Both governmental entities and users willing to remain incognito while making payments are showing interest in anonymous blockchains. Because hacking Zcash is quite a challenging task, bad actors try to slow the blockchain's operation by increasing its overall growth.

Zcash is a blockchain with a high level of anonymity, powered by the zk-SNARK protocol and zero-knowledge proof. Simply put, transactions are processed and verified without disclosing any internal information. 

Edward Snowden, the former US NSA employee, has on more than one occasion expressed his appreciation of Zcash as the most interesting alternative to Bitcoin. Later, it emerged that he was one of the six participants in the blockchain's launch, acting under the pseudonym John Dobbertin. 

Due to the coin's high level of anonymity and pressure from regulators, some crypto exchanges delisted Zcash in 2021. However, that didn't diminish interest in the network. On 31 May 2022, it unveiled the NU5 update that allowed confidential transactions on smartphones to be processed. Bryce 'Zooko' Wilcox, the coin's founder, called it a historic step for all mankind.

Two weeks after NU5 was introduced, Zcash faced a spam attack that increased the blockchain's weight fourfold over the last five months. The blockchain is now over 120 GB, which is just 3.7 times less than Bitcoin. And while Bitcoin has processed 770 million transactions, Zcash has only done 12 million.

The Electronic Coin Company (ECC), the coin's issuer, claims that the attack is someone's form of entertainment and poses no threat to the blockchain. Still, it admits the slowdown in authorisation for users of protected wallets. Given that the cost of the attack is estimated at $10 per day, it may continue until developers unroll an update to make spam bots' life harder.

StormGain Analytics Team

(cryptocurrency trading, exchange and storage platform)