> Why is this here?

Actually there's a precise answer to that. In yesterday's popular Keybase.io thread, the submitter (rdl) said "Along with Zcash, it is the most amazing crypto-engineering project I've seen in years." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11037297

That was evidence the community might find it interesting, and the project hadn't had discussion on HN yet, so we invited an earlier submitter (malgorithms) to repost it. From there it received significant community interest.

> Nothing new here. Add it to the pile

Whoa, this is exactly what we ask commenters not to do when discussing new work on Hacker News. The ratio of dismissiveness to substance in your post is too high. Substantive criticism is fine, of course, but not this; it degrades the discussion.

If you know something or have a genuine insight—including a critical one—you're more than welcome to share it. But "nothing new here", "add it to the pile", and "feels like" is far too weak to justify a dismissive swipe. A comment like this would be better phrased as the question, "What is new here?", in a spirit of curiosity not snark.

^ This is why Hacker News is worth coming to. Snark and quick dismissal lead to negativity and thoughtlessness, which rapidly kills communities.

Thanks for everything you do, dang.

You're right :) Thanks for the constructive rebuke.

I can't speak to as to whether Zcash is a pump-and-dump particularly, but I do know a bit about financing the technology development behind blockchains, and it's difficult. If the code is open source, you risk a fork and loss of any intrinsic value. If you sell the coins, you risk SEC difficulties in the USA. If you premine, people complain that you premined. If your company controls the currency, you get forks when founders leave (e.g. Ripple/Stellar), and you have to build large compliance teams.

In the end, though, blockchain tech needs SIGNIFICANTLY more technology development than it has had so far to develop its latent potential.

I'm sure blockchain enthusiasts would be interested in your suggestions as to how to get development funded.

> I can't speak to as to whether Zcash is a pump-and-dump particularly.

Look at the founder's stake noted here: https://z.cash/blog/funding.html

They get 20% of the mined coins off the top for the first 4 years, without doing any actual mining.

10% of all mining rewards for the first 5 years go to the developers. The tech is certainly interesting, but the pseudo-premine makes me a little wary of putting any significant amount of money into it.

Citation: https://z.cash/blog/funding.html (Check the "Founder's reward" section)

That bothered me too. It seems like "pump-and-dump" is a little harsh. I used the term "speculation" in my comment. But in this case, both are true.

what's to stop miners with 50%+ of hashing power from withholding the founders rewards?

Given that the coin hasn't launched yet, it can't be a pump-and-dump. Anyone who wants to profit that way has to pump after they obtain their coins, and it's not yet possible to obtain zcash coins.

Well, I was wrong.

I suppose when you see so many scams, you rely on instinct. But had I read more of the site, I would have realized that Zcash really is something different.

So what did I do? I relied on Cunningham's Law: "the best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it's to post the wrong answer." I rarely notice my karma score going up, but I certainly notice it when it goes down. That caused me to look at the comments and figure out why.

So I learned something :)

> Nothing new here. Add it to the pile of hundreds of other altcoins.

It sounds to me like you don't understand the technology involved. To be fair, it's probably Greek to most people outside of crypto.

How many of the other altcoins were based on zero-knowledge proofs or allowed for private transfers (with respect to the blockchain)?

I'm not aware of any. I think that's something new and worth talking about.

(EDIT: Snark was removed. Sorry dang.)

Please don't be rude and confrontational when someone comments like the GP, even though they shouldn't have. Instead, respond with the information you clearly have and they (and the rest of us) don't. Then we all learn something.

>allowed for private transfers

Monero?

https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/moneropedia/ringsignatu...

https://getmonero.org/knowledge-base/moneropedia/stealthaddr...