The Electric Coin Company(ECC) announced the launch of Zcash Network Upgrade 5 (NU5). This will be the first huge upgrade to the Zcash privacy coin network since November 2020.
Initially, Zcash required a setup phase for producing public parameters that constructed and verified private transactions. This is called a ‘ceremony’.
But now, the upgraded NU5 consists of the Orchard shielded payment protocol, which will remove dependency on the complex setup “ceremonies” that Zcash has used in the past.
The firm says that employing the Halo proving system within the protocol helps Zcash users in making private, trustless digital cash payments on cell phones. For this purpose, a new address format called unified addresses will be used which cuts off the need to juggle multiple address types.
Halo also helps in increased interoperability by offering a system that can unlock private cross-chain proofs at scale.
Another acclaimed feature that appeals to privacy-minded crypto enthusiasts is the capability to automatically route any ZEC received at a united address to the latest shielded pool. This makes sure that every Zcash transaction is shielded by default.
Speaking of the ceremonies, we had reported that Edward Snowden too was a member in one of the original ceremonies along with Zooko Wilcox, Peter Van Valkenburgh, Bitcoin core developer Peter Todd and two others developers.
At $1.3 billion, Zcash is currently the 44th largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.