Zcash (ZEC) Pumps $40k into Research Organization to Boost Anonymous Payments
Zcash Foundation, the nonprofit organization in charge of privacy-centric altcoin, Zcash (ZEC) has donated 1044.41369 ZEC ($40,000 USD) to non-profit Canadian group, Open Privacy Research Society, and the funding will be used to implement new initiatives that would further boost the growth of the Zcash ecosystem, according to a blog post on December 3, 2019.
Zcash Foundation Donates to Open Privacy
Per the publication, Zcash Foundation donated 1044.41369 ZEC tokens that were valued at the time at $40,000 USD, to Open Privacy Research Society.
Reportedly, the donation was unrestricted and the funds will be used to implement the group’s new initiatives, some of which will greatly benefit the Zcash blockchain project.
One such project is a Zcash Prototype which the Open Privacy team has already implemented using Zecwallet.
Here, the peer receives a Zcash payment URI which can be pasted into their Zcash wallet, and once confirmed, the server returns a response.
The team said:
“This response can be pasted back into the prototype, the tokens are then unblinded and available for spending. The prototype doesn’t provide a way to spend those tokens, and has been written to flesh out the zcash integration portion of the work.“
Other Initiatives
Likewise, there is the “Token-Based Services” initiative where Open Privacy has begun exploring additions to the Cwtch ecosystem that strengthen incentives to operate untrusted infrastructure and at the same time, maintain anonymity for peers and servers.
According to the group, the initial stage of this project involved the migration of Cwtch from Ricochet, as the underlying protocol for Peer.
Another initiative is targeted at “Scalability, Mobile and User Payments,” and in this case, token payment will be separated from spending to improve support to mobile clients.
Reportedly, this initiative will enable users to share tokens among connected devices instead of depending on the mobile peer to complete battery intensive proof-of-work.
Regulators and Exchanges Target Privacy Coins
Privacy-focused cryptocurrencies have faced hard times with regulators and exchanges.
For instance, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global financial watchdog that gives recommendations to its 37 member countries has placed Travel Rule obligations on exchanges that trade privacy coins such as Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC) and others.
Also, Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange informed its U.K. customers in August 2019, that it will be delisting Zcash due to the concerns its new banking partner had over the virtual asset’s privacy feature.
The price of Zcash (ZEC) is up by 0.68% at press time, but the cryptocurrency is down by 51% in comparison to its price of roughly $56 at the start of the year.
In related news, on September 3, 2019, BTCManager informed that Electric Coin Company has broken its agreement with ZCash Foundation to share the protocol’s trademark.
