Mastering Blockchain - Second Edition

Zcash

Zcash was launched on October 28, 2016. This is the first currency that uses a specific type of ZKPs known as Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge (ZK-SNARKs) to provide complete privacy to the user. These proofs are concise and easy to verify; however, setting up the initial public parameters is a complicated process. The latter include two keys: the proving key and verifying key. The process requires sampling some random numbers to construct the public parameters. The issue is that these random numbers, also called toxic waste, must be destroyed after the parameter generation in order to prevent counterfeiting of Zcash.

For this purpose, the Zcash team came up with a multi-party computation protocol to generate ...