- After the launch of Sigma in 2019, Lelantus brings a new and improved user experience
- Zcoin’s focus is still on privacy
Zcoin allows users to burn and redeem coins with ‘zero-knowledge proofs,’ unlike competitors’ decoy-based systems. This ensures that burnt coins are destroyed and join a general pool of burnt coins. Each coin has a unique secret serial number only known to the owner. Cryptographic proof of your burnt coins will allow new coins to be redeemed without any links or past transaction history. The privacy coin’s ‘one out of many proofs’ concept allows confirmation of a burnt coin for redemption without showing which coin was burnt.
What’s new with Zcoin?
As expected, the firm touted numerous improvements with Lelantus. Zcoin previously required fixed denominations, meaning coins could only be burnt in fixed baskets, i.e., 1, 10, 25, 50, 100. Technical requirements developed a fixed denomination wastage problem: if you wanted to burn 30 coins, 25 + 10 would need to be burnt. Building on Sigma, Zcoin’s biggest innovation with Lelantus is improving users’ ability to any arbitrary amount with one as the minimum number of spending. Verification speeds have also been improved, accelerating the pace of transactions.
Another aspect of Zcoin holding it back from competitors like Monero was its far slower proof time of 2-10s compared with Monero’s <1s. Lelantus proof time has improved to 1.5s-5s. Where the new privacy protocol really comes into its own is in its high degree of anonymity. While Monero is lagging behind with an anonymity set size of 11, Lelantus has an anonymity set size of 2^16-2^17.
The security focus remains with the new protocol, with privacy on by default ensuring the anonymity of the system (fewer people using it makes de-anonymizing easier). It also requires a no trusted setup, which, contrary to its name, avoids potential access points by creating compromised parameters that may or may not be destroyed afterward.
