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.
Cosmochain is a complementary Company-to-Consumer platform that connects cosmetics product users and content creators to cosmetics product suppliers, including cosmetics companies, OEM/ODM manufacturers, R&D centers, and distributors. Through this platform, the Cosmochain Team aims to solve the aforementioned unmet needs of both companies and customers. All data collected from platform participants are kept confidential in this customer-centered ecosystem. Those who contribute their scarce time and attention toward producing and curating contents for others are compensated with tokens and receive pro-rata ownership of the contents they create. On the other hand, cosmetics product suppliers are able to actualize a wide variety of “on-demand” services on the platform by utilizing API that Cosmochain provides. Two different tokens and one internal virtual index make up the Cosmochain ecosystem: 1) The first token is an externally traded token called Cosmo Coin, 2) The second token as well as an index of contribution to the platform is Cosmo Power, which can be used to make payment within the platform and given out as rewards for activities, and 3) The one virtual index is called Cosmo Level. Cosmo Level, a reputation index, is designed to prevent abuse of power within the platform and can only be accumulated by actual activities and contribution. Having been assigned distinct roles within the Cosmochain platform, these three entities construct a healthy ecosystem. ● The success of the Cosmochain platform lies in the active participation of users – where customers create reliable data after trying out various cosmetics products and sharing the experience with one another on the platform. As a result, Cosmochain has designed its own transparent and fair reward system based on Steemit’s incentive model. ● The Cosmochain platform connects this user-created data to interested company participants and distributes the payment made by the company to customers as reward for use of the information. Through this reward system, Cosmochain aims to address two structural issues of social media-based platforms: 1) risk of inflation following the necessity of a long-term and great quantity of token issuance to grow the community, and 2) risk of decreasing attractiveness of contribution rewards after the inflation rate has been stabilized. ● In addition, the Cosmochain platform aims to realize an upgraded tokenization model that brings the power back to its users by redistributing the following: (i) the right to display ads in a user’s viewing space, (ii) the right to access a personally curated Marketplace, and (iii) the right to share personal data to partake in a study or survey. Simply speaking, the Cosmochain platform will go beyond simply allowing users to share onedimensional personal information. As such, Cosmochain serves the purpose of revolutionizing the cosmetics industry’s ecosystem by redistributing ownership and management authority of personal cosmetics data and contents to those in need, and through operations of transparent rewarding system for the redistribution of data.