I'm not an expert by any means, but this seems like a good compare/contrast that elucidates zcash's actual place in the space: https://www.reddit.com/r/Monero/comments/41vg68/monero_vs_zc...
Anonymity is not a binary. Monero, even with the addition of RingCT, is vulnerable to transaction graph analysis (intersection attacks) that can de-anonymize users. Zcash takes a completely different approach that achieves ledger indistinguishability -- shielded transactions in the blockchain have no apparent relationship with each other, which is an essential privacy benefit.
Much of what I read in that thread is wrong or misleading: Monero does not have a trusted setup, but it's important to note that a failure in Zcash's setup does not disrupt the privacy of the system. The "poison-pill" vulnerability is not a concern in our system. The claims about the anonymity set are very misleading. It is possible to do far more than multi-sig in our system, we just haven't implemented it yet. The point about mining is specific to the paper and is irrelevant.
There are downsides to the system, such as our performance problems, but they are solveable given time. Zcash is obviously not the only player, but it's also going to continue to grow and adapt and improve, just like other cryptocurrencies will.
Your comment is highly misleading. RingCT solves 4 of the 5 remaining, known, privacy vulnerabilities in Monero ## The last remaining vulnerability has to do with transactions made with very little turnover, i.e. an amount is received and then immediately spent again. The privacy is stronger as the amounts are held in the wallet for longer.
Monero is useable on a magnitude greater scale in 2017, and a full node can be run with small CPU and memory. Zcash on the other hand requires minutes to send anonymouse transactions.
In other words, Zcash provides 100% privacy at the expense of scalability while Monero provides privacy approaching 100 percent as variable with time.
## http://monero.stackexchange.com/questions/1495/what-privacy-...
My favorite example of anonymity is Richard Stallman's description of an anonymous currency: you should be able to pay a publisher for every article you read on their website, without them being able to associate the payments.