An Open Letter to the Zcash Mining Community

Mining
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Dear miners, mining pool operators and mining software authors,

We all know what causes the value of the ZEC that you get from mining to go up in price, and that’s demand. What drives demand? More users. Where are the users? On Windows machines, of course!

I’m on the verge of releasing Zcash for Windows, and @vaklinov has finished adapting his Swing Wallet so that its Windows compatible. My Zcash on Windows port has been in the works since before the Genesis Block on Oct 28, and with help from the Zclassic community, is nearly ready for Zcash and Zclassic. An icky bug is causing some threads to go nuts and peg CPU use even when its not mining, but all functionality is now there.

However, I need your help! We’re short on rent that’s due in a couple of days, and my ISP bills are due this week, too. This is a purely volunteer effort, and I do not have a day job. Just 10 ZEC will put me over the top for making rent on time, and another few will pay the rest of the bills that coming due.

Let’s pull together and get the masses able to use Zcash, it’ll drive demand, raise prices of ZEC on the exchanges, and help out the entire Zcash ecosystem!

Thanks for your support, some miners and mining software authors have recently kicked in some resources, but I’m almost at the finish line on this one and don’t want to have to take my eye off the ball and go rustling up some lame short-term consulting contract when Zcash for Windows is so close.

My current donation taddr: t1eQJNFRr79j1YAEY3DTkcFVgc2q9JgtyKe
and zaddr: zcgYDWhqiVTtG8k3kbzc8wjNbXnxsJckfNjfHX66Udd74CjadFmwkqKuU1b9hg7wsJ5ZtujmWCk7LN7cc7iu3ig1dQxVVKu

Thank you, and happy mining!

-David Mercer
radix42@gmail.com
Tucson, AZ

3 Likes
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Thanks! Every bit helps…gotta nail down this Windows bug and then we can let in the flood of Windows users and drive up demand for ZEC!

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I notice that the Bitcoin address on your website is different to the one listed on keybase.io - be a devil and sign your currency addresses. :wink:

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lemme check what’s on keybase…I use an HD wallet now so it shifts :slight_smile:

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Check your PayPal…:wink:

2 Likes
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Thank you! getting closer

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I updated keybase to match my website, thanks for that, I had addys for old wallets listed on keybase…that I still have access to, but still

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https://blockr.io/zerotx/info/618404657cfacff194e621d3ba38c737f47aa9c56017d29bfcb72d08e588cdeb

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thank you for your support!!!

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@anon47418038 I also linked to your work on the new site Zcash Wallets - Zcash Community

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Awesome, I’ll ping you when the same is ready for Windows!

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@anon47418038 Just sent a little bit your way :wink:

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Thanks! Getting closer!

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A few more ZEC and rent is covered…and the CPU usage issue looks like it may have been solved by someone banging on the Windows code while I was out doing stuff with my kids today!

More on that later tonight/in the morning

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@ radix42:
I like your commitment to Zcash. But what I just don´t understand is: Why should the Zcash community donate money to private software developers like you? It´s the fucking job of the Zcash-Team to develop the software needed by the majority of users! They have enough money! I thought the founders reward would be used for the further development of Zcash applications! So why shall the users pay for private developers? They already pay while they are mining - 20% for the Zcash team!

radix, you deserve the money! But actually Zooko and team should pay you!!

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They’ve already indicated that once the Zcash Foundation is setup, most likely I’ll be getting a development grant from them. But the legal paperwork is still in progress, as setting up non-profits takes time. So yes, part of the FR will be used to fund 3rd party open source projects for Zcash, of which (if funded) I’d be just one of many.

To flip your question around, why should miners ever use mining software with dev fees?

My cost of living is insanely low, around 40 ZEC/month…I’d say that all miners collectively pitching in what’s effectively a rounding error in the total block rewards for the month to have Zcash supported on non-linux platforms is a pittance, and NOT kicking in that small amount is a classic “cut off your nose to spite your face” type of situation. Short-term greed vs long-term gains. How many more users and how much more demand and how much higher will the ZEC price be once there’s a Windows release?

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Another way to look at the lack of an offical Windows build… All the effort of the development team has been going toward removing critical bugs and other refinements. This progress would not be so fast if they had also decided to take on the work radix42 is doing - some of which is compensating for system specific inflexibilities of the libSNARK library, which is a separate project to Zcash. The Zcash development team can only be spread so far…

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exactly! If they took too much more VC funding, they’d possibly lose control of ZcashCo to outside investors, and the FR is enough to maintain them at their current run rate, from what I can tell from things @zooko has said/written about their funding. I mean come on people, 40 ZEC a month? that’s way cheaper than if they hired me! I’m a bargain for the community as a whole!

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I think there is no question what @anon47418038 is doing for zcash community is one of the most important projects been developed right now, I can’t help thinking that with the amount of time zcash was in development a windows wallet should have been ready at launch, for such a big project the most important parts seem to have been left to the community to come up with the necessary software,maybe zcash team might like to support zawawa and his open source gateless gate GPU miner so we are not forced to pay greedy miner developers a percentage of our earnings, just a thought!

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Hey @anon47418038. Check your PayPal :slight_smile:.