A protocol upgrade, Zcash Blossom announced for next year. Coinbase listing would be the “price blossom” for ZEC in this year

November 13, 2018

In a world where online privacy is becoming more of an issue by each passing day, coins that focus on providing it are becoming more and more valued. Zcash is one of these so called “privacy” coins as it represents an open, permission-less cryptocurrency that can fully protect the privacy of transactions using zero-knowledge cryptography.

2017 was an excellent year for Zcash as the protocol developed, matured, and the ecosystem expanded. The market-cap surpassed $1 Billion, and it is now well supported on various exchanges.

After successfully deploying Sapling upgrade onto the network, that allows shielded transfers to be 100 smaller in size and at the same time be six times faster, Zcash team keeps going strong with the development by announcing their next protocol upgrade dubbed Zcash Blossom.

As the CTO of Zcash states, this upgrade is planned to be released exactly one year after Sapling, October 2019.

The list of goals this upgrade has set out to achieve is extensive and includes

tweaks to mining algorithm
splitting founder’s rewards
improvement of usability and security of fees and confirmations
altering the base consensus protocol to reinforce light client support
base consensus support for the BOLT second-layer protocol
turn off all support for Sprout addresses and funds stored at those addresses except the ability to transfer funds out of those addresses
add protections against rollbacks larger than some predetermined length.
custodian reinforcement – this includes a variety of potential features that can potentially protect typical end-users as well as specialized custodians. This may include recipient address verification, “vault functionality”, “I Got Burgled Button”, transaction cancellation, or transfer rate limiting functionality.

ZEC is still in the loop for Coinbase listing

We already covered this topic on multiple occasions, ZEC chances of being the next coin on Coinbase are pretty healthy although XLM is a favorite according to the most of the market. However, ZEC definitely has its own aces in the sleeve, some of them counted below:

Adding ADA or XLM would just be adding another dapp platform, adding ZEC would be a first privacy coin on Coinbase.

?If you are interested in privacy coins – Monero coin (XMR) along with DASH (DASH coin) is most known. Right behind them, ZEC (Zcash cryptocurrency) and many forks of it are fighting for their place in the spotlight.

Note that Coinbase will only add support for transparent addresses if they do list ZEC in the future as they are a very by-the-book company.

Another argument for Zcash is that it has a company with a steady budget (founders reward) behind it. This means there will always be enough funds to help push things forward with development and education. In addition, serious crypto funds and high profile individuals from crypto space (like Digital Currency Group, Pantera Capital, Barry Silbert, Fred Ehrsam, Winklevoss, Fenbushi Capital, etc…) have continued to invest heavily in Zcash with things like seed rounds and the Zcash investment trust. People who lead these funds are also well connected with decision makers at Coinbase and regulatory bodies which is another plus for ZEC candidacy.

It’s a great combination of Tech, Team, Community and Connections that is propelling and will continue to propel Zcash forward.

Zcash keeps working hard on becoming the dominant privacy coin; with a plethora of competitors going up against it, it should be interesting to see if they have what it takes to become the leading solution of this fascinating market.