The Zcash blockchain is live! We released the genesis block this morning, and people all around our planet have begun mining and transacting on it.
Our homepage links to a download page where you can find instructions on installing the Zcash software; an explainer video will be posted there shortly. If you feel confident using this kind of Linux command-line tool, then dive in! The more people who do so the better.
Our blog hosts a number of articles that Zcash users should read, including User Expectation of our Slow Start Mining, the Distribution of Zcash, and how we think the Zcash Evolution might happen. This technology is still an experiment and it is not yet shown to be safe and stable.
This is the first protocol of its kind. It is the product of years of scientific research, advanced engineering, and diligent security work. Zcash is a group of scientists and hackers who came up with a way to combine blockchains for immutability with encryption for data security. These two things are separately well understood, important, and widely used, but they’ve never been put together before now.
We encourage the Zcash community to experiment with us, and to mine, run a node, and join the growing and friendly community. Zcash is a consensual currency, a community network, and developer-supported cryptocurrency; your active participation makes the network stronger.
Why We’ve Come Together
Zcash is a technology, and like any technology it has multiple uses. I suspect that many of the best applications of this technology haven’t been conceived of yet.
But, the reason we in the Zcash Company have poured years of our lives into this project, and the reason so many people around the planet have stepped forward to join us, is that we believe this technology holds the potential to empower and uplift billions of people. We believe that Zcash and other similar technologies can, with years more evolution and hard work, enable anyone, anywhere to cooperate and to share resources, and to construct more efficient and more humane social organizations. This can unlock the nearly limitless potential of people to help themselves and to help each other.
This technology can do for cooperation what the Internet did for communication two decades ago.
As we enter the next phase of this experiment, let’s remember why we began, and try to help everyone to learn from our experiment and to benefit from it.