Ahoy mateys! The privacy narrative is often considered a dark horse in the world of crypto. However, if crypto ever wants to see true adoption, privacy has to become a vital part of it to achieve fungibility. Most recently more people seem to realize this and more people on CT seem to be looking for the ultimate privacy play. Look no further, as today I am covering possibly the holy grail of crypto that has got it all; Zano!
The team
When looking at Zano's team page one thing immediately catches my attention, Andrey Sabelnikov, a legend in the world of privacy, is a core developer at Zano!
Andrey, also known under the alias ''Crypto_Zoidberg'' is the guy who worked with Nicholas van Saberhagen and created the original CryptoNote codebase. Thanks to his work, privacy coins such as Monero and Zephyr exist today as they make use of the CryptoNote protocol.
Other noteworthy team members are mathematician Valeriy Pisarkov, aka ''Sowle'', who's the mastermind behind Zarcanum (more on that later). Pavel Nikienkov, aka ''Ravaga'', is an experienced project manager whose ultimate goal is achieving widespread adoption. Last but not least is Quinten van Welzen, aka ''Mr_Kwibs'' who is a star at marketing and community building, known as an expert and advocate in privacy crypto via his community ''Pursuit of Privacy''.
The project
Zano describes itself as an open-source cryptocurrency and ecosystem with enterprise-grade privacy, security, and scalability that operates as a robust foundation for confidential assets and decentralized applications (dApps).
YarRr, that's a mouth full isn't it pirates?! So what does it essentially translate to when we look at Zano's current features:
CryptoNote-based: Zano is, just like Monero, CryptoNote-based. This means all transactions in the network are private by default. The transactions between Zano network members are made untraceable with ring signatures and stealth addresses. Also, the way transaction data is stored on the blockchain allows access by parties who authorized the transactions only, and none of the private data is ever publicly published.
Hybrid PoW/PoS consensus algorithm: A blockchain consensus algorithm is all about securing the blockchain's transaction history and making the costs of a double-spend attack as high as possible. Zano has come up with a very smart solution where half of their blocks are Proof of Stake based, and the other half Proof of Work based. If someone wants to attack Zano, they'd need to have a significant portion of the network's hashrate, and at the same time acquire a very large portion of the staked coins. This would only be possible by buying them from the open market and significantly raising the price of $ZANO.
In a nutshell, this makes their blockchain highly secure, and double-spend attacks become unfeasible as the costs of the attack would be way higher than the assets possibly acquired.
Aliases: All Zano network users can create aliases, for example, @username. These aliases make it easy to send and receive funds without the hassle of remembering a long string of confusing characters. Aliases can be linked to a payment address, which makes their network more user-friendly. After the Zarcanum hard fork, aliases will be used in a dedicated messenger, a user reputation service, and an alias-based authentication system. For example, it can function as your identity on Zano's private & decentralized marketplaces, Zano's DEX, or Zano's peer-to-peer trading platform. A pirate's wet dream, yArrr!
Escrow Contracts: Zano as a project aims to make anonymous P2P transactions as simple as they can be. One of the most practical use cases for this is e-commerce on a private blockchain. Generally, users must trust each other or a 3rd party to be sure that an online transaction goes as planned, and to make this happen they must give up their privacy. Escrow use on Zano offers a unique solution to this issue of trust. Using an escrow system, both parties are asked to offer an agreed-upon number of coins as collateral. This doesn't have to be the same amount for each person, it depends on the risk for each side. These coins are returned to each person once the deal is done and confirmed by both sides. If the participants don't follow through the coins in escrow are burned. All this is done with the Zano wallet using the contract proposal-response system built into the app and maintains each user's anonymity.
This technology can be used on Zano Trade, but also by the upcoming P2P trading platform or any of the decentralized marketplaces that build on Zano to settle transactions without the need for a middleman. All whilst maintaining privacy and completely decentralized as it all happens on-chain!
Marketplace API: Facilitating a seamless integration into the marketplace ecosystem of Zano. This feature allows anyone to spin up their own decentralized marketplace. The first marketplace is already being created by a zAnon named ''Kekzploit'', who deserves an enormous amount of credit for his work on the ''Zano Bazaar''. You can follow the latest progress on that here.
Auditable Wallets: Auditable wallets give people and organizations the option to create transparent wallets for situations where we would rather verify than trust. A nice use case example is Zano's development fund, where the Zano team uses this function so that anyone can transparently track their expenses. You can track the total amount of coins in the development fund via the explorer, and you are even able to see every transaction going in and out via the tracking seed of the auditable wallet. Most importantly, it doesn't affect the network's privacy in any way. Interested to find out more? Read more on the topic here.
Major network upgrade ''Zarcanum''
Zarcanum is the world's first Proof of Stake scheme that enhances traditional PoS with untraceability and hidden amounts, revolutionizing blockchain consensus not only for Zano but for all of crypto. It allows people to stake on Zano in complete privacy. The creation of Zarcanum has come from a collaboration between Monero's lead researcher Koe, and Zano's lead researcher Sowle. What a partnership! Find out the juicy details here.
Next to the fact that Zarcanum is the name of the private PoS scheme, it is also the name of Zano's upcoming hard fork, which is only 4 weeks away.
Confidential Assets
The network upgrade also activates another unique feature for the Zano ecosystem, privacy token creation on the Zano blockchain. Anyone can easily issue their own currencies and digital tokens on the Zano chain; assets secured by the same mechanisms that make Zano so much more secure than first-generation cryptocurrencies, namely hidden addresses, hidden amounts, and IP obfuscation.
Confidential Assets will transform Zano from a secure, single-asset chain, to an ultra-secure, multi-asset, decentralized financial universe. From hosting Zano alone, to potentially hosting more than one fungible digital currency… shielded versions of assets from less secure chains… privacy stable coins, utility tokens… and who knows what else! All tradeable on a permissionless platform — Zano Trade, powered by Ionic Swaps and Escrow Contracts, all secured by the most robust and advanced cryptographic protocols.
If you'd like to continue reading about this intriguing feature, check out this article that the Zano team has published.
Zano Trade & Ionic Swaps
These swaps work in much the same way as Atomic Swaps, but with one key difference: both parties have the ability to cancel the exchange up until the point that the second party finalizes, i.e., the "optionality" mentioned above now belongs to both parties until the transaction is complete.
Ionic Swaps are a safe and consistent way to perform peer-to-peer swaps in which neither party has an unfair advantage. It's upon this technology that a Zano private Decentralized Exchange (zDEX) would be based. It would require no user registration, as is the case with most popular DEXs (Uniswap, Sushiswap, etc.), and would use a decentralized on-chain order matching system to facilitate Ionic Swaps between Zano and the Confidential Assets. More details can be found in the white paper.
Zano has a bunch of other items on the roadmap that I won't discuss in this article, you can look them up for yourself here.
Zano's marketing and socials
Since Zano hired Mr_Kwibs as their marketing & community manager a significant increase in both marketing and community activity can be seen. When looking at Zano's marketing I noticed the following things:
Branding: Zano's branding is of high quality with clear guidelines being presented in their media kit. The graphics have been put together very well and the colors used and the logo of Zano are just as beautiful.
Twitter: Zano's Twitter account is active on a daily basis with a strong emphasis on engaging the community, keeping them up-to-date about the latest news, and educating the masses about their project. An increase in mentions by crypto influencers can be noticed.
Documentation: A clear documentation that is easy to navigate saves people a lot of time when researching a project. It also saves moderators a lot of work by simply referring to their documentation instead of answering the same questions over and over again. Well done Zano!
Articles: On Zano's blog many engaging and educative articles can be read. These articles make it easy for the community to understand the project and can be used in spreading awareness about Zano.
YouTube: Looks like Zano has just started with their YouTube channel. The episodes of Inside the Zano-Verse can be found there along with some small tutorials. I hope they will further expand their activity on YouTube!
Inside the Zano-Verse: Inside the Zano-Verse is the go-to podcast to listen to if you want to stay in the loop about all things Zano! During the episodes, Zano discusses multiple topics and invites various engaging guests who are of importance to the Zano community. People who are listening live via Twitter Spaces will have the chance to engage and ask questions during the show both via the dedicated Discord chat and via voice on Twitter Spaces. Personally, I love to see this type of stuff as it creates a highly engaged community.
Ambassador Program: Zano has just announced their ambassador program to further bolster their community, with a special focus on growing their local communities. This will surely have a decent effect as 2024 progresses.
Backed by OGs: Zano has garnered the support of crypto OG Roger Ver which is noteworthy as he has invested in Bitcoin at just $1 and made billions of dollars by being early on many other start-ups such as blockchain.com, XRP, and many more. His investment in Zano is an acknowledgment of the potential of the project.
Other rockstars seen supporting Zano are: Braver Crypto, Ez Money, RVCrypto, OurCryptoTalk, CryptoReviewing, Altcoin_Gold, AltcoinMiyagi, Crypto Alucard, Fitforcrypto_, Coinesper, Queen B, TheCrypticWolf1, Patron, Donnie100x, and CryptoDoc.
Emission of Zano
Zano decided to set the block reward relatively low to avoid unnecessary selling price pressure while keeping the chain safe from TX flood. The block reward is fixed at 1 ZANO per block. Zano has an uncapped max supply because the assumption that TX flow and its fees would be enough to cover miners' appetite might not be accurate and Bitcoin might become a sad example of this. Having a fixed and slow emission (backed by strong consensus algo) looks like a safer choice to them.
Zano's total supply increases slightly over time while the inflation percentage decreases slightly over time which can be seen below.
A rumor that's been going through the hallways of Zano's community is that they are planning on making the supply deflationary. From an investor perspective, this would be hugely beneficial for the project and make $ZANO a highly attractive investment.
After the Zarcanum hard fork, Zano's usage will increase massively and so will its revenue stream across the verticals in which every transaction on the network (asset creation, asset transaction, DEX transaction, escrow transaction etc) costs a 0.1 or 0.01 $ZANO fee.
Rumor has it that all of these fees will be burned daily to make $ZANO's supply deflationary.
Partnerships
Cake Wallet
Vik Sharma from Cake Wallet has been seen flirting with $ZANO on Twitter. It is likely that an integration of $ZANO including privacy token compatibility on Cake Wallet is happening after the Zarcanum hard fork. On GitHub, the commits for a Cake Wallet integration can already be seen here.
Cake Wallet has hundreds of thousands of users from all across the globe. The integration of Zano into their multi-coin wallet will be highly beneficial for the Zano ecosystem. Well done team!
Bitcoin.com wallet
Roger Ver is the owner of Bitcoin.com and a huge fan of Zano. With time we will likely see an integration of $ZANO into their multi-coin wallet as well. Bitcoin.com wallet has millions of users worldwide and an integration of Zano would put the project on the map even further.
Exchanges
CoinEx:
https://www.coinex.com/en/exchange/zano-usdt
TradeOgre:
https://tradeogre.com/exchange/ZANO-BTC
https://tradeogre.com/exchange/ZANO-USDT
Xeggex:
https://xeggex.com/market/ZANO_USDT
Zano just announced they have secured the funds for a MEXC listing and started the integration progress, so I expect them to list $ZANO on their platform in a matter of weeks.
Conclusion
So here we have it, a highly developed and unique blockchain, created and backed by crypto OGs, with solid progress and presentation on basically all fronts. Whilst still only sitting at a 38M market cap at the moment of writing this, the upside potential of the project is insane.
The use cases of Zano are and will be insane and I personally think that 2024 is going to be MASSIVE for Zano. I'm happy to follow this project throughout the next year and wish them the best of luck with the project!
None of my statements are financial advice.
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