Many of us at ConsenSys believe the Ethereum community should be excited about the launch of Zcash and the incredible partnership opportunities that exist to bring both blockchains closer to achieving our goals.



What is Zcash?



Zcash is a new cryptocurrency that launched on Friday, October 28, 2016. A clone of Bitcoin forked from the Bitcoin codebase 0.11, Zcash is differentiated from Bitcoin and Ethereum by the added functionality of completely private transactions. For that reason, Zcash has been hailed as “untraceable”.



To allow private transactions, Zcash employs a technology from a branch of cryptography and computer science called zero-knowledge proofs. Even the smartest mathematicians in the space describe zero-knowledge proofs as “moon math”and a handful of dedicated researchers worldwide have a complete understanding of the details of how it works.



What is a zero-knowledge proof?



Simply put, a zero-knowledge proof means you can prove to someone that you’ve done a computation without their having to redo the computation themselves. The effect is that you can prove a statement true without revealing anything about it other than that it’s true.

