ZenCash (ZEN) Goes Steep After Binance Listing

All the markets were at a loss but ZenCash (ZEN) is just now having its 15 minutes of fame following its Binance listing.

ZEN appreciated, achieving a vertical climb against BTC, and in dollar commensurate. ZEN rose to $47.12, nearly 40% overnight, and more than 60% up net in the past seven days. The coin is close to its BTC peak and is yet to repeat the dollar price above $65.

The next few days will show if trading picks up, ahead of the asset’s first anniversary.

Just as ZEN is gaining prominence, the matter of ASIC mining is also on the agenda for this coin. The ZenCash project is now minable by the new Bitmain Equihash machines. The project core team has decided to take an exploratory stance on the matter while discussing with the community.

A hurried algorithm change is not in the books for ZenCash:

“We value decentralization and our GPU miners who are an integral part of the community.  Changing algorithms is an extremely complex activity and we are not going to rush into a decision that may compromise the safety or integrity of the Zen network. It’s important that we take time to conduct research and evaluate options to properly formulate a plan.”

On GitHub, however, the community is generally against ASIC mining, citing centralization and the difficulty to approach specialized hardware, even when provided by Bitmain.

ZenCash is a privacy coin with a built-in governance system and a treasury for development holding 8.5% of the mining reward. This helps the ZenCash community develop with some guidance and clear goals. However, there may be animosity on the ASIC issue.

ZenCash was forked from ZClassic (ZCL) just a year ago, causing a spike and drop in ZCL prices similar to the case around the Bitcoin Private (BTCP) fork. ZenCash is the older project with a more organized team and supporting nodes, hence the ability to reach out and be brought into Binance.