Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies offer an in-built trust mechanism and decentralised control for transactions between the sender and receiver. Transactions are added into the blockchain and can be easily retrieved from internet. Thus, the anonymity of users are not secured for official transactions. This does not pose threat to individuals with account information not linked to KYC. However, several other cryptocurrencies offer the option to maintain anonymity and is deemed useful for official business transactions. For businesses, information is a valuable asset and transactions in those situations occurs by imbibing high level of security into the system.
Monero was launched three years ago in May' 2014 and was initially named as BitMonero. Later it was renamed Monero to shorten the initial name. The currency increased its market capitalisation in 2016 with an upward surge in transactions, primarily by darknet market AlphaBay. Further in 2017, the use of Confidential transactions and Ring signatures enhanced the privacy of transactions Monero Wiki.
Zcash launched in late 2016, was developed to aid security of bitcoin transactions. The coin had an increasing upward trajectory and is in the list of top 20 cryptocurrencies. Apart from offering anonymity in private transactions, it also offers the user to prove their transaction with option of selective disclosure. The added feature is a unique step that enables the coin to comply with government regulations and selectively allowing access of transaction. The access of transaction can be given to auditing agencies, which would give sanctity to transactions Zcash Wiki.
While both Monero and Zcash comes with a set of similar and unique features they both feature in top performing cryptocurrencies. Monero contributes to 0.99% while Zcash contributes 0.45% of total market capitalisation. Zcash has fixed supply of 21 million coins similar to Bitcoin with approximately 2.3 million coins used till now. Monero has a different supply system, in which ~18.3 million XMR will be mined for 8 years till May 2022. After exhausting the capped emission limit (which is analogous with supply), the coin will be supplied at a constant tail rate of 0.3 XMR per minute. This will result in continuous supply and at same time provide incentive to miners Monero Supply Limit. Currenty Monero has exhausted ~15 million coins and is priced at $94.96. On other hand Zcash is steeply priced at $288.28. Monero is at 10th position while Zcash is at 15th position in ranking at Cryptomarketcap.
There was an interesting thread on Twitter, yesterday, started by Edward Snowden discussing Zcash, initially, but then someone mentioned Monero. The lead developer(?) Spagni jumped in to answer criticism of Monero. It was a good interaction and arguments for both cryptos were made. Here:
I saw an article regarding the same on Coindesk and tried to find similarities and differences between the two cryptocurrencies.