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Privacy coins are cryptocurrencies that hide transaction details. Moreover, they are interchangeable. Monero and Zcash are two of the most popular privacy coins today.
Monero was launched in April 2014 to support censorship-resistant and private transactions. It operates on an opaque blockchain that uses privacy-enhancing tools to keep transactions confidential and make them untraceable. These include stealth addresses, ring signatures (a type of digital signature), and RingCT (a way transactions are hidden on Monero). It uses the CryptoNote protocol to group transactions together and a proof-of-work consensus algorithm to validate them.
Zcash was launched in October 2016 by Zooko Wilcox as a fork of Bitcoin. This enables selective transparency and transaction privacy. It consists of two addresses- Z-Addresses (private) and T-Addresses (transparent). It uses zk-proof (zk-SNARK) in achieving a high level of privacy.
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