Zcash is a cryptocurrency that offers privacy and selective transparency of transactions. Zcash payments are published on a public blockchain, but the sender, recipient, and value of a transaction remain private. Zcash is based on peer-reviewed cryptographic research, and built by a security-specialized engineering team on an open source platform based on Bitcoin Core's battle-tested codebase. Our roadmap is designed to support long-term scalability of decentralized applications, including personal payments and enterprise transactions.
Zcash offers total payment confidentiality, while still maintaining a decentralized network using a public blockchain. Unlike Bitcoin, Zcash transactions automatically hide the sender, recipient, and value of all transactions on the blockchain. Only those with the correct view key can see the contents. Users have complete control and can opt-in to provide others with their view key at their discretion.
All Zcash transactions are encoded into private keys that are partially derived from a user's public key. This unique zero-knowledge cryptography allows users to spend their coins without revealing their identity or the details of the transaction to the rest of the world.