3 reasons why I prefer Zcash over Monero:

1/ Zcash is encrypted Bitcoin.

Started out as the Zerocash soft fork proposal for Bitcoin in 2013. Launched as an altcoin in 2016. Constantly improved, but always remained 100% compatible with Bitcoin.

Meanwhile, Monero uses a completely different codebase, started out as a reaction to address Bitcoin’s limitations, the tech stack cannot get soft forked on Bitcoin.

2/ Zcash produces research beyond its initial scope

Thanks to Zcash, we’re witnessing a cryptography revolution with Zero Knowledge proofs.

Bitcoin is gonna get ZK rollups from Citrea & Alpen. Full blocks can be synced in less than a second by only verifying a ZK proof. Drivechains also chose Zside as the fungibility solution. And last but not least, Shielded Client Side Validation & ZK Coins are attempts to bring Zcash to Bitcoin.

Ethereum also got Tornado Cash, Railgun, and a bunch of ZK rollups such as Starkware.

An entire industry evolves with Zcash tech. Meanwhile, Monero’s tech isn’t used for as many revolutionary projects.

3/ Zcash is just getting started

Tachyon will make shielded transactions scale to billions – coming to mainnet next year.

Shielded assets will revolutionize the whole token economy, giving other user-generated assets the same privacy guarantees as ZEC.

Zcash aims to improve the privacy of every popular use case in crypto.

Meanwhile, Monero is reactionary and only tries to keep up with Zcash (see FCMP++, which tries to offer the same sender privacy as ZEC).

Bonus: Satoshi expressed his interest in ZK proofs, but didn’t have the right cryptographic libraries to build something like Zcash. Hal Finney followed the Zerocoin/Zerocash initiative. CoinJoins on Bitcoin were proposed as a reaction to the lack of a ZK soft fork. Even Luke Dashjr agrees today that Bitcoin needs a ZK verifier.

Zcash is building the future of Bitcoin. And if you love Bitcoin, you gotta support Zcash too.