Talk:Zcash/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Zcash. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

zCash Miner

This section should probably be replaced with paragraph explaining how zcash mining actually works and perhaps how it compares to bitcoin, etc.

Thoughts? – JonathanCross (talk) 14:58, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Updates

I have noticed that the Zcash Wikipedia page has not been updated in a long time, or still contains old information (such as some areas still referring to the Beta). I plan on slowly updating each section at a time listing plenty of references for every edit and remaining neutral in all instances.

If you have a question or issue with something I have edited please feel free to contact me any time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GibsonA (talk • contribs) 22:40, 11 May 2017 (UTC)

Exchanges

Heather-Hit is trying to place a list of exchanges that deal in Zcash into the article. In the latest there were 8 exchanges listed, two of them have articles. All of them are only sourced to the company website. One of the articles linked says it deals in Zcash, the other one does not mention Zcash. This looks like a directory, which Wikipedia is not. ~ GB fan 16:34, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

founders' reward

User:Verifiedaccount the source makes it clear that the "founders will end up with 10% of all coins issued; the 20% is only at the beginning and is evened out later. Why did you change it to emphasis the brief time at the beginning? Jytdog (talk) 04:17, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

User:Verifiedaccount This is where we discuss content. Let's work out what the article should say here, shall we? Jytdog (talk) 10:20, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

User:Jytdog

You are completely misreading the section that I wrote. It's not emphasizing anything unfairly:

Unlike Bitcoin, Zcash takes a "founders reward" of 20% for all coins generated for the first four years. When all 21 million coins have been generated, the founders will own up to 10% of coins in circulation. The founders reward is distributed to the founders, investors, employees and advisors of Zcash.

1. unlike bitcoin: used to parallel the sentence prior to it. "like bitcoin, zcash has a fixed supply of 21 million units" blah blah blah -- "unlike bitcoin, zcash takes a cut" blah blah blah

2. zcash takes a "founders reward" of 20% for all coins generated for the first four years: do you not understand that? they take 20% of all coins generated for the first four years. it is later explained that by the end of the 21 million supply generation, their stake will be 10%.

3. when all 21 million coins have been generated, the founders will own up to 10% of coins in circulation: this is to say that after those first four years are up, they will not take a cut any longer. down the line, years later, when all 21 million coins are generated, they will own up to 10% of the supply.

4. the founders reward is distributed to the founders, investors, employees and advisors of Zcash: this is to explain who the founders are

Long story short -- they take a 20% cut FOR THE FIRST FOUR YEARS. THEN, WHEN ALL 21 MILLION COINS HAVE BEEN GENERATED (AFTER THE FIRST FOUR YEARS, THEY DO NOT GET A CUT ANYMORE), their stake will be 10% of all coins in circulation.

You are reverting changes for absolutely no reason. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Verifiedaccount (talk • contribs) 09:07, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for using the talk page. Lets do one thing at a time. "Founders' reward" is a genitive plural construction. In English we use apostrophes to show possession. It goes after the "s" when there is a plural. So "dog's bones" (a single dog), and "dogs' bones" the bones belonging to multiple dogs. What is your issue with standard English spelling, "founders' reward"? Jytdog (talk) 04:58, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Agree with JYT here. Let's use sources to define what the article content should be. WP:NPOV dictates that the article can't have a bias trying to explain in this case that ZCASH is bad because it had some founders reward (looks like all these ICOs gave some coins to the founders), so let's not make a mountain out of a molehill in this case (even if ZCASH was not an ICO, it is all in the same ballpark). In each of these crypto articles there are editors that have a strong position on something. Let's keep those strong opinions limited to the talk pages. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 08:01, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Competing project

CredaCash Jackzhp (talk) 03:24, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Recent edits of technical content

The following Wikipedia contributor has declared a personal or professional connection to the subject of this article. Relevant policies and guidelines may include conflict of interest, autobiography, and neutral point of view.
Their edits to this article were last checked for neutrality on 2017-12-20 by Jytdog.

Lukedmor (talk · contribs) This user has contributed to the article. This user has declared a connection.

Regarding edits made today (2017-12-20) by Jytdog:

"content is not supported by the ref which does not mention zcash" — This content was supported by the ref, except for the point that Zcash uses zk-snarks. That fact is present in almost every other citation on the page (and is even mentioned on the page).
"unsourced" — It follows from the definition of fungible.
"ref is about zerocash, not zcash" — Zcash is an implementation of Zerocash, and has been since the beginning. It says so in the second sentence of the Wikipedia article. Here's the specification for Zcash which clearly states it: https://github.com/zcash/zips/blob/master/protocol/protocol.pdf
"revise per ref" — This change is effectively censoring the core contribution of the relevant citation. While the added material is fine, the was removed content was relevant and should not have been removed. Additionally, mention of t-addr and z-addr is superfluous when transparent and shielded were already mentioned.

I believe these edits should be undone or revised accordingly. Lukedmor (talk) 20:25, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Fixed formatting of the diffs... Jytdog (talk) 20:46, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

* the missing part is the most important part for this article.

this exactly the kind of thing you cannot do in Wikipedia. This is the place to write what you now. All we do here - literally all that we do - is summarize what reliable sources say.
yes it is clear that Zcash started with Zerocash. I don't know what changed and you cannot use a ref from before the change to talk about reality today. This would be like citing the original US constitution (not its amended form that existed today) to talk about something like voting rights. It is just not relevant.
the core contribution of that ref, in my view, is that very few transactions actually use shielding and few ever have. I get it that "fans" of Zcash may want to emphasize that transactions can be shielded but we care about what actually goes on. So much of the hype around these cryptocurrencies is what could be done with them or what they can do. Jytdog (talk) 20:51, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Referring to an additional citation — one of many already used throughout the article — would have resolved this missing element, rather than removing the whole thing.
Understood.
Adding a citation to the protocol should suffice, then? It is common knowledge among those who are familiar with Zcash that at its foundation is the Zerocash system — that cannot change (unless there is a fork that fundamentally changes Zcash and people still decide to call the new thing Zcash, an unlikely event and unworthy of consideration for an article about the past and present day). These sentences provided substance to the article by simply explaining the technology it uses, they should not have been removed. If anything, they needed more proper citation (such as the protocol spec).
If you think that is the core contribution of the work, I encourage you to read it again. You don't even need to look beyond the title — here is an excerpt from the abstract: "We then search for round-trip transactions, where [...] nearly the same number of coins are sent from a transparent address, to a shielded address, and back again to a transparent address. We argue that such behavior exhibits high linkability [...]". And the text you removed with your edit: "While staying within the realm of shielded transactions preserves privacy, there are conditions which permit linkability when both preceded and succeeded by transparent transactions of nearly identical amounts."

Furthermore, I believe you are imposing your own biased judgement based on the last two sentences in your above comment. The fact that few coins are kept shielded doesn't mean the core technology of Zcash is not worth presenting on an article about Zcash. By analogy, just because "very few" USD notes are $2 notes doesn't mean $2 notes should be excluded from the article on USD notes (this doesn't even account for the very different functionality between what there are "very few" of versus the rest).

Forks

ZClassic & ZenCash Jackzhp (talk) 03:24, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Ycash Elysianfields (talk) 06:05, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Sources

@Elena ECC: you left a message on my talk page here asking about sources. It is more difficult to add content to cryptocurrency articles due to sourcing guidelines consensus that is in place. Thus we are not using sources like coindesk, cointelegraph, etc as they are deemed as not WP:RS. I know this might be frustrating, but at wikipedia we aim to err on the side of reliability rather than completeness. Thank you! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 19:29, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Jtbobwaysf: thanks for the quick response. I'll update the proposed revisions based on that feedback.

Please use the colons to indent and sign your comments using 4 of this ~ mark Wikipedia:FOURTILDES. I suggest since you are new to put your proposed changes here on this talk page and we will give comments first. Thank you! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 20:53, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Use of the Zcash Protocol Specification and ZIPs as references

In what ways can this article reference the Zcash Protocol Specification (web-friendly URL that supports linking into the PDF, source file) or individual Zcash Improvement Proposals (ZIPs) (source files)? These are technical documents that precisely define the current Zcash consensus rules and protocols (or in the case of draft ZIPs, proposed changes to the consensus rules or protocols), and thus are reliable by design. However, my reading of Wikipedia:Reliable_sources (specifically this section) indicates that these would be treated as primary sources, and thus not generally usable as references outside of specific facts. It would be great to have some clarity here, so that future article modifications can use these resources appropriately.

I ask because I noticed that there are numerous technical mistakes in the current article, many of which could be rectified with appropriate references to the protocol specification. For example, the summary box currently states that the "hash function" used by Zcash is "zk-SNARKs". Putting aside the fact that a zk-SNARK is not a hash function, I assume that what the summary box means by "hash function" is "Proof-of-work algorithm". If so, this should be "Equihash", with a reference to "Section 7.6: Proof of Work. Zcash Protocol Specification, Version 2019.0.4 or later (https://zips.z.cash/protocol/protocol.pdf#pow)".

Disclosure: I am a cryptographic engineer at the Electric Coin Company (the primary maintainer of the zcashd reference implementation), and one of the designers of the Zcash protocol.

Str4d (talk) 00:08, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

It has been 3.5 years since I asked this question, and there have been numerous edits to the page in the intervening time. I would appreciate feedback on this from any of the recent editors of this page, so that future technical additions can potentially make use of the technical references. @Jtbobwaysf: pinging you because per the section below this, you have previously had opinions on how referencing is done for this page. Str4d (talk) 00:49, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Muddling of entities?

I think Zcash, Zcash Foundation and Electric Coin Company should be clearly discussed as distinct entities. Currently there is little to no distinction and Zcash Foundation and Electric Coin Company are kind of muddled together.

Zcash is the cryptocurrency. Zcash Foundation and Electric Coin Company (ECC) are two distinct entities. Zcash Foundation and Electric Coin Company are not the same company or different sides of the same coin. Zcash Foundation is a non-profit, while ECC is a for-profit business. In fact, they were in a small trademark dispute that spilled over into public because one of them holds the Zcash logo, and would not sign an agreement to let the other use it. Also see these blog posts from the ZCash Foundation:

To summarize, there are three things going on here:

Zcash, the cryptocurrency
Zcash Foundation, the non-profit
Electric Coin Company, the business

Jeffrey Walton (talk) 04:51, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree:

The current "History" section reads more like a history of ECC and ZF, and not a history of Zcash. For example, there is not a single mention of the network upgrade mechanism that is somewhat unique to Zcash, and only two of the six historical network upgrades are mentioned at all, and then only in passing.
There is almost no useful technical content on this wiki page about Zcash itself.

It looks like the last attempt (in 2020) to add content that addressed these two issues was rejected on it seems WP:RS grounds. See also my previous question regarding how to reference technical primary sources.

Additionally, the current article seems like it may violate WP:NPOV, as a result of e.g. WP:UNDUE.

Str4d (talk) 00:49, 14 February 2023 (UTC)