Different coin pools in zcash

Question

I would like to understand the cryptocurrency zcash a little bit better...

My understanding of it is that there are two address types t-addresses and z-addresses. Only transaction between two z-addresses are fully private. Transactions between t-addresses are working as transactions in bitcoin, i.e. the degree of privacy is exactly the same. Also there are two different pools: shielded pool and unshielded pool.

My questions:

1. Zcash is based on a base currency. As far as I know it is bitcoin, right?
2. I guess the coins in the shielded pool are zcoin, right?
3. How about the unshielded pool? Are they bitcoins or zcoins? (i.e. the marketcap of zcoins consists only of the coins in the shielded pool or both pools?

Thanks a lot for any kind of help!

Answer 1

1. Zcash is based on a base currency. As far as I know it is bitcoin, right?

Zcash is not based on a base currency; it is an independent block chain. The code was built on a fork of Bitcoin Core 0.11.2 (and since then has had numerous backports of subsequent upstream changes).

2. I guess the coins in the shielded pool are zcoin, right?
3. How about the unshielded pool? Are they bitcoins or zcoins? (i.e. the marketcap of zcoins consists only of the coins in the shielded pool or both pools?

All pools within the Zcash block chain contain ZEC. There are three pools within Zcash:

• The unshielded pool (containing ZEC stored in transparent addresses).
• The Sprout shielded pool (containing ZEC stored in Sprout shielded addresses).
• The Sapling shielded pool (currently zero, but will start being used once Sapling activates).

ZEC is moved between the various pools when transactions send ZEC from one type of address to another, e.g. from a transparent address to a Sprout shielded address (see this blog post for more details).