Nathan Wilcox, CTO of Zcash, discusses the guiding principle behind Zcash, the pros and cons of using it, and its similarity to Bitcoin. All coins are created equal—that’s the motto of Zcash. With Bitcoin, the sender, recipient, and transaction amount are visible in the blockchain, meaning that with enough time and data, the history of individual coins can be traced back through its hops. None of these are visible with Zcash, which gives its users complete privacy. Transactions can still be verified, even without this information, using a zero-knowledge proof called a ZK SNARK. In this way, all that is ever known about coins is their value, making your money fully fungible and private.
