Before zcash goes live I would like to set up air-gapped cold storage.
Has anybody written on this topic?
Or, is there an equivalent bitcoin approach that will also work for zcash?
It’s not that different from Bitcoin or any other altcoin. Just generate a private key and address, turn them into QR codes and print them on a piece of paper
I believe OP’s question also includes how to create and sign zcash transaction offline, not just how to create address.
One way to guarantee information only ever flows one way is to transfer all information off a computer via QR codes. Another way would be to encode it as audio and output through a speaker (assuming the speaker doesn’t have a secret input.)
I have always used Bitcoin Armory, so I never learned how to do it manually. I suppose I’ll have to search old bitcoin discussions to figure this one out.
@hud, that’s correct, for proper cold storage the private keys must always be on the offline computer only, which means the transaction must be signed only on the offline computer.
Also note that you will probably want to store the coins offline in a transparent address, if you don’t want to use a computer for extracting coins from cold storage - I do not recommend creating a JoinSplit transaction by hand 