Zcash founder joins Shielded Labs, seeking to drive hybrid PoS upgrade.
Odaily News reports that Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox, after joining Shielded Labs as the product lead, is seeking to accelerate the protocol's upgrade to a hybrid proof-of-stake system. Shielded Labs is an independent organization based in Switzerland dedicated to supporting Zcash. Wilcox recently stated that after eight years of PoW mining, Zcash needs to upgrade to a hybrid PoS system. He pointed out that the PoW consensus and the issuance of new coins have put downward pressure on its price, "but as the rate of new coin issuance declines, this pressure is expected to ease." The two major upcoming improvements Wilcox mentioned include deploying a Zcash Sustainability Fund and upgrading to "Crosslink," a hybrid PoW and PoS protocol. He said, "We hope to deploy this technology as soon as possible while maintaining Zcash's good security record." The benefits of the upgrade include allowing ZEC holders to stake, providing finality to protect users from rollback attacks, reducing transaction times, and allowing for safer two-way bridging to other networks. However, Wilcox did not provide details on the technical specifics or a timeline for the upgrade.
