The Zcash community has plans to develop a ZEC token that can operate on the Ethereum blockchain, thereby partaking in the network’s decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.
According to Josh Swihart, VP of marketing and business development at Electronic Coin Company (ECC), Zcash developers hope to launch a wrapped token within the next six months. Swihart made his comments to news outlet CoinDesk at the Devcon developer conference held last week in Osaka, Japan.
With integration onto the DeFi platform, there is hope that the privacy-focused ZEC token will be able to provide anonymous, automated loans and transactions via Ethereum’s network. Zcash developers are also hinting at the possibility of interoperability, allowing the privacy features of ZEC to be applied to smart contracts.
ECC is reportedly targeting ETH interoperability and DeFi as a way to boost ZEC usage and purchase on exchanges. Sources familiar with the coin’s exchange performance say ZEC has been stalling in popularity over the past year, despite the resurgence in the crypto markets through 2019.
Swihart explained that ECC wants to make zcash widely available for DeFi applications,
If you want to do lending, if you want to do DAOs [decentralized autonomous organizations], all of that stuff could be done with zcash as well. … Ultimately, we want zcash shielded [addresses] to be usable in ethereum smart contracts.
While ECC may be looking to ethereum interoperability as a path forward for zcash, developers say the looming 2.0 network update could potentially disrupt any cross-chain applications, making the partnership short-lived.
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