Zcash began as a fork in the bitcoin block chain on October 28, 2016 by Zooko Wilcox. It was previously known as the Zerocoin protocol before it was transformed into the Zerocash system and finally into Zcash. Like Bitcoin, it is also based on a decentralized block chain, but allows anonymity behind the transaction amounts and parties involved. In Bitcoin, if you know someone's address, you can track their transactions and you can even see their transaction amounts, but with Zcash all the information is encrypted.