The recent rally driven by ZCASH has cemented its place as a structural round in privacy-focused projects as the sector continues to outperform other market segments.
ZEC rose nearly 5% to $635 in the past 24 hours, reversing losses over the weekend that saw it dip to nearly $480. Its market cap easily crossed $7.2 billion, surpassing Monero’s $6.3 billion for the second time this month in a symbolic moment in the long-running tug-of-war for dominance in privacy tokens.
The move extends a wider cycle to older “dino” properties that once defined the 2015-2018 market cycle.
Names from this cohort were some of the largest tokens by capitalization in the early years of the market, but fell from investor favor as newer narratives – such as decentralized finance (defi) tokens and memecoins – gained retail attention.
Privacy-focused Dash, Decred, Railgun, and Verge have climbed from 10-25% in the past week, per coinecko, as payments focus is up to 16%.
Much of Zcash’s appeal lies in its optional privacy model, which allows users to choose between transparent and shielded transactions. A transition from cash or crypto to going fully private takes a few minutes on average in a less than five-step process, as Coindesk Research said In the recent ZCASH report. That flexibility has helped ZEC regain traction among institutions that want exposure to privacy tech without the regulatory baggage of Monero, with XMR of late being delisted from many major exchanges due to compliance concerns while ZEC enjoys enthusiastic exchange support.
Meanwhile, Starknet’s STRK climbed 45% to $0.20 in 24 hours, topping Layer 2 gains as liquidity returned to Ethereum scaling tokens.
Starknet’s developer ecosystem has been accelerated ahead of several protocol updates this quarter, including Release of a dedicated Bitcoin The financial platform, and traders are starting to price in growth after months of stagnation.
A separate, even memetic, factor is starknet cofounder Eli Ben-Sasson’s previous work as a founding scientist of Zcash, and his Recent support of a Zcash and Starknet Alliance in the future.
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The so-called ‘ZTARKNET’ proposal by ecosystem developer @dimahledba in the ZCASH community introduces a network layer that combines Starknet and Zcash, creating a private but highly scalable blockchain.
The proposal includes a method for paying network fees using ZEC, which has gained early support from prominent members of the Zcash community, included Founder Zooko Wilcox.
