Shawn
August 22, 2025, 9:08pm
35
Disagree, ZSAs have many upsides for Zcash users in general.
I’m a big fan of adding use cases and attracting users to Zcash. IMHO, ZSAs are a win-win-win situation for Zcash holders, Zcash users, and ZSA users:
Zcash holders benefit by adding demand for ZEC to issue/spend/burn ZSAs.
Everyday Zcash users benefit by increased activity in and out of the shielded pool, thereby increasing privacy.
ZSAs users benefit by having assets in a massive private pool: ( x.com )
This is yet another thread bringing up the same old debates we have been having since 2021. I won’t copy/pasta all the threads here but the “What are the pros/cons of ZSAs” discussion has been had many times before.
Literally hundreds of thousands of $ worth of ZEC and hundreds human-hours have been spent to make ZSAs happen. No longer a question of if, but a question of when.
I’m really excited broadly about ZSAs - I think they bring a lot of good attention and expanded use cases for Zcash. I also get the feeling that a lot of people around these parts are, or at least claim to be, price agnostic, which I think is a mistake. The use case for ZEC as a private store of value/means of exchange relies on parties wanting to hold ZEC, as no one is going to feel comfortable about storing their savings or accepting payment in a depreciating asset, regardless of the other a…
Zooko’s question is a good one, not in bad faith at all, and quantitatively framed. Here are some other factors to consider.
ZRC-20 would add more use cases to ZEC, increasing value for ZEC, as we have seen with how ETH is needed to pay ETH fees for ERC-20s.
The redemption risk of ZBTC offsets the lower inflation cost, so it’s not a lossless trade of ZEC for ZBTC. Even if trustless, you are involving two chains vs one - complexity is there.
That said, the “life raft” property of ZEC as …
That’s correct.
ZSA R&D is the priority (beyond what’s already been done), largely after we get NU5 activated on testnet and a block height set, though Nate has done work on fee models. We are looking at scalability through a ZSA lens. GMU should be wrapped up before the end of this month. We have also started looking into possible issuers, beyond but including Thesis, and will begin UX work as soon as feasible after NU5/Halo Arc related work.
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