Top Privacy Coins Blaze Past Bitcoin This Week, Here’s Why

Privacy coins have soared higher this week as crypto market sentiment remains mixed. The top three privacy coins Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC), and Decred (DCR) are continuously moving higher as the largest cryptocurrencies Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) fail to show any significant movement this week.

In the last 24 hours, privacy coins Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC), and Decred (DCR) are up nearly 7%, 6%, and 20% as the coins remain in demand. In the last 7 days, Monero, Zcash, and Decred have surged almost 20%, 14%, and 31%, with prices reaching 2022 highs.

The broader crypto market declined as investors feared more monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve.

Largest Privacy Coins Rally On Network Upgrades

The largest privacy coin Monero (XMR) has been surging significantly higher in the last few days as developers announced the “Fluorine Fermi” upgrade. The upgrade will take place on July 16th at the block height of 2.7 million while the software will be released one month before on June 16th. Hence, users and node operators are required to update their software before the date of upgrade.

The version 0.18 upgrade will introduce new features on the Monero network via a hard fork. An increase in ring size from 11 to 16 will improve the base privacy of transactions on the Monero network. Moreover, an upgraded Bulletproofs algorithm will improve transaction size and verification by almost 5-7%. Thus, reducing transaction time on the network. In addition, to improve the security and resilience of the network, fee changes will be implemented, while also enforcing view tags to reduce wallet sync time by almost 30-40%.

Zcash is also undergoing the major upgrade Network Upgrade 5 between April 19-22, 2022 at a block height of 1.8 million. The upgrade will improve the privacy and scalability of the Zcash network. The advancement to the Halo 2 proving system will remove trusted setups and proof composition. Moreover, the migration to a PoS consensus and the implementation of components of the Cosmos infrastructure.

Decred the best performer

Decred (DCR) prices blew past their peers this week, outperforming most of the crypto market ahead of the key v1.7 upgrade scheduled to take place in early May.

The upgrade is a push towards increasing staking rewards and decreasing pumping-and-dumping by miners. As a result of the privacy upgrade, mining rewards will be reduced from 60% to 10%, while rewards for proof-of-stake (PoS) validators will be increased from 30% to 80%. Thus, users will be incentivized for keeping DCR in their wallets.