Basics of blockchain economics (and how it should guide protocol changes)

General
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Zooko’s question is a good one, not in bad faith at all, and quantitatively framed. Here are some other factors to consider.

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. That said, the “life raft” property of ZEC as a backup chain for BTC — in the event there is some major issue with respect to privacy, eg say a chain analysis database being leaked — would increase the value of ZEC. That is, being able to import some/all of the BTC ledger to ZEC is a very valuable property.

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