ZCoin launches new crowdfunding system to decentralise funding

Zcoin has launched its Zcoin Crowdfunding System (ZCS) as a key step in decentralising funding and decision making of projects.

Zcoin a privacy-focused currency that focuses on achieving privacy and anonymity for its users while transacting on the blockchain. It is the first to develop and implement the Sigma Protocol, which allows users to have complete privacy over their transactions via zero-knowledge cryptographic proofs without the need for trusted setup.

The core team of Zcoin recently elaborated its plans to further decentralise the project and remove any single point of failure in its recent post. The Zcoin team intends for the ZCS to serve as a transition from funding directly from the block reward to a donation model and shall begin funding ancillary tasks such as non-core development, third party integrations and community management and events.

The ZCS allows any community members to propose, approve and fund activities. Anyone can submit an idea for a feature, task or service for discussion and once it reaches sufficient interest, it is approved for donators to start funding it. Funds are then released according to the milestones specified along with regular updates of the progress of the project. The ZCS utilises Zcoin's Github for transparency so that there is a trackable history of all proposals and its amendments.

"As a privacy project, decentralisation is essential for long term sustainability which includes governance and funding. While a block reward has served us well in building the foundations of Zcoin it can result in over-reliance on the core team," explains Reuben Yap, project steward of Zcoin.

"We have looked at many funding models including decentralised treasuries where proposals are voted base on stake but these often result in plutocracies. ZCS draws from the good example set by the Monero CCS and also shows that competing privacy projects can complement one another including drawing inspiration from each other and collaborating in research," he says.

"I am hopeful that the ZCS will result in increased community participation in the project by allowing a streamlined way to seek funding."

Zcoin is also set to launch Lelantus, its own innovation which have attracted a lot of academic interest, as its next generation privacy protocol in 2020. Unlike zkSNARKs and its variants, Lelantus does not have trusted setup, only relies on standard cryptographic assumptions and uses a relatively simple construction making it easy to deploy and maintain while achieving a similar feature set such as direct anonymous payments.