Once upon a time, back when I last asked the question:
What are ZSAs good for?
The most concrete answer I got (in the thread @Shawn linked to) was:
“zBTC”
At the time, I thought that was a great use case!
Now I am not clear, and I believe that I am correct to be unclear, because I know that there are significant new developments that are relevant to the topic!
New shit has come to light, the availability of DEX swaps with NEAR.
To be clear, I think there are unique and exciting features of ZSAs that are likely to be highly valuable! That having been said, they should be accounted for in the context of the current landscape, including functioning DEXs (Is there only one at this moment? I don’t know the schedule for ZaVax, Maya, etc.).
For me, the broader topics of ZSAs and DEXs contain a lot of complexity that I don’t understand, so to simplify things I am just focused on the simplest and most concrete use case that I understand the most.
A Tale of Two Coins, A Thought Experiment
Let’s suppose you hold some BTC, and you value privacy.
Your objective is to acquire the privacy benefits of Zcash for the value that, at the beginning of the story, is in BTC.
Now the universe splits into two new universes DEX and ZSA.
In the DEX universe you swap the Bitcoin for ZEC using NEAR (maybe later Maya, or others).
In the ZSA universe you wrap your BTC in a ZSA “zBTC”.
What are the pros and cons of each approach?