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Pan Chasinga
Pan Chasinga

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Zmsg: Zero-knowledge Messaging on the Blockchain

Last weekend I've finally finished a functional proof-of-concept command line tool called zmsg which is built on Zcash, a cryptocurrency focusing on anonymous payments. I've been experimenting with ways to build a social platform that focuses on total anonymity that's censorship-tolerant.

The tool allows anyone with a Zcash shielded address to send a 512-byte maximum ASCII or Unicode message to any recipient with a shielded address with very small possibility of any middleman knowing the identity of either party and the content of the message.

Zcash is built on Z-snark, a very complex mathematical cryptography which makes it fast and trivial to a prover to prove an ownership without revealing any information about themselves and the owned entity.

The fallback here is the cumbersome experience of spinning up a Zcash daemon, creating and maintaining addresses, and very importantly the time it takes for a message to be verified on the blockchain (which can take several minutes).

I would appreciate if anyone of you could star the project or contribute in anyway. That would greatly motivate me!

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