ZcashZEC
The 2016 shielded-payments chain built on the Zerocash research — “the privacy upgrade Bitcoin never accepted”.
Zcash is the most-covered privacy chain on the show: Zooko, Sean Bowe, Josh Swihart, Kris Nuttycombe and Daira-Emma Hopwood. The magazine frames it as a Bitcoin upgrade that went elsewhere.[1][5][11]
Origins
Zcash grew out of academic work on private payments for Bitcoin: Zerocoin in 2013 and Zerocash in 2014, whose authors were Eli Ben-Sasson, Alessandro Chiesa, Christina Garman, Matthew Green, Ian Miers, Eran Tromer and Madars Virza[1][2][2]. Zerocash hides sender, recipient and amount, where Zerocoin hid only the link between deposit and withdrawal[1].
Launch
The Electric Coin Company announced on 28 October 2016 that the Zcash blockchain was live and the genesis block had been released[3].
Upgrades and incidents
Zcash has upgraded through named network upgrades including Sapling, Blossom, Canopy, NU5 (Orchard) and NU6.1[1]. In February 2019 the Electric Coin Company disclosed a counterfeiting vulnerability that had been remediated[4].
On the podcast
Co-founder Zooko Wilcox argued on S16 E29 that a shielded pool does about the best possible job of privacy at the blockchain level, and that privacy is added to money at rest rather than in flight[5].
Heard on Bitcoin Takeover
Asked on S16 E51 (October 2025) when he realised Bitcoin was not really private, Zcash engineer Sean Bowe said: “Oh, it was obvious it wasn't private from the beginning.”[6]
Other Zcash episodes: S16 E55, ‘Mert Mumtaz on Zcash, Privacy & Zillions’ (November 2025)[7]; S17 E28, ‘Josh Swihart on Zcash & ZODL’ (June 2026)[8]; S17 E49, ‘Kris Nuttycombe on Zcash at Ten, Hard Forks, the Dev Fund & Why Ossification Is Death’ (November 2026)[9]; S17 E50, ‘Daira-Emma Hopwood on Zcash at 10, Halo, ZSAs and the Fight Over Grants’ (November 2026)[10].
References
- btkZcash: The Privacy Moon Math Bitcoin Was Afraid to Include (BTCTKVR: Forks!) [archived]
- primaryBen-Sasson et al., “Zerocash: Decentralized Anonymous Payments from Bitcoin” (2014) [archived copy; original: https://zerocash-project.org/paper, TLS certificate invalid on 2026-11-13]
- primaryElectric Coin Co., “Zcash begins”, 28 Oct 2016 (archived on zodl.com) [archived]
- primaryECC, “Zcash Counterfeiting Vulnerability Successfully Remediated” (Feb 2019) [archived]
- episodeS16 E29: Zooko on Ecash, Bitcoin & Zcash — privacy at rest vs in flight▶ listen at 1:31:47timestamp transcript-derived, pending a listen [archived]
- episodeS16 E51: Sean Bowe on Bitcoin's privacy▶ listen at 14:08timestamp transcript-derived, pending a listen [archived]
- episodeS16 E55: Mert Mumtaz on Zcash, Privacy & Zillions [archived]
- episodeS17 E28: Josh Swihart on Zcash & ZODL [archived]
- episodeS17 E49: Kris Nuttycombe on Zcash at Ten, Hard Forks, the Dev Fund & Why Ossification Is Death [archived]
- episodeS17 E50: Daira-Emma Hopwood on Zcash at 10, Halo, ZSAs and the Fight Over Grants [archived]
- btkBTCTKVR: Forks! (2026 magazine) [archived]