ZERO is a cryptocurrency with advanced privacy features. It is a fork of Zcash that is a fork of Bitcoin. The ZERO client software downloads and stores the entire history of ZERO transactions; depending on the speed of your computer and network connection, the synchronization process could take a day or more once the blockchain has reached a significant size. ZERO supports two kinds of addresses:
- T addresses (T stands for transparent) - all their transactions can be publicly seen
- Z addresses - their input/ouptut transactions cannot be seen by anyone expect the sender/recipient. These addersses offer privacy
See important security warnings in doc/security-warnings.md. ZERO is still a work in progress and highly experimental. Use at your own risk! Also see: License and Disclaimer
Currently only Linux is officially supported. Ubuntu Linux is the recommended distribution to use but others are also possible. Requires at least 8GB RAM. Sequence of commands is:
- Install packages (needs to be done once only at start)
sudo apt-get install \
build-essential pkg-config libc6-dev m4 g++-multilib \
autoconf libtool ncurses-dev unzip git python \
zlib1g-dev wget bsdmainutils automake
- Obtain the ZERO software from GitHub
git clone https://github.com/zerodev2/zero.git
cd zero
git checkout master
- Download cryptographic keys (needs to be done once only)
./zcutil/fetch-params.sh
- Build the source code to produce binary executables:
./zcutil/build.sh -j$(nproc)
- Create a ZERO configuration file
mkdir -p ~/.zero
echo "rpcuser=username" > ~/.zero/zero.conf
echo "rpcpassword=`head -c 32 /dev/urandom | base64`" >> ~/.zero/zero.conf
echo "addnode=35.164.216.74" >> ~/.zero/zero.conf
echo "addnode=35.165.120.254" >> ~/.zero/zero.conf
echo "addnode=94.176.235.178" >> ~/.zero/zero.conf
echo "rpcport=23800" >> ~/.zero/zero.conf
echo 'gen=1' >> ~/.zero/zero.conf
echo "genproclimit=$(nproc)" >> ~/.zero/zero.conf
echo 'equihashsolver=tromp' >> ~/.zero/zero.conf
After following the build & install steps you will have ZERO ready for use (probably) in folder ~/.zero/src. The two important binary executables are zcashd and zcash-cli.
The default configuration in ~/.zero/zero.conf has mining enabled. When mining you're helping to strengthen the network and contributing to a social good :)
Mining ZERO may take up to 3 GB per CPU available. If the available memory is not sufficient for this, you may disable mining by setting the option gen=0
or you may reduce the number of CPUs that are mining e.g. genproclimit=1 means mining with 1 CPU only.
The usage is currently the same as for ZCash. For more information see the ZCash User Guide.
A ZERO Graphical Wallet exists that is maintained by an independent developer. See installtion instruction on the wallet site.
