Zcash founder joins Shielded Labs and seeks to promote hybrid PoS upgrade

Zooko Wilcox, founder of the privacy coin Zcash, is looking to accelerate the protocol's upgrade to a hybrid proof-of-stake system after joining Shielded Labs as head of product. Shielded Labs is an independent organization based in Switzerland that supports Zcash. Wilcox recently said that after eight years of using PoW mining, Zcash needs to upgrade to a hybrid PoS system. He noted that PoW consensus and the issuance of new coins have put downward pressure on its price, "but this pressure is expected to ease as the rate of new coin issuance decreases." The two major upcoming improvements mentioned by Wilcox include the deployment of the Zcash Sustainability Fund and the upgrade to "Crosslink," a hybrid PoW and PoS protocol. "We want to deploy this technology as quickly as possible while maintaining Zcash's good security record," he said. The benefits of the upgrade include allowing ZEC holders to stake, providing finality to protect users from rollback attacks, reducing transaction times, and allowing safer two-way bridges to other networks. However, Wilcox did not elaborate on the technical details or provide a timeline for the upgrade. (Cointelegraph)