Zcash, one of the first privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, saw its ZEC token post gains in Asian trading as the protocol’s shift toward proof-of-stake and compliance directives won more support from market participants.

Zcash cleared the $100 mark, rising as much as 6% over 24 hours and 12% so far this week, according to CoinGecko.The protocol is one of the original privacy tokens, first launching in October 2016 as a fork of Bitcoin.In November, Electric Coin Company, the team behind the project, announced that it was transitioning to Proof of Stake by 2023 and planned to release an official wallet.The market also reacted favorably to ZCash’s compliance plan. The team said the protocol is fully compatible with global anti-money laundering and counter-terror financing standards as well as Financial Action Task Force recommendations like the Travel Rule, which requires them to keep customer data with any transaction. In a blog post, the team notes that the majority of transactions occur on FinCEN-registered exchanges in the United States.Privacy protocols and mixers have been in the news, as recently over $30 million in digital assets was stolen from Crypto.com and mixed through Tornado Cash.In an interview with CoinDesk, Tornado Cash’s co-founder Roman Semenov said that law enforcement tends to focus on obtaining IP addresses from infrastructure providers as these can be tied back to a name via subpoenas instead of privacy tokens.The RAND Corporation noted in a 2020 report that there is no evidence of widespread illicit use of Zcash, as crooks prefer to use bitcoin instead.

Read More: What Is Zcash? The Privacy Coin Explained