Today, the market started a small second round of exploration, and while the mainstream is falling, ZEC is rising against the trend Is Gen Z Cash difficult to come true? Or is it the return of the crypto punk spirit? Anyway, as the pioneer of privacy coins, Zcash is probably not well known to friends after Defi Summer entered the market in 20 years. Here is a brief science popularization on the privacy track, and why Zcash has recently been called by Naval again The space is limited, and many technical details will not be discussed. I am interested in Laotie and can study some technical terms by myself The privacy race can basically be divided into four generations Zero Generation - BTC (Pseudo Privacy) BTC actually has privacy features, but not strong. The core implementation is based on UTXO and change address replacement technology. Simply put, Xiaoming needs to send 5 BTC from address A to Xiaohong, consuming a UTXO of 7 BTC. 5 BTC goes to Xiaohong's address, and the remaining 2 BTC change to a new address B. This address B is also owned by Xiaoming (automatically generated each time) For retail investors, it is difficult to track the source and flow of funds after a few transactions, but for professional institutions, with transparent on chain data, the entire source and flow of funds can be reverse collected. So BTC's privacy is a 'pseudo privacy' Key terms - UTXO (there has never been any BTC, only UTXO), change mechanism First Generation - Dash Monero Zero Coin Basically, those who entered the market around 2017 are very familiar with these three coins, and the privacy three swordsmen at that time 1. Dash - Weak Privacy - Based on BTC code development, it can be seen as a privacy enhanced version of BTC, using the best understood coin mixing technology CoinJoin protocol (Tornado Cash direction, but the technical implementation is completely different) Mixing the transactions of a group of people in equal UTXO stages and sending them back to everyone will make it difficult to track the entire UTXO chain. But privacy is limited, and very professional analyzers can still extract a lot of information. And it also requires a standard equal amount, which is quite troublesome Key Terminology - CoinJoin Protocol 2. Monroe XMR - Strong Privacy+Mandatory Privacy - uses ring signature technology that mixes real signatures with multiple decoy signatures, making it difficult for the outside world to determine the identity of the specific signer and essentially unbreakable. In addition, it can also hide the amount and use a one-time receiving address to hide the recipient. So after BTC moved from the dark web to the bright web, Monero took over from the dark web. But recently, with Qubic dominating computing power, Monroe is basically in a cool rhythm, and its mandatory privacy features make its regulation extremely unfriendly and difficult Key terms - ring signature 3. Zero Coin Zcash Zec - The protagonist of this article, the founder of ZK - Super Privacy+Optional Privacy When Zcash first came out, it opened at a sky high price (1Zec=1.9BTC, and the total amount is equal, which means that Zcash FDV initially surpassed BTC, although the time was short) Later on, the market didn't pay much attention and said that with deep black (99% privacy Monroe), do we still need pure black (100% privacy Zcash)? The price of Zcash has also been continuously declining until now, without causing too many waves But to be fair, although Zcash doesn't have much PMF, it has "epoch-making technical significance" in the cryptocurrency circle, after all, it is the first to apply the well-known zero knowledge proof zk SNARKs technology to cryptocurrency on a large scale. Without Zcash, there would be no Tornado Cash and various privacy protocols, and you wouldn't be able to see ZK L2 such as ZK Sync, Starkware, and the increasing number of ZK DAPPs currently available Zero knowledge proof is equivalent to completely encrypting transaction data, making the sender, receiver, and transaction amount invisible to the outside world, belonging to 100% super privacy. Even better, privacy is still an option, you can choose transparent transactions, partial privacy, or full privacy. This is much friendlier than Monroe in the current regulatory environment Key Terminology - Zero Knowledge Proof So the question is - Zcash's recent surge is mainly due to Navar's call for orders, and the phrase 'BTC is the insurance of fiat currency, Zcash is the insurance of BTC' is becoming increasingly popular. How should we understand it? BTC is the insurance of fiat currency - if the fiat currency system collapses (due to hyperinflation, capital controls, political instability), you can use Bitcoin as an "escape pod". Even if these things don't happen, the fact that the government keeps printing money is a certainty, and you can at least use BTC as a value storage tool to hedge. Many countries in Africa and South America are experiencing financial turmoil and high inflation, not to mention Zcash is BTC's insurance - Bitcoin's on chain transparency (open transactions) may become its weakness, and privacy coins like Zcash can provide supplements or alternatives. In this era where BTC is increasingly moving towards compliance, if countries or institutions begin to strictly regulate Bitcoin (such as monitoring wallets, restricting transactions, and tracking addresses), its Anti Sensing "anti censorship" attribute will be severely weakened. This should have been the original intention of BTC's discovery (well, part of the original intention, the original intention of peer-to-peer electronic cash is no longer there -). At this time, we still have Zcash to continue the spirit of crypto punk and defend financial freedom Ah, I suddenly realized it's too long for me to write anymore. I'll write Tornado Cash, Railgun, Aleo and other second-generation and third-generation privacy coins tomorrow Finally, let's talk about something fun that 99% of retail investors may not know - the well-known ZK Rollup (such as ZK sync and Starkware), which actually has nothing to do with ZK. Strictly speaking, they should be called Snake Rollup or Stark Rollup, or more academically, "Validity Rollup", but ZK Rollup is the least accurate. But that's not important, who stipulated that there must be a wife in the wife cake? Haha I won't explain the reason anymore, let me leave it as a thought-provoking question for everyone:)