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.
Released to the public in 2014, Reddcoin is a decentralized social cryptocurrency that allows anyone to instantly send & receive RDD (its native cryptocurrency) payments on social networks with no transaction fees. It’s essentially the blockchain version of Venmo, Facebook Money, or Snapchat's Snapcash, all of which allow you to easily transfer money to friends and family via their respective social media platforms. However, unlike these major social media networks that require you to use their native platform to send and receive money, Reddcoin allows you to seamlessly integrate its payment features on multiple platforms like Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and more. Reddcoin is a social cryptocurrency that can be integrated with many different social media platforms for sending/receiving money with zero fees. It’s a peer-to-peer open-source cryptocurrency forked from Litecoin. It dedicates much of its efforts to facilitate the “tipping” of small amounts of RDD on social networks, done in a similar fashion to “liking” a post on FB. The PoSV algorithm is a new take on PoS which encourages both ownership (stake) and activity (velocity). Its tipping system has already been enabled on Twitter, Reddit, Twitch, and Justin.TV. Reddcoin was created on January 20, 2014, as a PoW cryptocurrency. On February 2, 2014, after raising $100,000 through their Initial Public Coin Offering (IPCO), Reddcoin was released to the public. On April 29, 2014, they announced that Reddcoin would transition from PoW to PoSV. In 2017, Reddcoin made an official announcement listing their team members, including developers John Nash and Leonard Simonse. In subsequent Tweets, they’ve publicly announced the additions of developers such as Bradley Ploof and James Tweeg. They’ve been active in updating the community via Twitter, but if you’d like to keep informed directly on the teams project progress, check out their GitHub or Trello (which includes the project roadmap).