Israeli-Developed Privacy Money

Built with Israeli
cryptography.

Zcash is a privacy-first digital currency co-developed by researchers at Tel Aviv University and the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology, alongside Johns Hopkins and MIT. A coin rooted in world-class Israeli science.

As featured in

The Times of Israel — “Zcash, the Israeli-developed virtual money, starts to make its mark.” Read the article →

01

An Israeli origin story

🇮🇱

Tel Aviv University

Home to cryptographers whose research on zero-knowledge proofs helped make Zcash's privacy guarantees possible.

Israel
🇮🇱

Technion — Israel Institute of Technology

One of the world's leading science institutes, contributing core academic work behind the protocol.

Israel
🔐

zk-SNARKs

The breakthrough that lets a transaction be verified as valid without revealing sender, recipient, or amount.

Privacy by math
🌍

A global team

The Israeli labs collaborated with Johns Hopkins and MIT in the United States to bring Zcash to life in 2016.

Israel + USA

Recognized in the Israeli press

In 2017, The Times of Israel profiled Zcash as Israeli-developed virtual money beginning to make its mark — highlighting the deep roots Israeli academia has in the privacy-tech that powers it.

2016Network launched
2Israeli institutions
21MMax supply (ZEC)
02·5

The people behind the protocol

Daira Hopwood, Zcash engineer and protocol designer
Founding team member

Daira Hopwood

Engineer & Protocol Designer · founding member of the Zcash team

With over two decades in security-focused software engineering, Daira is one of the founding members of the Zcash team and a central force in its cryptographic protocol design. Ze drove many of the circuit optimizations behind the Sapling upgrade, which cut shielded transaction times by around 90%.

Photo & bio: Electric Coin Company

Proud to celebrate Daira (ze/hir)
02

Privacy you can be proud of

Built with compliance in mind

Zcash supports optional viewing keys, letting a user voluntarily disclose their own transaction details to an auditor or authority — privacy balanced with accountability.

Open & transparent code

The protocol is open-source, peer-reviewed, and built on published, scrutinized cryptography.

Rooted in research

Few currencies trace their lineage so directly to elite academic institutions, including two of Israel's finest.

“And by the way, I think we can successfully make Zcash too traceable for criminals like WannaCry, but still completely private & fungible.”

— Zooko Wilcox, Zcash founder & CEO · May 2017 →
03

Research & funding

Zcash grew out of the academic Zerocash project. Its published acknowledgments list the institutions and grants that supported the underlying research — a roster that reflects its serious academic pedigree, including Israeli science funding.

Zerocash project sponsors list, from zerocash-project.org/about_us
Sponsors of the Zerocash research project, as published at zerocash-project.org/about_us. Supporters included Tel Aviv University, the Israeli Centers of Research Excellence (I-CORE), the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology, the U.S. DARPA/AFRL, the NSF, the Office of Naval Research, the Simons Foundation and others.
04

Proud to call it Kosher Cash

For a proud member of the Jewish community, "Kosher Cash" is a badge of affection — a way of celebrating a privacy coin with deep Israeli roots, born in the labs of Tel Aviv and the Technion and carried onto the world stage.

From zero-knowledge cryptography to a global community, this is a project to be proud of. גאווה — pride, built into the chain. 🇮🇱

“Kosher Cash” and the seal above are an original, affectionate nickname and emblem for this fan page. They are not an official kosher certification and are not affiliated with any kosher-certifying agency (OU, OK, Star-K, Kof-K, etc.).