On July 18th, 2019 the Zcash blockchain will be hard forked, creating a new chain called Ycash. Due to lack of a wider community support, BitGo will not be supporting the fork. We are reassuring our clients that this fork will cause no interruption to BitGo’s Zcash wallets and custody services. See below for links to instructions on how to claim Ycash from the airdrop.

Understanding the Ycash hard fork

The Ycash fork is an initiative independent of the Zcash Foundation due to alternative visions for the future of the blockchain. On July 12th, the Electric Coin Company announced that although they consider Ycash a “friendly fork,” they do not support or endorse the new blockchain.

The Ycash protocol will be different from Zcash in two ways. First, the mining algorithm of Ycash will be modified to accommodate commodity GPU mining hardware. Second, the Zcash Founders Reward will be reduced from 20% to 5% perpetually.

In order to assess community interest in this fork, we reached out to several top exchanges and we have not yet seen a significant support for this fork in the community. At this moment, BitGo does not plan on supporting the Ycash fork because of the lack of community interest. We will continue to monitor interest in Ycash and, should interest increase we will consider future support of the chain.

The Ycash fork will be utilizing two-way replay protection ensuring that transactions on one of the chains will not affect the assets controlled by the same keys on the other chain. Thus, BitGo does not deem necessary to pause Zcash transactions during this fork.

Claiming Ycash from the airdrop

The hard fork will grant Ycash to anyone who is holding Zcash at the moment of the fork.

To claim the airdrop, you can send your Zcash to ZecWallet or Exodus before the fork and import the same private keys to Ycash Foundation’s wallet after the fork. The Electric Coin Company has provided a set of instructions and best practices for this procedure that could be found here.

Alternatively, you can use exchanges or wallets that are supporting the fork for receiving airdrop. The Ycash foundation is providing a list of exchanges that are confirmed to support the fork, here. If you plan on employing one of the supporting exchanges or wallets to claim the airdrop, please be sure to check their announcement regarding their schedule for seizure of trading and distribution of Ycash to Zcash holders. Bitpie and Guarda wallets have indicated that they will be supporting the fork.