ZKSNARKs Plasma ETH Scaling Solution of 500 Tx/s Launched on Testnet – Trustnodes Wow! I had no idea they were making this much progress to reach a running testnet version! Fantastic! This increases my interest in pursuing this sort of approach for Zcash. (Note: it is harder with Zcash because scaling private transactions is harder than scaling public transactions. The thing shown here is only a scalability improvement and not a privacy improvement for Ethereum.) (Also note, I’m kind of disenchanted with zk-SNARKs and wanting to upgrade to toxic-waste-free systems like STARKs and Bulletproofs instead of using zk-SNARKs for more things, but that again makes it harder and pushes back a probable launch date by about two years.)
That is absolutely wicked! I’m very much interested in Zcash’s future. This is VERY big news. Zcash is quite slow as it is currently but it serves its purpose.
One thing i’d like to ask is that is what are your thoughts of zk-snarks being put to use in different models like Proof of Research, like how BOINC projects allow you to use your computing power for research? (seeing that currently they’re ‘toxic waste’ mining. I believe Resistance is using zk-snarks and with this model so i’m curious if plasma would be something viable for them.
Apologies if this is too abstract of a question, I’ve been hopping on topics today and still getting my feet wet
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Glad to see you’re staying on top of this. 
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I imagine that I am not the first one to ask but what is your reasoning with respect to the democratization of zk-tech. My understanding is that you believe that the more the merrier but what is the logic that underlies your position?
My naive belief on the issue: the more ZCash’s value prop is replicated, the less value the ZCash currency holds - if not for it’s network effect or degree of censorship-resistance (neither of which are optimal yet), therefore ZCash must move quickly to gain the most adoption (I think black markets are the killer app) before its unique appeal gets replicated by other currency-attempts.
Also,
I am curious to hear you elaborate on this point. What are the shortcomings of very large MP-ceremonies to generate the CRS?
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For the record, I don’t think this is naive. It’s a reasonable view (although, of course, not the only reasonable view).
Personal perspective: Ethereum has a lot of problems. It’s cool and innovative, and it works to some extent, but the jury is still out on dApps in their current incarnation. On top of that, governance and monetary policy are sticking points.
Zcash itself is much more similar to Bitcoin, and IMO that’s a good thing. But ultimately, whatever is the most useful to end users will “win.”
Zcash Foundation perspective: The more that zk-SNARKs are deployed in legitimate cryptocurrencies, the better! We’ll continue to focus on Zcash for the foreseeable future, but it’s exciting to see this key privacy technology spread to more blockchains, where more and more people can use it to protect themselves and their funds.
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I also think that’s a good thing, but sometimes it feels like Zcash Co is moving to a different direction altogether with the Harmony Mining and flirting with PoS.
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While its great that zcash tech is being used by others to improve their own vision, zcash should be closely watching these developments and evolving fast. Bill Gates admitted in the reddit interview that both Apple and Microsoft copied from xerox, but how did it benefit xerox? One of the things Zcash needs to do now is making faster decisions of change, follow the set of leaders or put in place another mechanism that facilitates faster decision making. I also think Zcash has the best technically competent team out there but if iam not wrong crypto is all about community even salt was accepted as currency bcaus there was community…many shitcoins still around due to the same reason, so zcash also needs to put an equal or greater push towards community expansion through agressive marketing, right now its a race and those who have a larger community will have multiple opportunities to improve their tech, the first one to drop out will be those with weak communities.
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I would also look into an “AZTEC protocol” introduced there allegedly “turning Zcash into an dApp”
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A private way to spend cryptocurrencies, but the first thing you have to do is accept their data tracking…
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Website cookie’s aside, the protocol looks pretty cool.
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