Zcash Fungability

Moved from market discussion thread.

yeah I wasnt sure if you understood fungibility as I was talking about it as you keep mentioning markets…

fungible in that any 2 units of ZEC are the same

any unit with a history is not fungible as it is not the same as the other unit

these units if used in illegal transactions can be blacklisted

therefore affecting the overall value of the currency, or in this case, crypto

Monero IS fungible because its units hold no history - all of the units are the same

ZCash is not fungible because some units hold history.

I want to know your opinion on how this affects the future Valuation of the currency as you are supposed to be a “digit assets specialist” but seems your lacking in knowledge…

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still no one talks about fungibility …
i was not really debating monero vs ZCash…
I was asking about Valuations of ZCash and how fungibility effects such Valuations
I dont care about opinions…
I was only comparing Monero to ZCash so that the “expert” could understand…
obviously no experts here…
we need an accountant here…

@cryptomined Zcash solves fungibility completely and I’ll try to explain how…

There is no intrinsic “history” stored inside of a coin itself, the history is entirely contained within the blockchain, which is essentially a plain text database containing every single transaction since the genesis block. With a completely transparent blockchain like Bitcoin, one can easily trace each coin all the way back to the block in which the coin was created (i.e. when the miner received the coin as a block reward). Because of this transparency, one Bitcoin is not necessarily equal to another. Merchants may refuse certain Bitcoins because they have a tainted history, such as being used in illicit transactions. Certain addresses may be blacklisted, which could lead to a chaotic system of good and bad Bitcoins.

Zcash removes the possibility of “bad coins” through encryption: When using z-addresses, the transaction amount, along with sender and receiver addresses, are encrypted on the blockchain. A person can only view the transaction amount or sender/receiver addresses if they have a specific view key, which is controlled by the sender. Therefore, there is no plain text history accessible through the blockchain. The transaction history is still stored on the blockchain, but only in encrypted form. You need the view key if you want to actually see the details of the transaction.

Without a fully transparent transaction history, there is no possibility of performing blockchain analytics to the same effect as with Bitcoin. Using a z-address, it becomes trivial to “wash” coins in a way that permanently obscures the coin’s origin. Tracing the coin backwards through it’s transaction history will only allow a person to trace it back to it’s last encrypted transaction. Passing your coins through a z-address will be sufficient to obscure any prior transaction history.

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cool thanks for that explanation, so a z-addr does wash a coin of its history - of its previous t-addr uses.
that answers my question, thank you :slight_smile:

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Exactly. I assumed you knew this, which is why I couldn’t understand why you were asking about fungibility in the prospectus thread.

ZCash is hands-down the most fungible cryptocurrency around, with zkSnarks there’s no need for mixing, or other crude ways to obscure history. That’s one of the reasons for the hype. The fungibility is real! :smiley:

well i figured such, but was not 100% sure about it

BUT what I was really asking was how does fungibility affect the valuation of the future value of the currency…

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One need only look at the steady rise of Monero and Dash over the last year for what value the market places on privacy and fungibility. It also doesn’t hurt that Edward Snowden and other people concerned with privacy are tweeting about it.

ok maybe more so the lack of fungibility effecting the future value
as ZCash is fungible and not fungible at the same time
was just a bit confusing for me
i guess the chance of a coin being used for an illegal transaction using a t-addr is low, so blacklisting chances are low, so lack of fungibility with t-addr shoud not really effect the supply

i think thats what I was more or less curious about

funny that shawn couldnt answer that but could step in to say there is no ZCashClassic…
you would think they would either take part in topics or not… kinda strange… guess he just doesn’t like me :slight_smile:
thats what happens when you become infamous

The fact that Zcash is versatile in that way will allow for innovative wallet integrations where someone simply has a private/public button to click before sending a transaction. There are also many reasons people, organizations and companies would want to send money in private and they are perfectly legal. While there is a huge focus on the darknet use of this technology, something like sending money to Wikileaks or hiding taxable money from a government may also be interesting and valuable.

Even simply paying employees via blockchain without anyone knowing how much you’re paying is a big deal and totally legal.

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hahahaha lol! who changed the topic title?

yeah sure there are many legal and illegal ways to use the technology
as long as it works, its all the same

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Zcash is the elephant in the room

The big flaw with all these digital coins is that they are and will be very unpredictable for a long time

For that reason you will probably never see them in use at your favourite stores etc

Can you imagine trying to get a refund on something ?

Or finance?

Or a mortgage ?

Yeh hold on while i get my calculator out and try see what your money was worth when you bought this

The blackmarkets are the only real driving factor at the moment for bitcoin. Its only a matter of time…

well monero has true fungibility, Zcash does not, whats your opinion on that?

also with large transactions, the sender and receiver could still be figured out, so is it 100% anonymous? can you really say that?

ive started mining some ZClassic now

well people have been predicting a 0.1 BTC value for a while now, so your prediciton is not exactly earth shattering, no offense.

no problem, but would still like to understand more on how fungibility affects ZCash vs monero. you never really answered that.

just curious how it affects the future value of a currency

I read some about it, but im sure a lot of people do not even understand fungibility and myself would like a deeper understanding on how it affects ZCash

as we know bitcoin is not anonymous due to its lack of fungibility
the USD is anonymous due to its fungibility
Zcash is kind of in the middle, so just curious to learn more about that

maybe I will have to ask Zooko soon :slight_smile:

although it can be sent anonymously, does that change the underlying fungibility of the currency? is the sent z-addr ZCash fungibile? or does the actual ZEC hold history previous to that transaction?

I think zookos a cool guy, i think i can get an answer if i ask him :slight_smile:

so Monero is not true fungibility???

not really cause you have not answered if a history is kept in the bit of ZEC sent through a z-addr… does a z-addr erase previous transactions when it was sent through a t-addr

as one could send the same bit of zec through a t-addr, then a z-addr and then a t-addr… but its the same bit … so… does that bit retain the t-addr history

i just get confused on when a t-addr was first used for many transactions using a bit of zec, then a z-addr is used, andt hen back to a t-addr… if that bit fungible?

good point shawn… maybe you can help answer my question about fungibiility?

Maybe, this blog post will help to end speculations on history kept in shielded transactions:

Anatomy of A Zcash Transaction

Simple graphs show everything :wink:

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cool thanks ill give that a read through :slight_smile:

Fungibility refers to the capability of mutual substitution between the individual units of a commodity or assets. Gold, for instance, is fungible because one kg of gold carries the exact same value of any other kg of gold. Therefore, currencies, bonds, shares or other commodities like oil and precious metal are all fungible in nature. Zcash in this case should be fungible ( in contrast to bitcoin ) primary attributed to z-address that is designed to obfuscate any prior transactions of Zcash.