What’s a
$JubJub?
@Zcash asked & we find out.
To begin with they mention: “Find the lore, win the 🛡️(shielded) zcash:native”. So they begin by welcoming Jubjub and inviting us to find the lore behind it and winning the zcash:native. Naturally a crypto person like myself would assume that this refers to a meme paired with stock.
Why do I say this? Well, this is particularly interesting because of many reasons, one being the timing.
The Jubjub token on
@LaunchOnSF was launched 3 days prior to their post on X and 5 days prior to the official protocol that mentions it 152 times according to Grok. With this in mind and the fact that they never mentioned Jubjub before on X, how did someone know in advance?
This is also interesting because the leading meme on Stonk is a cat paired with zcash:native, a memestock. Coincidence?
The
@Pumpfun vamp was launched at the same time as the post and can therefore be excluded from our argument, which is that this was a “planted” mascot token. I’ll explain later why it’s THE mascot.
So let’s look for the lore behind Jubjub.
Two days after they welcomed Jujub Zcash released the “Zcash Protocol Specification”.(*)What’s the first thing you see on there? Exactly! The same Jubjub on the front page with a footnote referring to Peter Newell 1902 and Zcash founder Daira-Emma Hopewood 2018. These names are interesting but we’ll get back to this.
Upon exploring the protocol further we find that there is a specific topic named “Jubjub” on page 105. It begins with a quote from - Lewis Caroll. “The Hunting of the Snark”. The quote is interesting but not useful for our argument.
Grok explains the correlation here as Jubjub being a “cryptographic building block used by Zcash’s zk-SNARK machinery.”. In simple terms just clever naming, but the lore doesn’t stop here.
After searching the github belonging to Daira, it seems that she also has referred to this exact book, why?(**)Let’s dig further.
The protocol and Daira’s github do not explicitly explain what the correlation here is. Why would they quote the original author behind the Jubjub picture along with Daira? What’s her part in a 100-year old book? This is not mentioned in the protocol and leaves us to search elsewhere for the answer.
After some thorough investigation i find out that Daira was quite active in the Zcash community forums. Tracking her posts i tried looking for any mention of Jubjub and behold I found it, it also explains why Daira is quoted alongside the original author behind Jubjub.
She had commented in a post discussing a potential mascot for Zcash titled “Zebras are unacceptable”, ie as mascots.(***) In it Daira responds with “I propose the Red Jubjub bird”, the same exact picture in the protocol. Apparently she had done edits of her own and this was the reason she was quoted alongside the author.
This proves our thesis about it being the Zcash mascot to some extent, but not fully, not until Zcash say so themselves. On the other hand, why would they invite us to find the lore, describe a literal memestock knowing fully well it’s going to lead to Daira suggesting Jubjub as the official mascot for Zcash? I will leave that for you to decide.
* Protocol:
zips.z.cash/protocol/protoco…
** Daira’s github:
github.com/zcash/zips/blob/m…
*** Daira/mascot:
forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/z…
Please meet jubjub. Find the lore, win the🛡️
$ZEC