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.
Groestlcoin is an ASIC-resistant cryptocurrency that boasts having “almost ZERO fees.” Although the coin itself is only pseudo-anonymous (like Bitcoin), the development team has ported a wallet (Samourai) to give you full anonymity. Groestlcoin is strictly a cryptocurrency for peer-to-peer (p2p) payments. The coin serves the same end-goal as other transactional cryptos like Bitcoin and Litecoin but accomplishes that goal with a different set of attributes. Groestlcoin accomplished a few significant “firsts” with its feature set. It was the first coin to implement Segregated Witness (SegWit) and the first to perform a Lightning Network transaction on mainnet. With the implementation of the Lightning Network, Groestlcoin has minimal fees. Transferring 10,000 GRS (~$6000 at the time of this writing) costs fractions of a fraction of a cent. Even if the GRS price rises 1000x, the transaction fee would be just a couple of pennies. Groestlcoin utilizes two rounds of Grøstl-512 for its mining algorithm. This mining algo is ASIC-resistant, for now. A developer going by the Bitcointalk username “Gruve_P” launched Groestlcoin on March 22, 2014. Since then, the team has grown to over 20 people spread all around the world. Most team members prefer to stay relatively anonymous, only sharing their first name and country of origin on the website. The team has been consistent in releasing new versions of the platform every three months. With such consistency, it shouldn’t shock you to hear all that they’ve accomplished in the last four years. The team activated SegWit in January 2017 and is currently working on Lightning Network releases for both their mobile and desktop wallets. The team and community have also built eleven different Android wallets, ten different wallets for Blackberry, and three for iOS. They’ve created more than ten desktop wallets as well. GRS has recently seen a rise in popularity, with most CPU and GPU miners moving away from networks like BTC, where ASIC miners have completely saturated the mining pool. With its robust features, focus on privacy, and innovative technology, GRS is a very lucrative choice for these miners, and has the possibility to be the next big coin that hits the market. While investing in any cryptocurrency is subject to their inherent volatile nature, the immense market potential of Groestlcoin, along with its pioneering technology and dedicated development team, make it a very strong consideration for investment.