PIVX Now First Coin to Offer Both PoS and Total Privacy with Zerocoin Protocol
PIVX, a unique cryptocurrency that offers proof-of-stake minting, and masternodes announced on November 28 that they have successfully implemented the Zerocoin Protocol. Zerocoin is a fascinating technology that provides total privacy on a blockchain. Read on to find out more about this incredible new development.
What is PIVX?
PIVX is an innovative, private, and highly decentralized cryptocurrency that uses both proof-of-stake minting and masternodes. The currency is designed to support instant transactions and offer very low transaction fees, in part, due to its masternode system. Masternodes allow for currency supporters to dedicate hardware purely towards processing transactions quickly. Masternode operators are rewarded with PIVX tokens. According to official stats, the network has over 2100 master nodes online.
With about 55 million PIVX units in circulation, the altcoin has an overall market cap of $293 million. The cryptocurrency went live in early 2016, moving from just under one cent to an impressive five dollars each, representing an increase in value of roughly 70,000 percent in just under two years.
PIVX also institutes a unique distributed governance model that allows stakeholders to help determine the future of the community and currency. The governance model allows for the currency to be self-funding for its own development and growth, which will ensure that it stays ahead of other cryptocurrencies that do not have this sort of a self-funding apparatus.
On the leadership side, PIVX is guided by the hands of some of the smartest and most talented people in the cryptocurrency space. The team has also made several public appearances at cryptocurrency events and conferences. On social media, PIVX has a fervent following of dedicated believers.
Zerocoin Protocol Now Live on PIVX Network
In late November, the team announced that they had successfully implemented the Zerocoin Protocol, which makes PIVX the first proof-of-stake cryptocurrency to use the private and anonymous protocol.
Zerocoin is a second layer solution that hides transaction details and history on the blockchain so that it is impossible to track the source and destination of a given transaction. The technology was initially suggested in a paper written by several John Hopkins University department of computer science students.
As blockchain technology has gained more and more attention, those who are calling for a more private system of transactions have been looking towards more and more privacy-centric technologies. Most of these technologies, however, rely on traditional proof of work mining, which means that a large investment in hardware and electricity must be made to participate in the network. With the integration of zerocoin protocol, PIVX is the first proof of stake altcoin to offer this incredible anonymity protocol.
Following the announcement of the new privacy protocol implementation, PIVX saw a large increase in its valuation on several exchanges. The rise in PIVX’s value demonstrates that the cryptocurrency public at large is still actively looking for and supporting privacy-centric coins. Users are looking for privacy not only as a way to maintain anonymity but also as a way to seek security from potential thieves.
How zPIV Works
Zerocoin is implemented through a technology PIVX calls zPIV. You can think of zPIV as something like casino chips. You exchange PIVX tokens for zPIV at a 1 to 1 exchange rate within the PIVX wallet. Then, when you to send or spend it, the system converts the zPIV to PIVX, and the receiver gets it anonymously.
Anonymity is further provided through specific, cash-like denominations. This means that zPIV is only provided or sent in set denominations, specifically 1, 5, 10, 50, 100, 500, 1000, and 5000. Why? This prevents a potential snoop from looking for specific amounts of zPIV in a single transaction. If someone were to send 3.141592 PIVX, this specific amount could still be seen on the blockchain. Restricting zPIV to these round denominations makes it impossible for individual transactions to be followed based only on their size.
If a sender wishes to send 5451 zPIV, for example, they would send 1 x 1 zPIV, 1 x 50 zPIV, 4 x 100 zPIV, and 1 x 5000 zPIV. Again the casino chip or cash note example is the best way to imagine this for the sake of simplicity. According to the technical paper describing zPIV, limiting transactions to these 8 denominations is a security sweet spot, between convenience, cost, security and anonymity.
So is zPIV a totally new coin? Not quite. zPIV is a “protocol-level pooling” that exists entirely in the PIVX network. If, for example, a PIVX holder were to send tokens to an exchange via zPIV, the exchange would still receive PIVX tokens as normal once the transaction settles.
The Future of PIVX
Now that PIVX has such a compelling security product on offer, those seeking security will likely continue to flock to it in droves. As well, since PIVX is the only proof-of-stake cryptocurrency with such enhanced privacy features, investors looking for regular returns via minting can also benefit from the new network security features.
PIVX has shown incredible growth and adoption since its launch. This new development just puts it one huge step closer towards its goal of being the most advanced cryptocurrency available.
