Introduction

This is the first in a series of articles that will discuss the brief history, current status, and future of the Ycash digital currency.

Shortly after Ycash was announced in April of 2019, it didn’t take long for us to hear the first (but certainly not the last) utterance of the regrettable pun, “Why Ycash?” Pun aside, it’s a legitimate question: In a world with thousands of digital currencies — including Bitcoin, Zcash, and several code forks of Zcash— why launch Ycash?

In this first article of the “Understanding Ycash” series, we’ll discuss the original motivations that led to the…

Introduction

In this article, we will show you how to get started with using YecLite, a lightweight Ycash wallet for MacOS, Linux, and Windows. We will walk you through downloading YecLite, backing up your wallet, receiving YEC into a transparent address, and then sending a portion of that YEC to a shielded address.

Note that screenshots used in this article are from the MacOS version of YecLite and may differ slightly from what you see if you are using either the Linux version or the Windows version.

[Note: The screenshots below are from an earlier version of YecLite, and will be…

Introduction

The Ycash Foundation is excited to announce the release of YecLite, a lightweight Ycash wallet that fully supports shielded Ycash transactions on computers running MacOS, Linux, or Windows. Download YecLite now:

https://github.com/ycashfoundation/yeclite/releases

Prior to YecLite, the only way to send or receive shielded Ycash transactions was to use ycashd or YecWallet, both of which require a full copy of the Ycash blockchain (currently over 22 GB in size). With the release of YecLite, it is now dramatically easier to get started with sending and receiving shielded Ycash transactions!

The Importance of a Lightweight Option for Shielded Transactions

To fully appreciate the importance of having a lightweight option for using…

Published: August 15, 2019. Last updated: December 3, 2019.

Introduction

This roadmap covers Ycash software development for the next several months. (It also includes projects completed between the Ycash launch on July 18, 2019 and the initial publication of this roadmap on August 15, 2019.) This roadmap is subject to change; check back here for the most up-to-date information.

During the coming months, the Ycash Foundation will fund projects in four key areas.

1. Improvements to ycashd and YecWallet
2. Light Wallets
3. Merchant Tools
4. Mining Algorithms

Summary

Below is a summary of the projects that the Ycash Foundation is funding, organized by area.

Improvements to ycashd and YecWallet

• YecPaperWallet…

A New Beginning

Twenty-four days ago — on July 18, 2019 — the Ycash/Zcash chain fork occurred. As the last block shared with Zcash was mined at 19:31:50 PDT, people around the world mining with GPUs began working on mining the first Ycash-specific block.

Five minutes and one second later, at 19:36:51 PDT, the first Ycash-specific block was mined!

This block — at block height 570,000 — is the first block that Ycash does not share with Zcash. Although the Ycash blockchain begins with the Zcash genesis block minted in October 2016, it will now continue completely independent of the Zcash blockchain, on…

At the time of this writing, the Ycash/Zcash chain fork is less than 100 blocks away. Since the fork has not yet occurred, no one in the world has mined or bought a single YEC. Before you do so, please consider the following:

Consideration 1: The Ycash Foundation is committed to mining on commodity hardware in general, not to mining on a particular class of commodity hardware.

As stated in the initial Ycash announcement on April 11, 2019, “To be clear, our commitment is to commodity hardware in general, not to a specific type of commodity hardware, like GPUs.”

If…

Introduction

After the Ycash/Zcash chain fork occurs very soon at block height 570,000, the private keys associated with your ZEC on the Zcash blockchain will also be associated with YEC on the Ycash blockchain. As a ZEC holder, if you choose to try to access your YEC, you may want to “unlink” your YEC and ZEC in certain ways for increased security and privacy.

(Before reading this post, you may want to read “A Zcash Holder’s Guide to Accessing Ycash.”)

Strategy #1: Move your ZEC to new addresses AFTER the fork.

Let’s say your ZEC is associated with a set of addresses that we’ll call Address Set M.

Steps for Strategy #1

1. Fork occurs at block…

Introduction

The Ycash/Zcash chain fork will occur at block height 570,000 (approximately July 18, 2019). At that point of the chain, if you have custody of your private keys associated with an amount of ZEC on the Zcash blockchain, you’ll have the option to use those private keys to access the same amount of YEC on the Ycash blockchain.

This guide discusses potential methods for accessing your YEC.

This guide will be updated to correct for any errors brought to our attention. Feedback is welcome.

Important Note: There is no 100% risk-free way to access your YEC, so if you decide…