Zcash (ZEC) Sapling Upgrade Is Now Live; Speed and Privacy Boosted

• Sapling is now live and active, as Zcash foundation complete the long-waited upgrade.
• ZEC/USD continues to demonstrate vulnerabilities to the downside, as indicators remain bearish for now.

Zcash (ZEC), the privacy-based cryptocurrency, has now executed a hard fork and upgraded its network. This was reported to have been completed by the foundation on 28th October, a move after many months, even years potentially within development. The hard fork was very much long-waited and heavily anticipated. The activation of Sapling will facilitate new shielded addresses, and is expected to enhance Zcash’s performance with improvement in its network’s speed of transactions.

The foundation tweeted on Sunday evening, “Success! We’re happy to announce that the #Zcash Sapling network upgrade activated today at block height 419200. #Sapling introduces new #shielded addresses with significantly improved performance.”

In the official blog post update, specifics were covered on the improvements, noting that, “Sapling introduces new shielded addresses with significantly improved performance: a time reduction of 90% for constructing transactions, and a memory reduction of over 97%”. The activation was said to have provided instant benefits to users and they were enabled with Sapling addresses.

Sapling and Its Benefits

Sapling is a network upgrade that aims to significantly improve the efficiency for shielded transactions – providing the pathway for broad mobile exchange in addition to vendor adoption of Zcash shielded addresses. This makes shielded transactions much faster, lighter, and equally as safe as before. Outside other mentioned benefits, another example is this will facilitate users being able to execute transactions from mobile devices.

In addition to this, ZCash’s shielded transactions will also be implemented into mobile wallets. Furthermore, these transactions will also reach IoT devices, and it will be much easier for exchanges and large enterprises to adopt the coin and take advantage of the privacy it offers.

Each transaction will not only take about 100 times less memory but is also six times faster. Ever since the upgrade was launched, ZCash users have reported no problems with it. Quite the opposite, many expressed their excitement regarding Sapling, announcing successful experiments, and congratulating the ZEC team for coming up with a new way to handle these issues.

Technical Review – Daily Chart

ZEC/USD as can be seen via the daily time frame, is being heavily dictated by a triangular pattern. This has been witnessed with several cryptocurrencies across the board, being contained within such a set up. Despite the positive successful upgrade of Sapling, the price continues to remain firmly within the bears control. Running within its second consecutive session in the red, set to test vital area of support. The lower part of the triangular pattern under threat, which could be catastrophic for ZEC/USD.

The bulls have continued to face rejections in attempts to breakout from the above-mentioned pattern. Throughout the back end of this month, the price has been sent south on each encounter of the trend line. On 25th October, the daily candle for ZEC/USD produced a gravestone doji. This being another firm bearish indicator, which as anticipated saw further selling pressure followed.

In terms of support, $111.50 is next major area of comfort, the lower part of the pennant / triangular pattern. This is also within a demand area, that has proven in September and October to prop up the price. A failure to hold will likely see a fast move back down to sub-$100, where another buying area is observed. Looking to the upside, resistance can be seen around $122-124, the upper trend line. Should the bulls manage to finally breach this, a decent wave of selling can be seen. However, to conclude indicators for now point to the downside.

Disclaimer: The author owns bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. He holds investment positions in the coins, but does not engage in short-term or day-trading.

Featured image courtesy of Shutterstock.

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Ken Chigbo

Ken has over 8 years exposure to the financial markets. During a large part of his career, he worked as an analyst, covering a variety of asset classes; forex, fixed income, commodities, equities and cryptocurrencies. Ken has gone on to become a regular contributor across several large news and analysis outlets.