ZCash Launched Sapling Protocol

By Chetna Phour

ZCash Company (ZEC), the crypto startup behind the cryptocurrency ZCash (ZEC) has launched the much-awaited upgrade called Sapling Protocol on the occasion of ZEC’s second birthday. The Sapling Protocol will improve the usability of the ZCash protocol.
Via a recent tweet, the company revealed that it had formally activated the Sapling Protocol. The protocol activated at block height 41200. Sapling Protocol has introduced new shielded addresses with improved performance. The new protocol is targeted a memory reduction of 7% and a time reduction of 90% for constructing transactions.

The Sapling Protocol was originally conceptualised in 2016. The protocol promised to change the private ZEC transactions in such a way that they become lighter and faster. The company posted a blog on its website about the monumental blockchain upgrade. According to the blog, the new privacy system utilizes zero knowledge proof based technology which will significantly improve the efficiency of the private shielded transactions. According to the Chief Technology Officer of ZCC, Nathan Wilcox

“ZCash Sapling will allow shielded transfers (transactions) to be completed with about 100 times less memory and probably six or more times faster.”

ZCash, the cryptocurrency is known for providing enhanced privacy to its users than other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. For increased privacy, ZCash uses cryptography technology called zk-SNARKS. ZCash offers its users the ability to make shielded transactions. The private transactions shielded by zk-SNARKS are cumbersome which disabled the exchange and users from taking advantage of the technology’s full potential.

The company believes that the introduction of Sapling Protocol will bring the ZCash “one step closer to widespread adoption of an open, permission less, and private payment system.” The blog stated that the primary purpose of the Sapling Protocol is the improvement of the constructing zk-SNARKS. After the upgradation, new transactions will be performed with 40MB of RAM utilization and the process will complete in a single second. Previously these kinds of transactions not only took around 7 minutes but also performed with 3GB RAM.

Sapling Protocol is very important for ZCash, it will not only make the shielded transaction faster, lighter, and equally safer as before but also will bring numerous advantages. Like now users will be able to perform transactions from their smartphones. Shield transaction now will be implemented into mobile wallets and also reach IoT devices. All these things will make it much easier for the exchanges and large enterprises to adopt the ZCash cryptocurrency.