æternity is a public, open-source blockchain protocol that enables a platform for next-generation decentralized applications with high scalability. Its core components are written in the functional programming language Erlang and its smart contract language - Sophia - is also functional. æternity has a stellar team of developers including Robert Virding - co-creator of Erlang, John Hughes - co-designer of Haskell, and Ulf Norell - co-designer of the Agda programming language for formal verification. Unlike other blockchain platforms, the æternity protocol itself incorporates a number of essential technological features. State channels for off-chain scaling, oracles for real-world information, and a naming system for increased user-friendliness are all implemented on Layer 1. æternity also features SDKs in Javascript, GO, Phyton, Java, as well as a middleware and a development suite that streamline smart contract development. æternity incorporates the Bitcoin-NG consensus algorithm developed by academics from Cornell University and uses the Cuckoo Cycle mining algorithm for Sybil attack protection. AE tokens, the native cryptocurrency of the æternity platform, is used for both - an economic unit of account and as ballots in the community-driven on-chain governance votes.
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. How Zcash works Zcash encrypts the contents of shielded transactions. Since the payment information is encrypted, the protocol uses a novel cryptographic method to verify their validity. Zcash uses a zero-knowledge proof construction called a zk-SNARK, developed by our team of experienced cryptographers based on recent breakthroughs in cryptography. These constructions allow the network to maintain a secure ledger of balances without disclosing the parties or amounts involved. Instead of publicly demonstrating spend-authority and transaction values, the transaction metadata is encrypted and zk-SNARKs are used to prove that nobody is cheating or stealing. Zcash also enables users to send public payments which work similarly to Bitcoin. With the support for both shielded and transparent addresses, users can choose to send Zcash privately or publicly. Zcash payments sent from a shielded address to a transparent address reveal the received balance, while payments from a transparent address to a shielded address protect the receiving value. Check out CoinBureau for guide on What is ZCash.