Zcash (ZEC), a privacy-focused cryptocurrency, has officially launched its latest hard fork known as Sapling. The upgrade aims at improving the network by making it faster, more secure and lighter. This could help other individuals to start using this virtual currency.
ZCash Improves its Network With a Hard Fork
The Sapling upgrade was activated at block 419,200. Planned a long time ago, it will allow the network to smoothly grow improving its functionalities. With this implementation, transactions will be much faster since they will take 90% less time to be processed. Moreover, each transaction will take 97% less memory.
Elise Hadmon, part of the Zerocoin Electric Coin Company, said that the monetary base of ZEC is held in shielded addresses. Additionally, the zcash ecosystem will require a longer time to add new addresses. At the moment, users are not able to transfer funds related to old shielded addresses to the new version without showing the amounts.
On the matter, Hadmon said:
“This allows us to audit the monetary base of ZEC held in shielded addresses. We are developing a tool to automate the migration of funds in a way that allows users to minimize the impact on their privacy. We recommend that users wait for the release of this tool, if feasible.”
However, there is no specific date selected for the new tool to be released. This would clearly be very positive since it would allow users to keep their information private.
The Sapling upgrade has been designed and engineered during the last two years. The main intention was to reduce the costs of shielded (encrypted) transactions.
At the time of writing, ZEC is being traded around $115 dollars. In the last weeks, it has been operating stable between $115 and $125 dollars. The new Sapling implementation will allow new users to start using the network. Other projects and teams are also starting to implement different scalability solutions.
In October, the hash rate of the ZEC network has been stable between 1.5 GH/s and 2.15 GH/s. Currently, the hash rate is close to 2.02 GH/s.
Want to learn more? You can read our ZCash ZEC Price Prediction article for analysis on the coin’s future.
Carlos is an international relations’ analyst specializing in cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Since 2017, Carlos has written extensively for UseTheBitcoin and other leading cryptocurrency sites; with over 2,000 articles published.
