The new Zcash Sapling update is here and it is being touted as the next major protocol upgrade. It will bring a slew of improvements to the performance, security and usability of Zcash’s shielded transactions. In this update, BLS12-381 curve is being implemented which will be an upgrade to the Zcash’s elliptic curve. This curve targets 128-bit security using more conservative recommendations suggested by several recent papers.
Crypto mining is now no longer profitable. Back when the price of Zcash and Ethereum price increased, a lot of people went on a shopping spree to hoard as many Nvidia and Zcash graphics cards as they could. This all started back in month of June and the demand went through the roof – so much that there was an acute GPU shortage worldwide.
Folks at ZcashCo have finally issued an official statement on the whole Poloniex situation. Poloniex is second largest crypto currency exchange and they had disabled Zcash withdrawals and deposits due to wallet issues. When one opens the page for ZEC / BTC trading, a yellow warning banner with following text is shown.
ZEC is currently under maintenance or experiencing wallet/network issues. Deposits and withdrawals will remain disabled until a solution is found, which may require an update from the ZEC team. Any updates must be tested and audited before enabling.