Zcash (ZEC) is a new decentralized and open-source crypto currency that is being advertised as an anonymous solution that offers privacy and selective transparency of transactions. Zcash payments are still going to be published on a public blockchain like other crypto coins, but the sender, recipient, and amount of a transaction will remain private. Zcash relies on zero-knowledge proofs in order to guarantee the validity of transactions on the network, but without actually having to reveal any additional information about them. This makes it possible to conceal values and other identifying information from the public blockchain and users simply prove that the values balance out and that they are not double-spending the amount they want to send.

Zcash is currently in beta and running on a testnet only, the official launch and genesis block on the mainnet is scheduled for October 28th or in about 21 days from now. This is when the first Zcash monetary units will come into existence, based on securely generated zkSNARK parameters, and when the mining of Zcash will actually launch. Currently Zcash is running a contest for an open-source Zcash miner until October 27th (the day before the official launch) a prize fund of $30,000 for the winner(s) of the challenge. Do note that the winning CPU miner entry will receive a $10,000 prize, the winning GPU miner entry will receive a $10,000 prize and the other $10,000 of prizes will be distributed to the Runners Up.

Zcash is using the so called Equihash algorithm for the production of new coins. Initially the Zcash interface will be a command-line tool on Linux, and will not include a graphical user interface, nor run on Windows or Mac OS at launch time. Zcash’s monetary base will be the same as Bitcoin’s – 21 million Zcash currency units (ZEC) will be mined over time. 10% of that reward will be distributed to the stakeholders in the Zcash Company — founders, investors, employees, and advisors, this is the so called “Founders Reward”. At first, 50 ZEC will be created every ten minutes and 80% of the newly created ZEC will go to the miners, and 20% ZEC to the founders. Every four years, the rate of ZEC being created will halve. After the first four years the ZEC created per ten minutes will drop to 25 ZEC, but after the first four years, 100% of it goes to the miners. The end result is that there will ultimately be 21 million Zcash, and 10% of it, or 2.1 million ZEC, will have been initially distributed to the founders. With this approach, the founders are incentivized to support Zcash for the long haul (at least for four years), and they have limited ability to pump-and-dump.

Since initial public mining for Zcash (ZEC) will most likely be limited to CPU mining on Lunux only, there is already an interesting alternative available from Genesis Mining as they have started taking pre-orders for cloud mining of Zcash. The company is offering three different basic cloud mining plans that are with a 1 year term and no additional maintenance fees applied, so the price you pay for the hashrate is the final one. Currently you can get 0.1 H/s for $29 USD, 1 H/s for $280 USD and 10 H/s for $2600 USD. Do note that these are pre-order prices and there is no guarantee what will happen with Zcash once it launches even with the already big interest in it from users. You can also use our special discount code during checkout to get 3% off the regular prices for Zcash mining hashrate, just enter CryptoMiningBlog5 as promo code during checkout to take advantage of the lower price.

– For more information about the Zcash cloud mining pre-order from Genesis Mining…

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