So I've been gone for a while and i have a question.

I was looking around the trade forums and what the hell are z keys.... im guessing something expensive? What happened to ecto's and shards?

Zaishen Keys open the Zaishen Chest on the Isle of the Nameless.

Tolkano sells Zaishen Keys for either 5,000 Balthazar Faction or 5 Tournament Reward Points. Tolkano can be found in the Great Temple of Balthazar, the Hero Battles outpost and all guild halls. Use the key outside the Great Temple Of Balthazar.

Since a player can only hold a maximum of 100Platinum at any one time, these have become a sort of additional currency, to facilitate trades or transfers of over 100Platinum. For example, something worth 100k + 20z-k would be worth 100Platinum plus 20 Zaishen Keys. This derived system of trading proved very useful in the trading of very rare (and thus very expensive) weapons or minipets.

I think he gets the idea of trading over 100k, Zaishen keys are gotten as shown above, open a chest with a chance to get good stuff, but more importantly are part of the zaishen title, which has an emote, so are fairly valuable, and are consistent at 5k, with new farming builds ectos are less stable, as are shards.

If he doesn't know what z-keys are, then I would not be making that assumption.

He has the idea of trading over 100k, but he remembers it as being 100k +20 ectos instead of 20 zkeys i think.

Z-keys, or Zaishen Keys, are used for:
-Increasing zaishen title by opening the chest (5 points towards title)
-Selling for 5k per key
-Getting rare items from the chest
The chest itself drops consumables, tomes, lockpicks, tonics and weapons.