Here’s Why Zcash Could Trend Upward, ZEC Prepares for Major Upgrade

Zcash and privacy coins could be back in vogue. Two weeks they began moving upwards, following an oppositive sentiment in the market, and scored profits of around 11% for ZEC’s price, and 15% for Monero (XMR).

Related Reading | Monero And Zcash Take Off With 15% Gains, Here’s What May Have Spurred The Rally

ZEC’s price has returned to move back in tandem with the rest of the crypto market. At the time of writing, ZEC trades north of $160 with a 2.3% loss in the past 24 hours.

ZEC with minor gains on the daily chart. Source: ZECUSDT Tradingview

This rally was driven by a potential demand for privacy coins, as the conflict between Russia and Ukraine potentially forced certain individuals to transfer their wealth into digital assets. Monero and Zcash could have benefited from this trend.

In addition, the U.S. administration, led by President Joe Biden, passed an executive order (EO) on cryptocurrencies. Celebrated by a majority of the crypto industry, the EO also contemplates the possible implementation of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) supported by the U.S. Federal Reserve (FED).

Still under exploration from U.S. entities, if the country decides to move forward with a CBDC, citizens could be subjected to more scrutiny, and the state could gain more control. Under this scenario, Zcash and Monero could become critical assets for privacy-seeking individuals.

The ZEC’s price rally could gain fresh momentum, as the Zcash Foundation announced its biggest mainnet update since 2020. Dubbed Network Upgrade (NU5), Matt Markewicz, an analyst at crypto research firm Messari, broke down the details via his Twitter account.

The analyst claims this update will improve Zcash’s privacy and scalability capabilities. This could provide a boost for ZEC’s fundamentals as the network advances towards the Halo 2 proving system, according to Markewicz.

Zcash will remove trusted setups, and proof composition, said the analyst while adding the following on the implementation of the Halo system:

Halo enables enhanced scalability and privacy by changing the underlying cryptographic primitives that power the system. End-users can easily verify large amounts of data by confirming a proof of proofs, like zero-knowledge inception.

Zcash Moves To Upgrade Network, The Ace In The Hole

Furthermore, said Markewicz, the network won’t require users to destroy data that could be used by bad actors. This is one of the steps to mint new ZEC, the analyst said.

Along with the upgrade, the developers in charge of maintaining ZEC are expected to, Markewicz said, shift to a “more product-centric focus. Thus, they will create more tools and resources to ease development on this network and will improve the user experience.

Perhaps the most bullish factor for Zcash and the price of ZEC it’s the potential migration to a Proof-of-Stake consensus and the implementation of components of the Cosmos infrastructure. The analyst speculates about the introduction of IBC, a protocol that allows communication between the different networks using it.

Related Reading | Monero And Zcash Take Off With 15% Gains, Here’s What May Have Spurred The Rally

This could mean the potential implementation of assets with Zcash’s privacy capabilities running on Terra, and other chains running on the Cosmos infrastructure. A new use case implies new users, and more adoption leading to possible new prices.

There are even rumblings of migrating to Proof of Stake by implementing components of the Cosmos stack. IBC? Interchain shielded assets? The multichain design space is still largely unexplored, but an IBC-compatible Zcash running on PoS would open up a world of new use cases.

— Matt Markewicz (@m_mark_0) March 18, 2022