Privacy Coin Zcash (ZEC) to Undergo ‘Friendly’ Fork

Zcash (ZEC), one of the largest privacy coins, will soon undergo its first "friendly fork," creating Ycash, an effort to uphold a few notable early tenants of the Zcash project including mineability on retail hardware.

Announcing Ycash, The First ‘Friendly Fork’ of the Zcash Blockchain https://t.co/tqPSC3GViZ

— Ycash Foundation (@YcashFoundation) April 11, 2019

According to the announcement, the fork will occur at block height 570,000 of the Zcash blockchain -- approximately July 18. Everyone holding Zcash at that time will receive the same amount of Ycash.

"We are launching Ycash to restore a goal — mining on commodity hardware — that appears to have been largely abandoned on the Zcash blockchain," added the Ycash team. "We are also launching Ycash to uphold a promise — that the Zcash Founders Reward would be forever capped at 2.1 million coins — that we fear will come under increasing pressure between now and the expiration of the Founders Reward in October 2020."

Here are the developments currently planned for Ycash:

At launch, Ycash will implement the following two changes:

1. Ycash will reduce the Founders Reward rate from 20% to a perpetual 5%, which will exactly preserve the original 2.1 million coin cap on the Founders Reward.

2. Ycash will direct the remaining Founders Reward in its entirety to a newly formed nonprofit named the Ycash Foundation.

Furthermore, either at launch or sometime after launch (but hopefully no later than around the time of the Zcash Blossom upgrade at the end of October of this year) Ycash will implement a third change:

3. Ycash will change its Proof of Work algorithm to an algorithm more conducive to mining on commodity hardware (like CPUs or GPUs). (Approaches like RandomX, ProgPOW, and various flavors of Equihash are currently being evaluated.)

Going forward, Ycash plans to continually leverage the strengths of Zcash by incorporating most changes made to Zcash into Ycash as well, especially changes to the zero knowledge infrastructure. Only in areas where there is substantial disagreement with Zcash’s approach will Ycash diverge.

This news comes roughly two months after the company behind Zcash rebranded from Zcash Company to Electric Coin Company to better differentiate itself from Zcash's non-profit foundation and the coin itself.

ZEC is currently down 2.8% on the day to $ 68.97, giving the coin a $435.2 million market cap, making it the second-largest coin in the AltDex Privacy Coin Index (ALTPRV).

More: Announcing Ycash, The First “Friendly Fork” of the Zcash Blockchain

Related: Zcash Company Rebrands to the Electric Coin Company

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Disclaimer: This article’s author has cryptocurrency holdings that can be tracked here. This article is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. Always conduct your own due diligence before making investments.

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