Calling all trustees, evaluators, reviewers and voters

Many of the recent discussions around the future of Zcash and its funding have included various committees, trusts, evaluators, reviewers and voters that would judge the merit of participants and their plans.

Well guess what? You don’t have to wait!

Please go ahead and reply to those with your evaluation! What do you like? What’s missing? What’s unclear? What’s wrong? What synergistic opportunities do you see?

The earliest you provide your feedback, the most impact it will have. Along the way, we’ll also get a feel for how much bandwidth and indpendent members the community has for evaluating proposed plans on their merit.

Note that the above plans are not meant as funding proposals, and don’t have a lot of the details (e.g., budget breakdown) that would go into funding proposals. Also, these particular plans focus on the engineering aspects; and both organizations do a lot more than engineering. So this is just a warmup. But let’s start flexing our muscles!

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I have said it x times allready and continue to say it that in my opinion the ECC and ZF are too technically only focused. You guys are great when it comes to coding and cryptographic but put the cart bevor the horse. I’am going even further that the horse has blinders on.

There is not enough adoption, not enough demand that will keep Zcash as a cryptocurrency at good enough price levels to finance and fund all the nice sounding technical improvements that are described in the above presentations.

IF we take a 20% dev fund proposal and an even split btw. the ECC and ZF the post halving funding for the new dev fund would be the following at various price levels:

  • at $30 = $657,000 which makes $328,500 for the ECC and $328,500 for the ZF monthly.
  • at $25 = $547,500 which makes $273,750 for the ECC and $273,750 for the ZF monthly.
  • at $20 = $438,000 which makes $219,000 for the ECC and $219,000 for the ZF monthly.
  • at $15 = $328,500 which makes $164,250 for the ECC and $164,250 for the ZF monthly.

Just a reminder that we are below $30 today. If i remember right at some time in the dev fund discussion we had calculations with $80, than $60, the latest with $40 but today we are allready at below $30…

With the current low adoption and demand the inflation will be a huge issue pricewise for the next 5 years and it’s amazing nobody at the ECC/ZF has awoken yet to consider an issuance change which would result in more price stability and ensure more stable dev funding.

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Well said. I’m astonished to see the lack of any substantial effort from the ECC to show individuals why they should be using Zcash for remittances, private payments, and so forth. There’s no convenience, marketing, or significant developer engagement. It’s been three years and we finally were blessed with a light wallet (using grant funds from the ZFND). Granted, the infrastructure behind that took time to make but still… 3 years?

Honestly, I have more faith in the individuals in the Zcash Foundation. They’re frank, on-point, engage with us, and seem to have a better understanding of what the community wants. I’m expecting that they will be the institution that moves us forward as time goes on.

Zooko recently made a point that it is the CEO’s job to maintain a strong vision, hire the best people, and make sure there’s money in the bank. The vision’s there, sure. Best people? Seems like it. Money? Perhaps not for much longer. We’ll see how fiscally savvy they are.

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@boxalex, @Yugo, on this thread (and the two I linked to to), can you please stay on topic and discuss the forward-looking engineering plans that were actually posted?

Remember those are not all the plans, those are the engineering plans posted by the engineering leads of the respective organizations. Please don’t walk up to the supermarket meats counter and complain they don’t serve icecream.

And if you don’t like what happened in the past, well you have plenty of opportunities to express that in other threads; this is your opportunity to change the future. Which is a great investment, because by going on record with your recommendations now, in the future you’ll be able to both complain and say “I told you so but you wouldn’t listen!”. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: Or maybe… oh yes I remember this is why we’ve gathered here… productively improve things!

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I don’t have experience in tech company logistics but given past perfomance, the timeline set forth and scalability being the ultimate goal there, I think achieving most of the rest of it seems pretty realistic. There’s not much else I could really nitpick about it personally.

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My apologies @tromer. Several of us feel that our opinions are not being heard in the threads in which we are critical of the current progress occurring. This frustration results in comments like @boxalex’s which I was replying to.

However in regards to feedback, Eran, you’re a well respected cryptographic researcher and I’m just a person on the internet. At the end of the day when internal discussions pop up about priorities it is doubtful my criticisms of let’s say… viewing keys (in regards to being a high priority) will be taken into consideration. As a consequence my incentive to participate is low. Mods please feel free to remove any of my comments.

I wish you all of the best in these discussions going forward.

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Each of us is “just a person on the internet”. In a merit-based setting like this, opinions are heard and taken into consideration when they bring new information (e.g., on what features people need) or new analysis. Certainly by me, when I choose what to do or press towards. And also by ECC and Zfnd, who are listening intently.

If you write something and don’t feel it’s been acknowledged, feel free to reach out to me by PM on the forum or community chat. I look forward to hearing your opinions!

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Integration into current projects (add zcash utility already on the current protocol), develop methods for developing the ecosystem through existing markets and products. Describe the capabilities of the protocol and consider applications globally. Only after that, after zcash has exhausted its potential on the current protocol, to switch to a new one, otherwise after a change and development a situation is possible when the new one again is not suitable or not enough for working in the real world. Ideally, the development of a new protocol is in parallel with the development of the old, or the transition to a new one is faster (consider the possibility).