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What Is the Primary Difference in the Consensus Mechanism of Zcash Compared to Bitcoin, despite Both Being PoW?

Zcash uses the Equihash algorithm (memory-hard), while Bitcoin uses SHA-256.
Greeks.Live19.11.25

What Is the Primary Difference in the Consensus Mechanism of Zcash Compared to Bitcoin, despite Both Being PoW?

Both Zcash and Bitcoin use a Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism, but they differ in the specific hashing algorithm. Bitcoin uses SHA-256, while Zcash uses Equihash (a memory-hard algorithm).

Equihash was initially designed to be more resistant to specialized ASIC hardware, aiming for more decentralized mining via general-purpose CPUs and GPUs, though ASICs have since been developed for it.

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