You ask & We Answer CoinEx - answers by Andrey Sabelnikov

On July 7th, we successfully launched the first event of our co-marketing series with CoinEx. The event surpassed all expectations, garnering over 320,000 views and receiving many great questions from our enthusiastic audience. Today, we are delighted to share that Andrey answered 10 of the best questions, selected by both CoinEx and us!

Q1 by @USCMigs: Looking forward to private tokenization via CA, how would the DEX work? Could LP pools be privately implemented where all users can see the amount of liquidity in the pool or supply liquidity and still remain private? Also can we expect to see atomic swaps cross-chain with BTC or ETH?

At the moment, we have a technology that enables safe and fully anonymous execution of asset exchange operations natively on Zano blockchain. However, we do not provide any user matching mechanism. This is primarily due to privacy concerns - any matching mechanism implies access to sensitive information such as asset type, quantity, proposed exchange terms, and ratios. So LP's will not be implemented.

HTLC-based atomic swaps (compatible with ETH and BTC) were implemented a few years ago and, like most of the cases with HTLC, it didn’t attract much interest since it gave advantage to one of the participants, the one who holds the hashed secret.

Q2 by @Hollo1390: How does $ZANO's privacy compare to $XMR? Are $ZANO native assets possible?

With Zarcanum mainnet release we’ll meet the same privacy level as Monero, generally speaking, but Monero is also improving their tech, including optimisation of decoy selection algorithm, improving network level privacy, and working on full membership proofs, so it hard to make accurate estimate how different it would be by the time Zarcanum will be released.

Q3 By @Gonbat03: Would a decentralized stable coin (like DAI) be possible natively on Zano? Is the DEX meant to be a Uniswap replacement or a complement? (Considering the risks of bridging outside of ETH). Also any words on the bridge implementation? (Trustless?)

A decentralized stablecoin would be possible on Zano as long as the stablecoin issuer can provide a decentralized collateral system. However, confidential assets aren't designed to function as contracts, due to obvious reasons, such as the lack of data to work with. Thus, such a system would need to be implemented externally, using assets that can be managed in a decentralized manner.

As for Zano's DEX, it's an on-chain swap tool intended to facilitate confidential asset swaps. It definitely complements the opportunities offered by Uniswap. Regarding the bridge implementation, I can't share much at this point, but we are actively involved in developing a tool that will enable bridging between privacy and public chains. We are excited about this development and can't wait for it to go live!

Q4 by @Moonscriber: What would be the metric/event that makes $ZANO go full Proof of Stake?

As soon as we find a way to protect our consensus model from so-called “long range attacks” we’ll switch to full PoS. You can read more about our current consensus and how we tackle this issue here.

Q5 by @Legs_dan: With the upcoming confidential assets, how would CoinEx list these? Do you participate in testing, listing, trading of now clear but then 'private through ZANO' assets? If so, how does this process go? If not yet, how do you plan these?

We can't answer for CoinEx so we'll comment on the matter from our side. We upgraded our wallet API so exchanges(basically any custody service) can work with assets via wallet API(available in zano documentation under version 2.0). I believe listing of assets is more a matter of people that hold the role of maintainers/creators for those assets, of course we can provide all technical support from our side if needed, as well as a full guidance document on how to perform custody of the multi assets wallet.

Q6 by @its_law19: What specific privacy features does your cryptocurrency offer that distinguish it from other privacy-focused cryptocurrencies in the market?

Beside very practical value, having countless assets privately circulating inside Zano blockchain massively increases the anonymity set of the whole system, and this is one of the reasons why confidential assets will play a significant role when full membership proofs will be created for CN.

Q7 by @BurnTopo98: What are Zano's goals and motivation for taking anonymity with transparency in general in particular as a priority for your project?

We believe that privacy is an essential feature of any cryptocurrency. Only coins that are anonymous by default can be truly fungible. However, there are situations where some accountability is beneficial, such as tracking the Zano development fund or setting up a collateral system for Confidential Assets. That's why Zano has a feature called auditable wallets.

Q8 by @cryptostarfrich: What are the major challenges or risks that the Zano project currently faces, and how does the team plan to address them?

Liquidity is a significant challenge, as privacy projects often face difficulties with exchanges. To address this, the Zano team is developing a Confidential Assets DEX and exploring P2P methods that utilize our Escrow Contracts. Our goal is to be less dependent on centralized exchanges in the long term.

Q9 by @Hanabi_SRK: How does Zano compare to other privacy-focused cryptocurriencies,such as Monero or Zcash and also How does Zano plan to adress scalability issues in the future?

I believe it is important to highlight two key distinctions: Zano implements a unique Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism without dedicated masternodes or validators, making it a fully egalitarian consensus without revealing transaction amounts. Implementing such a system for a privacy-focused coin is exceptionally challenging, and we are not aware of any other project that has successfully accomplished it.

Another crucial technology is the implementation of Confidential Assets, which serves as a significant enhancement to Zano. This feature is a crucial addition, unlocking a plethora of new possibilities and positioning Zano at the forefront of technological innovation in the cryptocurrency space.

Q10 by @viku8379: What are your top priorities in 2023? Which part of the project are you most focused on right now and which features of your project makes Zano ahead of its competitors?

The major milestone for Zano in 2023 is the Zarcanum upgrade, the first Proof of Stake scheme with hidden amounts. This is not just a big deal for Zano, but for privacy in general, as it wasn't possible until now. Combined with Confidential Assets, also introduced in this update, we have a strong go-to-market strategy that gives us an edge against the competition. However, it's important to note that we don't see other privacy projects as competitors, but as colleagues working towards the same goal. That's why another key part of our strategy is to increase our collaboration with them.

To the winners of this event, congratulations! CoinEx will contact you for your prize. To all the others, we hope you guys enjoyed reading these questions & answers, if anything is unclear we'd be happy to see you in one of our user groups that you can find via our linktree.

Linktree: https://links.zano.org/