The Zcash Foundation, the firm behind privacy-centric cryptocurrency Zcash (ZEC), has donated $40,000 to a Canadian private messaging developer. The Open Privacy Research Society, a non-profit group working on Cwtch, a decentralized metadata-resistant messenger, has received 1,044 ZEC from Zcash, the organization announced on Dec. 3.

As described by Open Privacy, Cwtch is a platform for building decentralized infrastructure based on metadata-resistant communication applications. Derived from a Welsh word meaning “a hug that creates a safe space,” Cwtch is an extension of the metadata-resistant protocol Ricochet to support “asynchronous multi-peer group communications via discardable, untrusted, anonymous infrastructure.”

Open Privacy integrates the platform with anonymous payments based on Zcash’s tech

In line with the platform’s anonymity-focused vision, Open Privacy is also working on providing Cwtch users with anonymous payment options. As such, the firm has implemented a prototype system relying on Zcash Foundation’s native crypto wallet, ZecWallet.

In the announcement, Open Privacy wrote that Zcash is one of few cryptocurrencies that directly provide a way to transmit significant data alongside a payment and wouldn’t compromise the metadata resistance goals of Cwtch. However, the Zcash-based prototype doesn’t allow users to spend tokens as it was only written to demonstrate Zcash integration, Open Privacy noted.

Zcash is a major privacy-focused cryptocurrency project

Launched in 2016, Zcash is a major cryptocurrency focused on providing users with private transactions, similar to coins like Monero (XMR).

As reported, Zcash uses a special iteration of zero-knowledge proofs called Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument of Knowledge (zk-SNARKs) that allows native transactions to remain fully encrypted while still being verified under the network's consensus rules. According to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, zk-SNARK is an example of the only global anonymity sets that are secure.

In mid-November, an industry expert argued that Bitcoin (BTC) must introduce anonymity features like those provided by Zcash or Monero. Otherwise, Bitcoin will lose its censorship resistance, the expert declared.

At press time, Zcash is ranked the 33rd-largest cryptocurrency, with a market capitalization of $219 million. The coin is down 1.2% over the past 24 hours, trading at $27 at the time of writing, according to Coin360.

Zcash all-time price chart. Source: Coin360