Zero Project Analysis
About
Intro
In another edition of our project reviews, we decided to have a look at Zero. In this review, we will dig deep into this project and give you all the answers. We took an in-depth look by examining the project, its team, tokenomics, community and technical analysis, among other metrics.
If you wish to skip to the summary to see the SWOT analysis, matrix score and rating, click here.
Finally, if you find this review beneficial, feel free to sign up and register for our newsletter or follow us on Twitter for our latest reports. Thank you in advance for your support 
Overview
ZERO (ZER) is a cryptocurrency and transaction platform based on Zcash, with a focus on privacy and anonymity technologies.
Use case
Zero is intended for use a method of payment and transactions, with the most prevalent feature being the anonymous feature, providing users with the ability to send untraceable payments.
ZER is a direct fork of Zcash and inherits most of the codebase with few modifications. The most significant changes are the newly added Equihash parameters that have been carefully picked to make specialised mining hardware difficult and uneconomical.
Adoption
Currently, ZER is being accepted as a form of payment by a handful of small independent retailers across the UK and EU.
Competition
Current competitors in the privacy sector include the following projects, which all utilise various technologies to implement their privacy features:
- Monero ($1,050,470,818 USD Market cap)
- Zcash ($309,789,975 USD Market cap)
- Grin ($25,260,710 USD Market cap)
- PirateChain ($2,978,095 USD Market cap)
About Summary
| ✅ POSITIVE | ⛔ WEAKNESS | 📝 IMPROVEMENT |
|---|---|---|
| Private and fast method of payments | Limited use case | Increase drive among online retailers |
| Lack of current adoption |
Tokenomics
Token info
| SYMBOL | ZER |
| GENESIS BLOCK | JUNE 2018 |
| BLOCK EXPLORER | EXPLORER |
| CONSENSUS | POW |
| CIRCULATING SUPPLY | 7,204,770 ZER |
| MAX TOKEN SUPPLY | 17,000,000 ZER |
| % MAX SUPPLY MINTED | 42% |
Financials
| MARKET CAP | $632,327 USD |
| VOLUME (24HR) | $60,156 USD |
| PRICE | $0.087 |
| VOL TO NETWORK | 0.095% |
| AVG PRICE 30 DAY | $0.065 USD |
| TRADING PAIRS | BTC, ETH, USDT and USD |
Token distribution
Circulating supply
Emissions
At the time of the review, the block reward emission is 10.8 ZER per block or 7776 ZER per day.
The next block halving is around block 800,000 or June 2020.
Token utility
Zero is currently used as a method of payment among several small independent retailers.
Token Summary
| ✅ POSITIVE | ⛔ WEAKNESS | 📝 IMPROVEMENT |
|---|---|---|
| Funding method incoporated via block reward fee | Long POW period means continuous emissions | Increase ease of use for adoption |
| Users can obtain ZER via airdrop/bounties | ||
| Several retailers accepting ZER as payment option |
Team
Experience
The team behind the Zero project are listed on the website, mainly under their crypto identity, which tends to the norm from our experience with anonymous coins. There are no LinkedIn or Github profiles linked to any other the team or Bio around their skills and experience.
The team state that they plan to register a foundation for the project in the future.
Advisors partnerships
There are no listed advisers for the project.
The team have recently formed a partnership with Mazer Gaming, who is a professional esports team. Zero aim to showcase the privacy, efficiency and speed of Zero by sending ZER micro-transactions to gamers on Mazer’s Twitch channel.
Development
The development milestones are listed on the roadmap of the project; however, no dates or progress are attached to each milestone. Milestones are being achieved and announced to the community upon completion.
Team Summary
| ✅ POSITIVE | ⛔ WEAKNESS | 📝 IMPROVEMENT |
|---|---|---|
| Active development from team | Team partially transparent/partially anon | Improve team transparency |
| Developing alternative streams of revenue | Register foundation/company |
Code
Audit
Coin specifications match in code, and no hidden premine has been discovered.
ZER is a direct fork of Zcash and inherits most of the codebase with few modifications.
The most significant changes are the newly added Equihash parameters that have been carefully picked to make specialised mining hardware difficult and uneconomical.
ZERO is a POW coin, so theoretically it is vulnerable to a 51% attack. To mitigate this, the algorithm requires a high memory to mine (around 4GB), so it’s, therefore, doubtful that there will be ASICs to mine ZER anytime soon.
The mining algorithm is Equihash (192/7), the block time is set to 120s, and the block reward is 10.8 per block.
The GitHub contributors match with the details for the team members.
Code Summary
| ✅ POSITIVE | ⛔ WEAKNESS | 📝 IMPROVEMENT |
|---|---|---|
| Basic code audit | None identified | External code audit recommended |
| Unique algorithm developed |
Community
Followers
There are over 2950 followers on Twitter and over 1700 members in the Discord
Engagement
There are several channels for communication, including a Telegram and Discord, however, Discord seems to the main channel of communication as it allows for the organisation of numerous channels/rooms.
Regular project updates are provided on Discord
There is regular activity in the Discord chat and admin/mods are engaged with any questions from the community replying in a timely manner
According to RivalIQ, the average Twitter engagement is 34 per tweet, which is 1.15% of its total 2950 follower audience.
At a rate of 34 engagement per tweet, this is just over 4 times higher than the average engagement rate across all industries [ref].
Governance
Zero is a community focused project and as such all decisions are discussed and implemented among the community.
Community Summary
| ✅ POSITIVE | ⛔ WEAKNESS | 📝 IMPROVEMENT |
|---|---|---|
| Website multilingual | None identified | None identified |
| Active community | ||
| Governance model | ||
| Regular updates provided to community |
Technical analysis
Chart
Chart Analysis
Price is currently trading around the 1000-1200 satoshi region after spending several months at new lows in the 500 satoshi region.
Areas of interest on the upside include a breakout above the 2000 satoshi region. Conversely, on the downside, a return to the 500 satoshi region or below would be an area of interest.
Price Summary
| ✅ POSITIVE | ⛔ WEAKNESS | 📝 IMPROVEMENT |
|---|---|---|
| Several pairings | Low liquidity | |
| Listed on several exchanges | ||
| Team have worked hard to add further exchange listings after Cryptopia |
Summary
Conclusion
In summary, the Zero project scored 61/100 based on our scoring matrix, and we rate the project at a B- rating
| ABOUT | USE CASE ✅ |
COMPETITION ✅ |
ADOPTION ✅✅ |
FEATURES ✅ |
ROADMAP ✅✅✅ |
| TEAM | PUBLIC ✅ |
EXPERIENCE ✅ |
DEVELOPMENT ✅✅ |
PARTNERSHIPS ✅ |
FINANCES ✅✅ |
| CODE | AUDIT ✅ |
CODEBASE ✅ |
ACTIVITY ✅✅ |
DOCUMENTATION ✅✅ |
ENGAGEMENT ✅✅ |
| COMMUNITY | COMMUNICATION ✅✅ |
FOLLOWERS ✅ |
GOVERNANCE ✅✅ |
ENGAGEMENT ✅✅ |
WEBSITE ✅✅ |
| TOKENOMICS | DISTRIBUTION ✅✅ |
BLOCK EXPLORER ✅✅✅ |
EMISSIONS ✅✅ |
UTILITY ✅ |
ENTRY ✅✅ |
| PRICE | EXCHANGES ✅✅ |
LIQUIDITY ✅ |
PAIRINGS ✅✅✅ |
T.A ✅✅ |
DATA ✅✅✅ |
| MISC | LEGAL ✅✅ |
HYPE ✅✅ |
PLATFORM ✅✅✅ |
Breakdown
Disclaimer
- This review is a community voted review on behalf of the Zero team.
- This review is intended for educational purposes only and SHOULD NOT be considered by you as financial advice.
- Before investing in any project, we recommend you do your research + consult a registered financial adviser.
- All information listed is accurate at the time of publishing in October 2019.
Methodology
- We use a combined rating score out of 100, covering all the listed metrics for project reviews.
- Each metric is rated out of 3, including a potential bonus point in every metric.
- We also reserve the right to award a bonus point for outstanding achievement for a project.
- Our rating and grading framework is available here.
