this by the 1st of April. One of the proposals is going to introduce a brand-new polling feature. This is going to give users the chance to vote with the funds that they have, and it will also give them the chance to do this unshielded too. Another proposal seeks to lay out the building blogs for a private layer network. Interestingly enough, this is going to be done on the private layer network and it is also going to help people to take more advantage of the benefits that are available. This is especially the case for those who work in BOLT.
By the time any of these proposals are tested, activated and even approved on the MainNet, ZCash will then hopefully have their second software. This is called client implementation and it will also make it so that users don’t have to rely on the implementation all the time. In light of the new ecosystem, it’s safe to say that the new ZIP process is noting that eventually, if a lot of the consensus is compatible then this will be activated on a two-backwards change. This is otherwise known as Blossom, and the hard fork will help to increase the block time on the network. It will also split up the 20% block reward tax. This will be set into three wallet addresses. You will have one for the ZCash foundation and you would also have one for the Electric Coin Company.
The aim of this change is to try and decouple the once individual funding stream. This is on a legal and operational basis. It will also offer much more transparency to the structure and it will also make it part of the Founder’s Reward too. At the end of the day it’s just trying to make sure that it is easy to clean up and even distinguish the difference between the companies. The model is trying to make sure that the entire development is sustainable and it is also being done as a block reward tax too. Wilcox has noted that Coindesk have been copied into other currency projects and they have also launched it on the privacy coin known as Beam as well. Beam made its debut back in January and this came after another currency leveraged other technology too. This is otherwise known as Grin and it is safe to say that more awareness needs to be raised on this.
Of course, the emergence of these new entrants is going to be on the space and this is really positive news to say the least. Wilcox has come out to say that he doesn’t like their technology too much, but he does like the community. He believes that they are a win-win mindset and that they also like to help other people as well. He likes to help them too because he believes that they are on the same side of history. Zooko has also explained that he is going to try and prove that privacy coins such as ZCash are going to beam and that they are also going to be the norm in the future. When you look at the privacy enhanced currencies that were in the period of the 1990s you will soon see that this was done way before currencies were introduced. Wilcox then went to point out that after 10 years of constant struggling, that encryption is now becoming standard. In the earlier days, way before HTTPS was invented. When this did come about, people saw it as a way to try and make browsing private and they believed that this was dangerous. They thought that this would help people to break the law. This comes right from Wilcox himself. He now believes that the US Government is making people use HTTPS because it is much safer, and this could help users with their sensitive data. When you look at the struggle you will see that right now, governments are viewing currencies such as Grin, Beam and even ZCash as having strong protection in terms of privacy. This is dangerous and scary to them but in reality it isn’t at all. He then went on to say that in over 10 years, people are not going to say that this is a privacy coin. Instead, they are going to see them as being normal coins that you can use for normal business. They also are going to say that changes are required and that this movement is certainly a positive one.
