Recap of the AMA with CryptoGriffons community

Yesterday we held a great AMA together with the CryptoGriffons community. This article is a recap of that interview so that it's available to everyone who couldn't attend. Enjoy!

Q1: Please briefly explain what Zano is and what use cases it has.

• Zano is a privacy-centric blockchain ecosystem that was launched in 2019. Zano transactions are untraceable, leveraging ring signatures and stealth addresses. With the upcoming Zarcanum hard fork, Zano is transitioning to RingCT and introducing the first-ever Proof of Stake algorithm with hidden amounts. Furthermore, the Zarcanum hard fork will incorporate Confidential Assets, which are privacy tokens that operate on the Zano blockchain. These assets share the same privacy features as native Zano coins, allowing other developers to run their privacy-oriented projects without the overhead of maintaining their own blockchain, dealing with consensus issues, or other complexities of network operation. Zano's security is fortified by a unique hybrid PoW-PoS consensus algorithm, which is also applicable to assets. In addition to these features, Zano supports on-chain aliases, escrow contracts, and has a built-in staking system with no minimum requirements or time locks making sure everyone can participate equally, no matter how big or small. Zano offers numerous features for both users and developers whilst always having privacy, security, scalability, decentralization, and ease of use in mind.
• Use cases are anonymous/private transactions, dApps, escrow contracts, confidential assets, ionic swaps, anonymous staking, anonymous governance, and so much more.

Q2: Can you give us a summary of what Zano achieved in the past year?

Over the past year, we have made enormous achievements for our project. They can be divided into 4 subcategories:

1. Development: we have worked tirelessly on the preparations for the Zarcanum hard fork. The testnet of Zarcanum launched almost a year ago and has been running great ever since.
2. Community: Our community has grown significantly, quadrupling our numbers on almost all social platforms.
3. Marketing: We have accomplished and exceeded all of the goals we had set for 2023. We started the Inside the Zano-Verse podcast, launched an Ambassador Program, attended multiple events, joined strategic alliances and created partnerships, put out lots of great content in the form of videos and articles, and got featured by multiple big media companies and key opinion leaders.
4. Exchanges: We have been listed on 4 new exchanges in 2023. Namely Xeggex, NonKYC, CoinEx, and MEXC.

In short, we have made incredible progress on all fronts, and 2024 is set to become an even better year for Zano.

Q3: Zano has the infamous Zarcanum hard fork planned for March 15th. What will change for Zano after the upcoming hard fork?

With the upcoming hard fork, the improvements can be split into 3 main things:

1. General privacy improvement via the addition of hidden amounts and mandatory ring upgrade to 16.
2. Upgrade of our Proof of Stake side as Zarcanum will introduce the world’s first PoS scheme with hidden amounts (allows you to stake in complete anonymity).
3. Introduction of confidential asset creation on the Zano blockchain. This feature allows others to launch their privacy tokens on top of Zano’s blockchain.

Q4: Why is the hard fork necessary for Zano?

A substantial part of our codebase changes with the addition of so many new features. Therefore, a hard fork is necessary to be compatible with the new pieces of code. The hard fork will be as smooth and user-friendly as possible. Users don't have to do anything else other than update their wallets, so no weird swaps or anything!

Q5: What projects will launch on top of Zano’s ecosystem after the hard fork?

We have set a goal to get at least 10 projects to launch on Zano’s ecosystem in 2024. There are already 2 projects waiting for the Zarcanum hard fork to happen so that they can launch their privacy tokens on top of Zano. They are

• https://confidentiallayer.com/
• https://zanobazaar.com/.

We are in talks with many other projects that are interested in launching their privacy token projects on our blockchain and expect us to easily accomplish the goal of 10 projects by the end of 2024.

Q6: What exciting news is awaiting the holders of Zano after the hard fork?

After the hard fork, we plan to roll out many more new features in addition to our ecosystem. The features I am personally most excited about are

1. Zano Trade: our very own DEX to trade ZANO and the confidential assets.
2. The governance system: This allows anonymous on-chain voting on major decisions for coin holders.
3. The grants program: This allows developers to acquire a grant from us for building new projects & dApps on Zano’s ecosystem.
4. Deflationary supply proposal: The emission change is planned to burn all of our transaction fees, leading to a deflationary supply with enough network usage.

All of these new features and proposals benefit Zano's ecosystem in a major way and should get the holders of Zano very excited.

Q7: How will the community and holders profit from the hard fork?

The updates that are coming with and after the Zarcanum hard fork bring many unique use cases to Zano’s ecosystem. This set of new features should bring many new projects to our ecosystem leading to increased network usage which then again leads to decreased inflation of our supply, making Zano an interesting speculative asset for holders.

Q8: How does Zano plan to handle the current privacy coins regulations?

Zano’s goal is to expand the boundaries of what is possible with privacy tech in blockchain. We don’t take into account any regulatory compliance whilst doing this. Privacy is a human right and if blockchain ever wants to become mainstream, it simply needs this privacy to become truly fungible and therefore, usable.

Q9: How does Zano plan to promote the project in 2024?

In short, we plan to allocate much more time, effort, and resources to the promotion of Zano over the year 2024. We will expand the marketing team by hiring more people and lately made a deal with a professional marketing company which will be announced in the following weeks! To read more about our marketing plans I’d recommend checking out our full marketing plan that we released just some weeks back: https://blog.zano.org/marketing/