http://letstalkbitcoin.com/new-alt-zerocoin-faster-more-private/In the beginning
the idea was to add the Zerocoin protocol to the blockchain making it possible to redeem Bitcoins anonymously. Just as paper currency once gained its value from being redeemable for gold, Zerocoins wold gain their value from being redeemable for Bitcoins. It now seems this model may be changing and Zerocoin may soon coin itself.
The big news is that Zerocoin is now talking about moving forward as its own alt-coin, perhaps as early as a few months from now. This is a radical change from the road ahead thank you very much! you may also watch the ongoing discussion of the dev core team members in this thread:
Agree from an engineering point of view; ZeroCoin's requirement for a hard-fork and many lines of new code using complex crypto is a risk Bitcoin shouldn't take. Coin mixing done well has very close to as good privacy, and can be easily fixed if it doesn't work.