YcashYcash is the first "friendly fork" of Zcash. The two share an origin and the same privacy technology — but Ycash made three deliberate changes at launch. Here is exactly what they are.
The shared origin
Ycash launched in July 2019. It is built on the Zcash codebase, which is itself built on Bitcoin's — so it inherits years of battle-tested engineering rather than starting from scratch.
More than that, Ycash and Zcash share real history. The first 570,000 blocks of the Ycash blockchain are identical to the first 570,000 blocks of Zcash. Ycash branched off from that point. Because of the shared history, anyone holding the private keys to Zcash at block 570,000 was able to use those same keys to access an equal amount of Ycash — the fork came with a built-in distribution to existing Zcash holders.
The word "friendly" matters. Ycash wasn't a hostile takeover or a cash grab. It was a fork made openly, with a clear rationale, by people who wanted to carry a particular set of principles forward.
The three changes that matter
1. A mining algorithm ordinary hardware can run
Bitcoin and Zcash mining both drifted toward specialised industrial machines — purpose-built hardware that ordinary people can't realistically buy or run. Ycash changed its mining algorithm at launch (from Equihash 200,9 to Equihash 192,7) specifically to keep mining viable on everyday, commodity hardware. The goal: keep the on-ramp open, so issuance reaches a broad base of participants rather than a small set of industrial operations.
2. A leaner, fixed development fund
Zcash's early issuance included a sizeable "founders' reward." Ycash set its development funding at a perpetual 5%, directed to the nonprofit Ycash Foundation, with the remaining 90%-plus of issuance going to users through mining. The idea is to fund ongoing work without the funding mechanism becoming a lever of control over the protocol.
3. Addresses that start with "y"
On a Zcash-derived network, shielded (private) addresses on Zcash begin with "z". Ycash's shielded addresses begin with "y". It's a small change with a practical purpose: it makes it much harder to accidentally send coins to the wrong network.
What stayed the same
The core privacy technology is shared. Ycash inherits Zcash's shielded-transaction cryptography — the ability to transact without exposing the sender, the recipient, or the amount. Both have a total supply capped at 21 million coins. If you understand how privacy works on Zcash, you already understand how it works on Ycash.
So which one should you care about?
They're separate projects with separate communities, and this isn't a contest with a single winner. Zcash is the larger, more established project. Ycash is smaller, and its pitch is specific: keep mining accessible to ordinary hardware, keep the development fund lean and fixed, and stay close to the original "digital cash" intent.
If those priorities resonate with you, Ycash is worth understanding on its own terms — not as a substitute for Zcash, but as a project that made a clear, early choice about what it wanted to be.