Hydro enables new and existing private systems to seamlessly integrate and leverage the immutable & transparent dynamics of a public blockchain to enhance application and document security, identity management, transactions, and artificial intelligence. Hydro enables developers to seamlessly deploy blockchain in their existing applications, without the need to create expensive infrastructure. If you are building a fintech app in investing, savings, or insurance, Hydrogen is already leveraging the Hydro blockchain technology. Through the Hydrogen API, you can build a blockchain application without being a blockchain developer. The proposed technology is called “Raindrop” - a transaction performed through a smart contract that validates private system access publicly, and can complement existing private authentication methods. The technology is intended to provide additional security for sensitive financial data that is increasingly at risk from hacking and breaches. Initial implementation of the Hydro Raindrop is performed on the Hydrogen API Platform. This modular set of APIs is available to enterprises and developers globally to prototype, build, test, and deploy sophisticated financial technology platforms and products. The Hydro Raindrop will be made available to the world developer community as open source software, to allow developers to integrate the Hydro Raindrop with any REST API.
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.