Hello Miners!

Today, we would like to announce a new mining opportunity at Slush Pool — Zcash. Why did we decide for this particular coin? What are its advantages and unknowns? But more importantly, how can you join the pool mining? What equipment will you need? All of this will be discussed in this article, so read on! Join us and the new exciting development in the world of cryptocurrency.

What Is Zcash

Zcash is a decentralized and open-source cryptocurrency that offers privacy and selective transparency of transactions. Zcash payments are published on a public blockchain, but the sender, recipient, and amount of a transaction remain private.

Zcash is based on peer-reviewed cryptographic research, and built by a security-specialized engineering team on an open source platform based on Bitcoin Core’s battle-tested codebase. Our improvement over Bitcoin is the addition of privacy. Zcash uses advanced cryptographic techniques, namely zero-knowledge proofs, to guarantee the validity of transactions without revealing additional information about them.

— Zcash (Source: link: https://z.cash/about.html)

WIRED also wrote a lengthy article on Zcash, should you be interested. https://www.wired.com/2016/01/zcash-an-untraceable-bitcoin-alternative-launches-in-alpha/

Why Zcash?

Zcash is an anonymized version of Bitcoin and therefore it can be considered as a proof that fully anonymized coins are viable. It takes privacy protection a step further than Bitcoin, making it attractive for many privacy-minded individuals. Furthermore, it can be mined on CPU/GPUs, making it available for many miners that are not interested in ASICs.

Zcash’s is also investing a lot of effort to make sure the coin will start without any issues. Its code is peer reviewed and audited, before the final release, in order to minimize potential problems.

Zcash Unknowns

As previously mentioned, Zcash is a completely anonymized cryptocurrency, based on Bitcoin. While this is its biggest advantage, and most likely its most distinguishing feature from other coins, one must always be aware of both sides of the coin. Yes, even Zcash has its unknowns and they must be fully discussed, for the sake of integrity.

Trusted Setup

In order to use Zcash, you need to trust that the developers of the coin have implemented the zero-knowledge proof correctly. Only under that assumption would your privacy be protected. Zcash uses this zero-knowledge proof implementation for efficiency reasons, according to their own words.

Detailed investigation of this so-called “Zcash catch” can be found here: https://blog.okturtles.com/2016/03/the-zcash-catch/

New Technology

Zcash is a completely new coin with new cryptography. There is no assurance that the code is completely spotless and devoid of bugs. Some have been found and squashed during the testing phases which means that the team attitude towards fixing is promising.

Developers’ Reward

The developers reward is the portion of your mined coins that would go to the developers of the coin instead of your wallet. This decision is part of the protocol design and was made by coin developers; not the pool. While there are moral justifications to implement such provision, such as the necessity to fund further development of the coin, for some this number might be too high. The reward is set to 20% at the beginning.

How To Mine Zcash At Slush Pool

Everyone can mine Zcash! As it is a new coin, it can be mined with GPU, making it in the reach of many former miners. A detailed how-to guide will be released soon.