A note about controversy and culture

WeDear folks:

We’re have another full-blown social controversy! Like the Great ASIC Mining Controversy of the summer of 2018, the less widely-known Zcash Ecosystem Fund Controversy, and numerous other smaller controversies that some of you remember but most of the readers of this note probably don’t.

First of all, I’d like to say: This is fine! :slight_smile:

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:laughing: But seriously, this is the sort of vigorous disagreement and passion that you should expect from an open, transparent, and innovative project that really matters. If there were never major decisions being made over vigorous and widespread opposition, then that would mean that project was stalled and was silently sliding into irrelevance.

So this level of disagreement and excitement is what we should expect and embrace going forward. This sort of response is what I expected all along for the Harmony Mining proposal during the last year or so that I’ve been working on it, including especially the time-locking of alg-B mining rewards.

My only warning is: resist the urge to cast aspersions on the character and intention of people who disagree with you, and exclude people who do so from your community and your discussions. Attacking the character and intentions of others will do no good and will do substantial harm, and everyone who does so should be excluded from the discussions among people of good intent, or else those good people will not be able make progress. This is important, and it requires vigilance and courage to execute on it and to silence the contributors who would pollute the culture and ruin it for the vast majority of well-intentioned contributors.

Please be aware that it is natural, when you are a part of a discussion group like the Zcash Community Forum, to feel like the group is the universe. This isn’t even a belief, or a cognitive process at all, it’s a part of our heritage as a group animal to feel like our group is the universe. That’s fine and healthy, but please be aware that the people who participate in the Zcash Community Forum with us are a very small fraction of the larger Zcash community. I could probably name maybe four hundred people whose names I know who are active members of the Zcash community and who I’ve talked to in the last year or two. People like the people who attended Zcon0, the numerous scientists who’ve studied and published science papers about Zcash, the members of the community governance panel, the employees at more or less every company that works on cryptocurrencies, not to mention thousands of people in a dozen countries that I’ve talked with at conferences and meetups, etc. whose names I wouldn’t be able to remember. Out of those four hundred or so that I could probably name, I think fewer than ten of them are active on this forum. So I estimate the size of the larger Zcash community of active, well-educated, engaged contributors to be about 40X the size of this forum. This isn’t counting the legions of fans and traders/investors/holders around the world, of course, which probably number somewhere between 100,000 and a 1,000,000. And it isn’t counting the users that we really need to prioritise and to target: the billions of people who’ve never heard of Zcash but who will come to use it in the coming years if we continue to execute well.

I really value each of your opinions… well, except the people on here who denigrate my character and intentions or that of other folks — those people are invisible to me and I don’t read or reply to any of their messages. But there are only like ~two or three~ one or two [*] of those folks on here that I ignore. For all the rest of you I really value your ideas and opinions and hearing how you feel about these sorts of things, and I’ll be reading as many such post as a I can. Unfortunately, that is fewer than the number of posts that get posted here. I’m sorry! I would read them all if I could.

Sincerely,

Zooko

[*] The one that I ignored the hardest — Trololino — got banned from the forum, now there are almost no ignorables left.

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Based on what ? Active zcash addresses ? I don’t think so. I have this chart from November, maybe someone can give an updated one.

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I PROPOSE we time-lock the FOUNDERS REWARDS.
With FOUNDERS funds time-locked they “would be a long-term investor in the value of ZEC and would have an economic incentive to protect the network,”.
We will start time-locking the FOUNDERS REWARDS and payout a small percentage each week over the next 4 years. Doing so will “probably make more revenue than if we didn’t have the time-locking of rewards”. ALSO the FOUNDERS will get to “reap the benefits of the trailing coin rewards for up to a 4 years”
This is a WIN/WIN!

everything you said about locking mining rewards should hold true for FOUNDERS rewards also right?

One again a very long winded post with no substance or facts.

Mostly because you refuse to release any information showing you will get the effects you are looking for with time-locking coins. While other have proof showing, it might infact have the opposite effect.

Where is your evidence/studies/research/proofs that ZEC is so “known” for. You have not released 1 shred of anything beside opinions and very badly thought out examples that make no sense.

This is the reason why their is controvesy. I dont know the people you have been talking to, but when you keep proposing things that effect the miners the most, shouldnt you maybe listen to them a little more? They are the ones being effected.

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Remember the Shii experiment: Shiichan Anonymous BBS - the forum software's official home page - already almost twelve years ago. If this forum is going to be loosely moderated and inclusive to even the least considerate (and intelligent) of the community members, then it is doomed to become a nasty battlefield that will ultimately amount to nothing at all.

@zooko I’m always impressed by the way you try so hard to be kind and open-minded. I just hope you won’t get burnt out by all the aggressiveness around here. Some people have a financial incentive to subvert your kindness and turn you hostile. I hope they fail and you remain great. If I can afford a word of advice, I would only say: pick your battles and don’t be afraid of ignoring either nasty people or sterile debates.

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instead of just saying “people on here are just creating a battfield”, why not add to the discussion?

Lots of people are upset they are talking about time-locking GPU mining rewards. Zooko has proposed these “features” with no studies/proofs/evidence to show it will help. Other members have come out with some proofs showing it might infact be a security risk.

Why do you blindly follow Zooko? I try to be open but he has given us ZERO reasons this is a good idea.

But keep blindly following Zooko and dont ask ANY questions because he cant do any wrong can he? I dont understand this mentality, he needs to back up his claims, all the devs/members always asks this of the fourm members, why does Zooko get a free pass?

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I think its not about Zooko, it’s about Zcash.
Zooko isn’t Zcash in my view and neither is Zcash Zooko. If I am wrong about that, please tell me so, because if that’s the case, I will drop all my remaining Zcash and go to a project that has a community.

And this is the official Zcash forum, so, yes, some people will get dissapointed with decisions made.
But atleast I can understand why some decisions are made if they get explained.
That’s what a forum is for, You have no idea what I lost in $$$$ the last months, still i am trying to keep it civil, because I know kicking at Zooko will not bring my profit back. But if this forum turns into a "we only publish what some like, you don’t have a debate, you have censor / dictator ship, I don’t think that’s what we want.

We are now at a point, where we want a clear picture of the future and not "we can do this, O wait I read something better, lets do that, despite the fact that people who know about it a lot more say, that’s not wise.

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Agreed, but Zooko is an important voice. In the long term, hopefully ZCash will outgrow ZCashCo and Zooko’s leadership but right now he is the de facto influencer of norms and decisions.

That’s not what I am arguing for either. I just don’t think much good will come out of it. There are (or will be) other forums and places to discuss all-things ZCash that are perhaps less known but more productive (present and future tense).

Why wouldn’t anything good come out of that ?
I think most of us are civilised enough to keep it clean, those who don’t play by the rules, mods have power to ban them, as a community we can flag them.
If I call you an Asshole, I agree, that is not done, but if you have another idea of things, please let me know, I am allways willing to learn from others and adjust my views, but please do so with arguments.
I am still against Asics, but that ship has sailed, so no one changed my mind there, but still I learned a lot, that’s in my opinion where a forum is for.

About the other channels, I don’t use them, this is the official one, Twitter and Redit , I don’t use.
To much Bullshit there

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He has just said “This will help”. He has nothing to back up his claims. People have raised 10+ issues in the first day with locking-rewards. He has come back with tacky examples of how it “could/might/possibly” help Zcash, even though there is a ton of holes in his examples.

All we keep asking for is some type of proof.
Or maybe WHY he thinks this way, and what has lead him to this conclusion?
Why does he feel so strongly that this is the right choice?
How many “experts” has he talked to about this?
What studies have shown him this is the correct choice.?
What sources does he have, that makes his think this will have the effects he is looking for?

Im not sure what you are arguing for.

People have shown their dislike of the future decisions made by Zcash. The community, small or large, are here to be heard about the proposal, and so far, almost everyone hates the idea.

But your right, these fourms are not the place, because nobody listens to us “minority” or “vocal few” anyway, and than come back 6 months later going “How were we suppose to know?”.

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This chart matches the current bull/bear market cycle, btw. It’s similar across crypto.

You have any Idea @root where to find the chart that is more recent ?

Is that Zooko sitting there?

I know you are just joking and trying to be funny, but alot of people are starting to feel like this. With Zcash and the future proposals that are being created. The “minority” sure is making things hot in here huh.

Everything is fine tho, nothing to see here, continue on using Zcash, move along now.

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I could be wrong, but I think boxalex posted alot of charts one day a few months back. I think that one is from that post. You could trying checking his post history or ask him, im not sure where he got them from.

Active addresses is also a terrible metric as shielded addresses are obviously not visible. Just for clarity, I don’t for a second think there has been a similar rise in shielded address use just that moving forward this isn’t the metric to use (we want this to go to 0) - perhaps # of tx would be a better indication?

Thanks m8, I’ll ask him.
Kinda intrested in how thing got after Oct

Don’t know if I am right Gareth, but can I read the chart this way ?

The decline in active adresses that starts in June juli is a result of GPU miners gone, and after that only the asics are active, smaller group ? @garethtdavies

Last papers I seen that “looked” into it, showed about 20% are shielded since sapling. But was the only source I have seen, so could be off.

Thast’s why I am curious where the chart is coming from, because BTG should then see a grow in active wallets, since a lot of the Zcash miners went there.

I’d say that’s a (probable) factor but don’t forget about change addresses. If anyone is sending a transaction with Zcash using transparent addresses then they (almost always) generate a new address every time by default for change so I’d imagine simply less transactions being made would also show this effect (and probably have a larger impact).

It’s also now possible to mine to zaddrs from a pool so this further complicates this metric further moving forward (not a factor on the timescale you are looking at).

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Yes, I agree, but then to claim that there are 1 000 000 traders/investors/holders in the world while not having any data to back it up is pulling numbers out of his ass.

I do have latest numbers, and since November number of active addresses has decreased even further. Proof:

right now at the time of sending: 17,497 active addresses for last day. Active addresses is the number of unique sending and receiving addresses participating in transactions on the given day. While it’s not exactly active wallets it’s a pretty good indicator how many wallets/addresses are used.

And this is how the discussion works. He claims something, I prove him wrong. If he has something to back up his claim I am willing to hear him out.

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