Zcash Foundation Funds App Mixing Private Messaging and Payments

The Canadian nonprofit Open Privacy is working on Cwtch, a zcash-fueled messaging app with more decentralization than Telegram or Signal.

"Cwtch is focused on building a decentralized infrastructure," said Open Privacy founder Sarah Jamie Lewis.

Now, thanks to a donation from the Zcash Foundation's donation of roughly $40,000, the nonprofit will hire a designer and continue research on the payment aspects of the system.

"You would top off at some point using zcash or any other payment methods."

Even the zcash option will rely on shielded transactions, which requires a node that very few people know how to operate.

"Server-side support is only half the battle, and the most critical aspect of this whole endeavour will be getting people who use Cwtch to a position where they can easily use zcash to pay for anonymous services, or even accept it themselves," Open Privacy said in a press statement.

The difference is, private keys and user identifiers can be used to unlock certain conversations, including private group chats and direct messages.

George Tankersley, the Zcash Foundation's director of engineering, said he hopes to incorporate insights and feedback from Cwtch into the "Zebra" zcash implementation.

"One of our goals is to do more work with external users and even competitors of zcash and to allow that to drive our priorities going into 2020," Tankersley said.

Open Privacy, founded in 2018, is funded primarily through user donations of bitcoin, zcash and monero.