Zcash, the privacy-centric cryptocurrency project, swiftly stole the Libra’s limelight and switched the debate from payments and fiat-backing to blockchain technology and scalability. Lofty ambitions of Zcash aside, the Electric Coin Company’s [ECC] new blockchain has not convinced everyone in the community just yet.

Tuur Demeester, Founding Partner at Adamant Capital, shared his opinion on Zcash’s new crypto-adventure, much to the dismay of the larger ZEC community.  He detailed a list of points surrounding the new project which, in his opinion, “sound horrible.”

Citing a report by Decrypt Media, Demeester highlighted flaws with respect to scalability, similarities in the crypto’s roadmap with other projects and the issue of “sharding.”

Nathan Wilcox, in the aforementioned report, had stated that the new blockchain was developed to make ZEC available to 10 billion customers by 2050; hence, the noted infrastructural improvements to the network. Coupled with the prospects of introducing sharding to “speed up transactions,” a switch was necessary.

Demeester’s primary issue with Zcash’s new blockchain is the introduction of a new coin, following the “implicit admission” that the coin they had, ZEC, was “never scalable” and a jibe at the privacy aspect of it, which the coin’s backers tout often. The lack of privacy transactions usage was described by many as one of the “biggest problems” for Zcash. This was because by default, transactions on Zcash are not set to “private,” unlike Monero [XMR]. In fact, less than 2 percent of all transactions are “fully anonymous.”

The Adamant Capital Founder highlighted its roadmap similarities with Ethereum, especially on the subject of sharding in the blockchain.

Finally, the report, citing Wilcox’s words, said that the ECC and the Zcash Foundation will stop receiving funding from mining rewards in 2020, while not mentioning how the development funding for the new project will come about. Demeester, in his final point of criticism, mentioned this as a “subsidy for ZEC Foundation.”

His full reply stated,

This sounds horrible to me:
– entirely new blockchain (new coin)
– implicit admission that $ZEC was never scalable, and that opt-in privacy doesn’t work
– roadmap has “a lot of similarities with ETH”
– “sharding” panacea
– subsidy for ZEC foundation https://t.co/R5vLXtKOCP

— Tuur Demeester (@TuurDemeester) June 23, 2019

Josh Swihart, VP of Marketing and Business Development at ECC, hit back at Demeester, calling the criticism “wrong and biased.” He said,

“Wrong and biased take. It’s a recognition that bitcoin doesn’t scale and that scalability and privacy are complimentary. Did you watch the session?”