FAQ — questions people usually have after reading the @orbinumnetwork vs. @Zcash combat article Q1: What's a "shielded ratio," and why does it matter more than price? It's the percentage of a chain's supply actually sitting inside the shielded pool at any given time. We care about this metric more than almost any other, because it's the one number that can't be faked with hype or bots. Shielding costs a fee and a few extra steps — so when someone does it anyway, that's real demand for privacy, not speculation. This is exactly why we designed Orbinum's commitments with an asset_id field from day one: we want shielded-ratio-style metrics to eventually cover every asset on our chain, not just one native token the way Zcash's does. - Q2: What's a "circuit," and why does it matter that one was under-constrained at Zcash? A circuit is the rulebook of math equations that a zero-knowledge proof has to satisfy — think of it as an answer sheet's grading criteria, not an electronic circuit. Zcash's Orchard circuit was missing one rule, the equivalent of a grading program that checks the answer range and the name field but forgets to check the submission deadline — so a late, invalid submission could slide through as "valid." This is precisely why our own docs don't just say "trust our ZK system" — we publish the four explicit constraints our transfer circuit enforces (Merkle membership, nullifier correctness, value conservation, output commitment validity), in plain terms, so anyone can audit exactly what we're checking. We built that transparency in because we watched what happens when one constraint gets missed. - Q3: Does Zcash really have zero smart contracts and zero multi-asset support? Is that actually a gap we're closing? Yes, on both counts, and yes, that's a real part of our thesis. Zcash was built as a privacy-focused payment currency — forked from Bitcoin's codebase, with no contract execution engine at all, so "EVM-compatible" isn't even a meaningful comparison; there's no engine to be compatible with. And there's exactly one asset on their chain, ZEC — no token-issuance standard. We built Orbinum the opposite way on purpose. We're EVM-compatible, so Solidity developers can build private DeFi without learning a new stack, and every commitment we generate carries an asset_id, so multiple assets can share the same shielded pool instead of each needing its own chain. Zcash proved private payments could work at scale. We're betting that private, programmable finance is the next step — not a replacement for what they built, an extension of it. - Q4: Why does a trusted setup exist at all, and why are we still using one when Zcash isn't? Think of it like manufacturing a lock. Certain proof systems — Groth16, which is what we use — need a one-time "master blueprint" generated up front. Generating that blueprint produces a secret number as a byproduct, and if anyone keeps that number, they could theoretically forge fake proofs. A trusted setup is the safe generation of that blueprint, and it only stays safe if every participant destroys their piece of the secret afterward. Systems without a trusted setup, like the Halo 2 system Zcash uses now, are built on math where that secret never has to exist — there's no master key to forge because none is possible by design. We chose Groth16 anyway, deliberately. It gives us a constant 128-byte proof and ~15ms on-chain verification regardless of transaction complexity — cheaper and faster than what setup-free systems typically offer, especially inside an EVM-compatible runtime. We took on the ceremony as the cost of that trade-off, rather than pretending it doesn't matter. - Q5: What actually happens at a "ceremony," and what will ours look like? It's the live event where that trusted setup gets generated. One participant creates a random secret, computes part of the result, destroys their secret, and hands the output to the next person — repeated across dozens or hundreds of independent participants in a relay. The security guarantee is that it only takes one honest participant in that entire chain for the whole system to stay safe, even if everyone else secretly cheated. More independent participants means lower odds that literally everyone colluded. Our current proving and verification keys are local, non-production, testing-only artifacts — we say that plainly in our own docs. Before mainnet, we're running a public multi-party ceremony with community participation, the same category of event Zcash ran with Powers of Tau back in 2016. We want it to function as a real community moment — validators, ambassadors, and builders taking part directly — not something we quietly run in-house and announce after the fact. - Q6: What's the difference between Sprout and Sapling, and why bring up Zcash's early history at all? They're Zcash's first two generations of shielded pool. Sprout (2016) proved the concept worked but was barely usable — proof generation could take minutes and needed serious memory. Sapling (2018) fixed that: seconds instead of minutes, light enough for mobile wallets. We bring this up because it's a useful reminder that shielded-pool cryptography has always been iterative — nobody, including Zcash, got it right on the first try. Orchard (2022) and Ironwood (2026) kept refining it. We're building on the version of this grammar that a decade of real iteration has already stress-tested, rather than starting from a blank page. - Q7: Where does the claim about our "public multi-party ceremony before mainnet" actually come from? @orbinumnetwork technical docs — docs.orbinum.network/archite…, under "Trusted Setup → Current Status": "The current proving/verification keys in /artifacts are for testing only. They were generated in a local, non-production setup. Before mainnet launch (Q4 2026), we will conduct a public multi-party ceremony with community participation and full transparency." That's not marketing copy for this thread — it's the same commitment sitting in our engineering documentation, and it'll be held to that standard. #PrivacyChainDecoded #orbinum #zcash