[ewillbefull]

> Zcash requires two states, a state analogous to bitcoin, and the anonymous zcash state which has to be explicitely opted into.

It does not require two states, this is a misconception that originates from the paper which refers to "basecoins" and other obsolete terminology. The protocol was anticipated to be a sidechain of some kind, but due to technical limitations that never panned out. Our system does use two states, but I personally advocate for removing the "transparent" system in the future when we have things like private multi-sig.

> Cryptonote are also auditable if a user wants to reveal information about a transaction. But even then the information is limited, it will show that payments came in and out of specific amounts, but it won't show the sending/receiving address along with those transaction IDs.

You can do all of this with our system as well, it was one of our design goals!

[cloudjacker]

I get that the protocol in theory doesn't need two states, Zcash the product will have two states. The harder second state likely won't be used that much. There are several cryptocurrencies that had multiple states to promote privacy. Darkcoin's darksend was an option in an otherwise bitcoin clone. Shadowcash has two states where the default state is an otherwise bitcoin clone. Zcash doesn't differentiate there.

As regard to your second point, I know, thats why I said "also".

Aside from the marketing budget and evangelists, Zcash isn't really standing out to me. What do you see? Your idea and possibility of removing the transparent system? From my understanding this means every transaction will have the high system requirements, it still seems like a worse execution of this technology than other existing cryptocurrencies who will be even further ahead by the time these growing pains are even considered on the Zcash network.