Developer Introduces Friendly Zcash Fork

The hard fork will occur on July 18^th and the Zcash Foundation will be involved in the new Project

Developer Howard Loo, member of the Zcash community, announced the creation of a new chain derived from Zcash hard fork, which will occur next July 18^th. The information was spread through a publication in the Zcash forum, where the developer stated that it dealt with a friendly fork.

Loo informed that the hard fork, which will occur at the height of block 570,000, will generate a new Ycash chain. The new project aims at restoring the mining of basic hardware, left in Zcash Blockchain, due to the proliferation of ASIC mining equipment. Similarly, it indicates a “fair distribution of currencies” and the maintenance of the total issuing in 21 million tokens.

Among the changes that the Ycash project offers with respect to Zcash, is the reduction of the rate of Founders’ Reward, which would change from 20% to 5%. This aspect aims at maintaining the original limit of 2.1 million coins for the founders, which, according to what Loo said, will be surpassed as soon as October 2020, in the case of Zcash. On the other hand, the new project will be supported by a non-profit foundation, which is the process of being created, whose name will be Ycash Foundation.

Besides, Ycash plans to change the algorithm of Proof of Work (PoW) that is currently used in Zcash, for one that favors the mining of basic hardware, like CPU or GPU. In this sense, they are evaluating RandomX, ProgPoW and several Equihash versions.

In the publication it is clarified that the owners of Zcash tokens, at the moment that the fork occurs, will receive the same amount of Ycash tokens. The ZecWallet wallet will also fork in order to support Ycash, and the official version will be distributed among compatible platforms.

Friendly Fork?

Loo indicated that this process is framed within a “friendly fork” as it does not derive from a division of the community. On the contrary, he personally stated that he will continue participating actively in the Zcash activities. In the same way, he said that he expects that advantage is taken in Ycash of the strengths of Zcash, at the moment of incorporating most of the changes made to the infrastructure of Zcash in Ycash.

However, this process does not seem to stick to the concept of “friendly fork” managed by Zooko Wilcox, Founder and Executive Director of Zerocoin Electric Coin Company (ZECC), responsible for Zcash protocol. In January 2017, Zoko explained in the official blog of the project that a friendly fork would imply two chains supported by the very/same community.

In the publication, titled “A future friendly fork”, Zooko indicates:

“I hope that when that moment arrives the Zcash community fills the space emptied in the previous matrix, displaying different technologies that are well adapted to the different needs, but still continue being tolerant and cooperating with each other, for the benefit of all.”

Zooko Wilco, Cofounder of Zerocoin Electric Coin Company (ZECC)

It is relevant to highlight that a friendly fork would require the participation and consensus of the community. In the case of Ycash, a representative of Zcash Foundation said in the forum of the Project that “the Foundation categorically was not and is not involved with Ycash. The information was confirmed by Howard Loo.

By Willmen Blanco