Overall security and cryptographic guarantees of the network
Distribution of network control and governance
Resistance to changes in historical data
Ability to resist transaction censorship
Transaction throughput and confirmation times
How widely tokens/stake is distributed
ABOUT ZCASH
Zcash, a privacy-focused Bitcoin fork launched in 2016, earns a Trustless Index score of 5.9, reflecting its strong cryptographic innovations via zk-SNARKs for shielded transactions alongside notable challenges in decentralization and scalability.
While excelling in immutability (8.5) and security (8.0) with no consensus exploits and robust resistance to reversals, it falters in decentralization (2.0) due to mining pool concentration (e.g., ViaBTC and F2Pool controlling over 60% of hashrate) and speed (2.0) with base-layer throughput at 7-10 TPS.
This score underscores Zcash's trade-offs: pioneering optional privacy enhances censorship resistance (8.0), yet validator diversity and performance lag behind peers, as verified through on-chain metrics and governance analysis.
The scores are based on objective technical analysis, network statistics, and governance structures. Each metric is scored on a scale of 1-10, with 10 representing the highest level of achievement in that category.