I commend fryguy for trying.<p>People with PhD&#x27;s in computer science have trouble figuring out how Zcash works. It seems to require a very strong mathematics background and it&#x27;s an order of magnitude more complicated than Bitcoin. I don&#x27;t think that you&#x27;re going to get a good ELI5 for it for a while.<p>Zcash is based on Zerocash. In case you ever want to feel like a simpleton:
<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;zerocash-project.org&#x2F;media&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;zerocash-extended-20140518.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;zerocash-project.org&#x2F;media&#x2F;pdf&#x2F;zerocash-extended-2014...</a>