What is Zcash? by House of Chimera

So I will start with you, this math, and I will start about with you, Seika Squirrel. Yeah, sure, yeah. So I actually, for a large portion of my life, I was outside of the crypto industry. And but I've always been interested in math, and computer science. I went to school for it. But I've always liked technology in general. And from a technology perspective, ZCASH kind of encapsulates everything that I'm interested in math, computer science. But servers, nodes, stuff like that. So fast forward to 2022, someone named Ian created the idea for ZCUB, posted it on the forum. And basically, from that post, I raised my hand. I said, hey, I want to participate in this. This sounds interesting. And that's essentially what got me started on my ZCUB. Inner student, inner student. And I think that's the beauty of crypto, right? Someone can just start something, put it post on the governance and, hey, we would like to start this with me, we would like to sort of start our movement. That's very cool. And we definitely also going to talk about the governance and support. Seika Squirrel, a little bit about an introduction about yourself. You can keep it short so we can push forward on the ZCASH and they really dig in with both of you. Yeah, so I got into crypto around 2017. Shortly afterwards, there was a project called Blockstream satellite. And I was already working in the satellite world, in the satellite sphere. And I found it super interesting that someone could broadcast block data anywhere across the world. So after that, I started a bunch of hobbyist projects and ended up finding the ZCASH ecosystem, finding great people. And yeah, I think it was more the environment of people and the community that kind of helped me stay rather than just the tech. I'm going to be honest. I think that is one of the most interesting ways I've heard how people got into crypto. Like the awareness satellite world, and that's sort of a project was doing, well, you could stream block data through the satellite that is very interesting. That's a very cool story. Normally I hear I have been studying finance and I found it at the find fund and said, cool anymore. But true, like a sort of a satellite angle, that is very interesting to say at least. The only that is already very interesting. Just give me some context. What does it mean you are in the satellite world? What does that really mean? Is it just you are working with the satellites or what does that really mean? Yeah, so I was in an earlier role provisioning satellite terminals. So this is before a Starlink was a thing. So at the time it was things like in my SAT and iridium satellite phones, iridium terminals that yeah, I was working with. And eventually I found block stream. Yep. Cool, very cool. Guys, obviously I can ask you the question. What is C cache? But before we do it because C cache is a lot of things. Before we do that, I want to sort of pick your brand a little bit. Well, let's be really frank. C cache has been around for a long time. It's not a new project. It has been around for a long time. And let's be honest, the privacy kind of, the idea of privacy, it was a little bit of a niche kind of thing. Like everyone cared about privacy, but still everyone is still using suicide media. That kind of thing. Right? The privacy paradox was specifically, you also would say a real thing. People, everyone cared about privacy, but whenever you have to give something up, people would not do that. We have seen it multiple times, which is a shimini, obviously, that now with AI, and it will always kind of be a thing. However, one thing which we definitely have seen in the last, I would say, 18 months, is there is a real push for privacy? And more importantly, it's not only from the retail level, it's even on the political level. We see even on a certain state level that there is more of a push, the sort of the voices of privacy are being getting, well, I could sort of finally hurt kind of thing. I'm wondering, what's specifically about C Keshe? Because C Keshe has been one of the most popular projects specifically in the last 18 months. Why do you guys think that is? What is sort of the thesis here? What makes C Keshe so special that all of a sudden, in the last 18 months, it has all of a sudden bursted, like the spark is finally there. And you can just open up your microphone and speak freely. I can go first here, Squirrel. For me, what is interesting is the idea of timing. You can have the best idea at the wrong time and that makes it everything wrong. But if you have the right idea at the right time, it just flows. So in my opinion, we're in the midst of a AI revolution. No different from, say, an industrial revolution. And the last, I don't know, 18 months, it's really been ramping up. So folks are understandably nervous, scared. They don't know what's going to happen next. And Z Keshe, as it turns out, offers the best solution when it comes to financial privacy. Not only from a technological perspective, but also from a human level, from a freedom level, because Z Keshe, more than any other privacy coin, offers pro choice, the choice to either be private or the choice to be transparent. And that alongside what Squirrel mentioned of the awesome community that's in the Z Keshe ecosystem is personally why I am so bullish, not only on the tech, the people, but the whole ecosystem. That makes sense. And when you say like, hey, we have the best solution, without going to a technical, what makes it so good except for what an opt-in, right? Like the opt-in, what you just mentioned, like, hey, well, you can be private, which you have to sort of opt-in to it. Is there any other sort of unique selling point which you would say, well, that's made Z Keshe better than the other solutions out there, because let's be honest, there are multiple solutions out there. All of them have like a sort of unique selling point. I'm wondering, what is the unique selling point where it's sort of standing out for you? Whenever, for example, you would explain Z Keshe to one of your friends, what would you sort of say, hey, this is what Z Keshe is and this is why it is better than the rest? Yeah, I could take this. And I would say it's probably the people behind Z Keshe. So when you're looking at a project, when you're kind of evaluating what your priorities are, one of the key things is who is working on it? Who are the teams building on it? So if you look at who has been building on Z Keshe since 2016 and slightly prior even, these are the scientists, the people that came up with the first in production use of zero knowledge proofs. So if you're looking for, in the present day, who would be most qualified to build the best state of the art kind of solution, it's the same people that have continued building on essentially freedom money until now. So yeah, I think the team is a big point. As for why Z Keshe is kind of, sorry, one second. That makes sense. I would say it makes sense that the teams which are building on it are the ones which are important. I do agree. I'm also gonna push a little bit back on that. And I'm wondering what you think because one argument when you could make theirs, like what, that makes sense. And generally, yes, teams are very important. I would say teams in any startup are the most important, right? Whenever a team one goes away, you know, it's kind of GGs. But that being said, you guys obviously and you guys in the C Keshe, well, the ECC, the electric coin company, which obviously, well, you read it so far as I know, created a launched C Keshe, they sort of depart it early in 2026. So that's a little bit of a, will I do a great yes, teams are very important? Obviously they're the part of it. So what is your stance there, considering, will I do a great a team so far, very important? Well, they are the ones which, rather than the left. No, they are still around. They're just going under a different name. So previously they went under the name ECC, but everyone who was working there, all of the team members simply transferred over to a new legal entity called Zoddle. So it's still the same people, just under a different title. Yeah, and sorry, just to go back to ask for why now, why over the past 18 months has ZCash seen this huge spike in interest? I would say that it's because there are many factors even outside of crypto that we need to consider, like the infringements on people's freedoms through like VPN bands and use of IDs, ID checks on the internet and things like this. And so in the greatest scheme of things, people find that a lot of their freedoms are being eroded, a lot of their ability to retain wealth through their national currencies, in many countries is being eroded as well. If you look at Turkey and I suppose Russia as well and yet other places, Latin America. So they're looking for a solution. And ZCash happens to be a layer one. So it has layer one privacy, meaning that the chances of your, I'll just say to skip the technical things for now, I'll just say that layer one privacy is a more resilient censorship resilient solution and it's been proof of workmind, so the distribution until now has been like extremely fair. And also the interesting fact that when people are using ZCash privately, when they're shielding it, they're removing it from centralized exchanges, so they're holding it in their personal wallets privately. And this reduces the supply on these exchanges and reduces the chances that some strange things happen, I'll just say. So yeah, that's why now. And do you guys feel, because I want one thing I hear from both of you, is that X, and she's saying, hey, AI, AI is one of the, it's a big driver. Do you guys feel that it's the main driver? Why now? Because I do agree, yes, I do agree. The overall privacy is degrading, but let's be really frank. That was the case five years ago as well. I mean, Russia, Turkey, specifically Turkey. I'm not sure if you guys remember the coup, which is 10 years ago by now, when there's a lot of people which got jailed and so forth. These has been degrading for, well, Turkey for a very long time, Russia for a very long time. Europe, well, we see the grinding as well. We see the EU chat law, which they're pushing very, very hard and fortunate. I think that is relatively more recent. Do you feel that besides, well, the sort of overall general degrading of the privacy of a human being, do you feel that AI might be the main driver here? Because let's be really frank, AI has been also very proper in the last 24, 18 months. I would say it's true that AI was around in 22, 23, but not nearly at the scale as it is now. And it goes back to my idea about timing. And just because something exists doesn't mean everyone knows it exists. And it just seems like a perfect storm in the sense that just as AI was starting to ramp up, I don't know, maybe late 2024, you four. And then on top of that, with AI ramping up in this perfect storm, we have the Zadil team who created a, the Zashi or the Zadil wallet, as it's called now, and which is shielded first, which makes it easy for most folks to just not have to worry about the details, and it's shielded and private. And then a third prong is they came out with the keystone support, which is hardware support. So everything aligned perfectly at the right time, and the markets responded accordingly. And it's kind of how I see it. What does a shielded transaction mean? What does that, what does it until? Well, at a basic level. Like if I was to explain it to someone who doesn't understand details of crypto, I would just say, when you send the transaction to someone, where you're sending it from, and who you're sending it to, are only available to the people that are involved in the transaction. And if you're on the outside, can't see the amounts, nor the destination or the front address. So it's more private. And that's how I like to frame it. If I'm not mistaken, that would go to like, well, that for a couple of months ago.