Zcash is a permissionless currency which uses zero-knowledge cryptography for protecting the privacy of transactions. With Zcash, your payment history is not visible to the public. You can hide information about sender, recipient and value of your transactions.
This system offers the possibility to confirm and validate transactions without revealing private information about participants. All payment details are encrypted before being processed. Despite this fact, it is also possible to send public payments. In this case, private information will be visible and system will be similar to Bitcoin.
As regards mining process, 1.0 User Guide is available on the website of Zcash Official Software – Github.