The cryptocurrency network Zcash is set to

launch on October 28th, which is either

forthcoming or has already happened,

depending on when you watch this video.

Zcash is based on Bitcoin and its

primary differentiator from Bitcoin is

that users have the option to encrypt

the details of their transactions.

This means that the sender address, the

recipient address, and the amount sent

can be obscured from public view on the

blockchain. Now some have been asking

around online about how Zcash compares

to Dash and I'm of course happy to

oblige. And now I could make comparisons

between what I consider to be

inconsequential technical details such

as differences in mining algorithms or

block times or coin emission rates, that

sort of thing. But as someone who is

confessedly only interested in the

medium- to long-term outcome of

cryptocurrency competition, I will

instead focus on a chart which I have

dubbed: Amanda's Six Prediction Metrics

for Long-Term Success. The six metrics

I'll be using to compare the two

networks provided that Zcash does in

fact launched on October 28th -- are

Governance, Trajectory of Infrastructure,

Independence of Development, Privacy for

User, Double-Spend Protection in

Real-Time, and User-Friendliness at

Protocol Level. So let's begin. First:

Governance, which is a fancy word for

decision-making process. Decision-making

mechanism.

How are decisions made? Zcash's

governance is exactly the same as

Bitcoin's. It has no additional

improvements, which is to say that if any

portion of the network seeks a change in

development which is not coming from the

team who currently has commit access to

the current code base, there are only

option is to write their own reference

client and attempt a fork. This type of

fork making has been debated

for years in Bitcoin -- of course

unsuccessfully as no forecast happened --

and has actually happened in Ethereum,

resulting in two different Etheria, Ether,

Ethereum. Two of them anyway. This is the

most rudimentary form of governance and

Dash of course has this capability. It

can certainly be forked. The main

differentiator in Dash's voting

mechanism is for users -- rather

stakeholders -- to be able to poll one

another before hand to see who, if

anybody, actually wants to fork. This may

sound simple but it makes all of the

difference in terms of huge development

changes because if one knows ahead of

time that a large portion of the network

wants to fork one, can confidently

execute it without worrying that a

surviving Dash classic chain will

survive and compete with you.

In short the voting mechanism allows all

major investors to get an answer to the

question, should we fork or not? Is it

safe to fork or not? Within less than 24

hours. For rudimentary governance Zcash

gets half a checkmark and for investor

controlled cryptographically provable

voting Dash gets a full checkmark.

Number two: Trajectory of Infrastructure.

By this I mean that with the economic

incentives or disincentives built into

running hardware for the network, is that

network going to tend to expand and

decentralize in its hardware across the

world? Or that going to tend to shrink

and centralized? Here again

Zcash offers no improvement over

Bitcoin in that the only type of

hardware it subsidizes is mining. Being a

proof-of-work network

this means that over time if the network

survives, mining will tend to centralize

into pools as it helps to stabilize

miner payouts and there will as a result

be fewer and fewer Zcash nodes across

the world. In contrast

the Dash network subsidizes both types

of hardware that it needs for its

network to run, namely miners and full

nodes. Or in this case masternodes, Dash's

masternodes are paid a full forty-five

percent of its block reward -- the same as the

miners -- in exchange for holding a

thousand Dash collateral and performing

the network's privacy and instant

confirmation functions. Because Dash's

block subsidies go to both types of

hardware, Dash's node infrastructure to

dollar investment ratio is the highest

out of all existing cryptocurrencies

and continues to grow actually. For a

block reward that subsidizes mining and

only mining, just like Bitcoin, Zcash

gets half a checkmark and for a block

reward which subsidizes mining and

masternodes in equal measure Dash gets

a full checkmark. Three: Independence of

Development. And by this I mean that it

is the block reward itself or blockchain

reserves or anything like that which

funds development rather than grants and

handouts from third parties who almost

invariably would like something in

return for their contribution. Now

guidance and labor for Zcash's

development is said to be planned to

come right out of the Zcash foundation.

This chart here shows the percentage of

block reward that is planned to go

towards supporting the Zcash

Foundation for assuming developmental

purposes at very least. But this subsidy

expires four years after Zcoin's launch,

leaving the network with developers

seeking a paycheck. And we've seen what

happens when developers are left wanting

a paycheck.

In contrast 10% of Dash's block reward --

also called its treasury -- is set to

indefinitely be paid to keep development

independent. And furthermore, unlike

Zcash whose development payouts are

hard-coded to a specific receiving

address, in Dash it is the voters who can

decide whom to pay and whom not to pay.

And anyone can be hired or fired at any

given time. For this effort to remain

independent in development for four

years,

Zcash gets half a checkmark and for the

effort to remain independent and

development indefinitely, Dash gets a

full checkmark. Number four: Privacy for

User, which as it sounds is the ability

for a user to opt to obfuscate the trail

of their coins on the blockchain as they

are sent from point A to point B. Now in

Zcash this offering is it based on a

bit of cryptography known as a zero

knowledge proof. That is to say that when

a user broadcast their transaction to

miners, the miners are able to tell

whether it's valid or not based upon

whether that user was able to generate a

string of information that they only

would have been able to generate if they

did in fact own the corresponding

private key.

This feature is said to be available on

demand to users who would like to employ

it. In contrast, in Dash the privacy

feature is offered via coin mixing that

is executed for users by the masternode

network in this way the various private

keys of various users are able to be

trustlessly swapped with one another,

which is to say that users need not

revoke their private keys during any

period of time during the mixing. However,

it is not available on demand in that

people must mix before they seek to send

the transaction and depending on how

much Dash there is to be mixed this can

be time-consuming in the current

iteration and user base. For these

reasons Zcash gets a full check for

privacy

and Dash gets a half. Five: Double-Spend

Protection in Real-Time. And by this I

mean the ability of the currency to be

used in retail environments where the

merchant needs to be quite sure at the

moment they receive payment that they

can confidently give the customer the

good or service they've purchased and

not worry that that transaction will be

reversed within minutes.

Zcash offers no double-spend protection

whatsoever and so anyone trading would

need to wait the up to two-and-a-half

minutes which is the Zcash block time,

to get a first confirmation. Dash, in

contrast, thankfully has developed a way

of querying quorums of masternodes to

offer locks on inputs of transactions so

that users who desire to pay an

additional fee to get InstantSend can

receive five confirmations in less than

a second, enabling real-world retail

transactions to take place

sans the fear of getting double spent.

For this Zcash receives no checkmarks

and Dash gets one. And six:

User-Friendliness at the Protocol Level,

which is to say that your mother or --

let's get crazy -- even your grandmother

would feel comfortable using the system

as a replacement for the type of money

they've been using their entire lives.

And I say protocol level because there

are many third-party centralized

services who are more than happy to make

cryptocurrencies easy to use. As an

example Bitholla or Coinbase or any of

these other services which make Bitcoin

feel more like PayPal. But at the end of

the day they are a centralized party

running a centralized server which could

be DDoSed at any old time. And if they were

offering a widely, globally used money, a

simple DDoS attack would be the end of

money as we know it.

not going to happen. Not acceptable. When

I asked Zooko Wilcox today on Twitter -- by

the way Zuko being the founder of Zcash --

he -- thank you for your time and

kindly response -- responded that there is

no such plan or roadmap and that he

hopes that third-party services make

those kinds of offerings. Again, making

Zcash no different from Bitcoin in terms

of its ability or non-ability to be

safely used by a non-tech savvy person

without relying on trusted third parties.

In very deep contrast you will find at

Dash.org/Evolution a highly

detailed road map of a forthcoming

product offering called Evolution which

will offer PayPal-like feeling things

like usernames and the ability to have

transactions moderated and password

resets and joint accounts and etc etc on

the protocol level itself. Now it's not

yet been released, and certainly remains

to be seen.

So in this case where Zcash gets no

checkmark, Dash gets a half a checkmark.

And that wraps up the scoring for

Amanda's Six Prediction Metrics of

Long-Term success and so when we add up

the tallies Zcash comes in with

two-and-a-half and Dash comes in with

double that at five. So if that's really

the case

what's with all the seeming hype?

Why do so many enthusiasts and investors

and developers seem to think that

something really big is about to be born