Zapa Labs Solves PoS transition for Zcash?

LaymanFrankz · May 6, 2022, 10:51am

Hi Zodlers,

So I was lucky to read on twitter that someone created, to the best of my knowledge, PoS version of Zcash… is this true? I know that @zooko has reached out to him through twitter.

Repo: GitHub - zapalabs/zapa

tokidoki · May 6, 2022, 11:24am

To answer your question, I don’t think so.

The project developer also announced the project on Discord. It’s a Zcash fork on Avalanche, currently still in development. I’m not sure how does it work as I’m not familiar with the Avalanche ecosystem. Hopefully something cool turns out from it.

aiyadt · May 6, 2022, 6:15pm

It’s great to see someone experiment with Zcash node & tech running as a subnet under Avalanche. ZAPA validators also need to become an Avalanche validator on main-net which requires locking in 2000 AVAX ~$120,000.

github.com

zapalabs/zapa/blob/master/tokenomics.md

# ZAPA Tokenomics

ZAPA is the native coin of the Zapa subnet. All transactions strictly involve the sending and receiving of ZAPA. 
It's possible other chains will exist in the future for transacting other assets privately, but as of this writing,
ZAPA is the only coin which gets transacted on the ZAPA subnet

## Overview

Zapa is an Avalanche subnet, and as a consequence, Zapa maintains independent state from the Avalanche primary network chains while sharing common validators with 
the primary network chains. See [Subnet FAQ](https://support.avax.network/en/articles/6158840-subnet-faq) for more information on Avalanche subnets.

![Validator](./validator.png)

Above is a view into how a Zapa validator fits into the overall network. Each Zapa validator must also validate the Avalanche primary network. As a reward
for also validating the Zapa chains, Zapa validators earn ZAPA detailed below.

## Validator Rewards

Validator rewards are divided into two components, transaction fees and a block reward for producing a block. Each ZAPA transaction has a flat fee of 0.00001 ZAPA. Currently, each
block producer receives a reward of 10 ZAPA. Currently, supply is capped at 21 million ZAPA with a descending block reward structure.

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I’m excited about this experiment and look forward to how much value can be locked inside a private shielded network running under a public network & avalanche consensus mechanism. ZAPA is a huge improvement over pass-through privacy tech like Sherpa Cash. https://sherpa.cash/

Zcash on the other hand is moving ahead to trustless pools & building Shielded Assets, and ZEC integrations with the crypto ecosystem continue to grow every day.

Shawn · May 6, 2022, 9:17pm

Interesting stuff

Milton · August 7, 2022, 6:40pm

I think it would be a good idea for Zcash to become an Avalanche subnet. Let the Avalanche team work on consensus and other infrastructure such as wallets, so the ECC and other Zcash devs could focus solely on the Zcash VM which is where their expertise and competitive edge lies.

It’s true that it takes 2000 AVAX to become an active validator, but let’s look at the alternative. If Zcash were to become a pBFT chain based on Tendermint (which is what the ECC is leaning towards if recent hirings are anything to go by), active validators would be capped to the top ~175 validators. To crack the top 175 validators in Cosmos you need over 40000 ATOM, which is over $400,000 at current prices. I imagine it would cost something similar in a Tendermint-based Zcash chain to become an active validator.

Since Tendermint seems to be the currently preferred solution by the ECC, let’s compare a couple of other things. Cosmos time to finality is 6 seconds, for Avalanche it’s 1 second. Current interop reach in Cosmos is still great, even with the collapse of Terra, and subnet interop is not yet live in Avalanche (you can also see there are barely any active subnets in Avalanche). But Avalanche subnets are still in their infancy and believe me they will explode. Another point for consideration is that Avalanche subnets have the choice between two different consensus algorithms, Snowman and Avalanche, depending on whether you need a totally ordered chain (smart contracts), or could do with a partial order DAG. I see that the Zapa Labs implementation uses Snowman consensus, but seeing as Zcash has no smart contract functionality (and will not in any near future as private smart contracts still have major unsolved scaling problems unless you use trusted hardware) I see no reason Zcash couldn’t be modified to be a DAG instead of a blockchain, and thus use the even faster Avalanche consensus. AFAIK there is no DAG-optimized version of Tendermint. I see there is a bulletpoint to research DAG-based systems on the Zcash Github, has there been any words from devs on this?

Zcash would be one of the if the not the biggest subnet on Avalanche, and is such a high profile name that I think the Avalanche team would not hesitate to integrate good Zcash support in their infrastructure such as their sweet looking wallet.

offchain · November 28, 2023, 7:22pm

so it this still happening? dev posted on twitter, zooko asked him to dm him and then complete silence. why no updates?

zooko · November 28, 2023, 10:31pm

I talked to him one or two times and generally just encouraged him to do it. I vaguely recall that the only feedback I offered him was that the project should give the ZEC unit a special place — not just equal with any other token. I believe that for the project to support ZEC would have required a bridge to Zcash. I vaguely recall thinking that since there wasn’t a trust-minimized bridge, this was a potential blocker. He seemed smart and sincere to me. I think I followed up at some point a while later, just in text messages, and he told me that he’d moved on from the project.

zooko · November 28, 2023, 10:32pm

Maybe he’d like to come back and restart it now that Kit Sturgeon’s “Red Dev” team is implementing a bridge thanks to funding from ZCG.