That’s what happened. Such protocol changes by definition require forks.
Yes, and if this would have been done legitimately, a new coin would have been created and ZEC would have kept working under the unambiguous agreement that no further funding should be allocated to investors and founders
The people in de facto control of the codebase are both the ones that have created Zcash (along with the 4 years agreement for the dev fund) and the ones that have changed the rules. So, no, I do not believe those are circumstances that make the change legitimate.
Those people are allowed to make forks just like everyone else, which is what they did.
I don’t see any part of your argument that wouldn’t have been addressed by not having a Zcash trademark, and thus allowing YEC to also be called ZEC, which under the new trademark agreement I think they are. I think it is a legitimate argument to say that early buyers of ZEC believed that the Zcash trademark would remain with a chain that did not have a dev fund, and were thus decieved. But if the trademark is the real gripe then it is strange to demand control of the dev fund rather than control of the trademark. If the dev fund is illegitimate because of the trademark it does not suddenly become legitimate because of coin holder voting.
We can keep it at that really. Now we’re on the same page.
This problem can easily be highlighted from different angles, I’m glad we can agree on one.
Well except that the new trademark policy allows Ycash to be called Zcash (as far as I understand), which means that you have practically gotten your trademark back and should at most be demanding reparations for the period Ycash wasn’t allowed to be called Zcash. The Zcash chain with a devfund is now legitimate, because you can now choose to use Zcash with a devfund, or choose to use Zcash without a devfund (Ycash).
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At the end of the day though, this is what we are talking about: deceit (non-ethical behavior).
We were talking about whether the dev fund is “legitimate”. Unethical behavior can be rectified, which I argue it has been now (and I think you can reasonably disagree whether it it was reasonable to have an expectation of control of the trademark), which restores legitimacy. The thing you are proposing (complete coin holder control of the devfund) is not how you would restore the legitimacy anyway.
You are saying unethical behavior can be rectified by a technical adjustment years later. You mentioned one could ask for reparations. That’s not making any sense, realistically and obviously.
Either way, that’s just a single angle how this situation is illegitimate. As discussed, they should have created a separate token with whatever rules they wanted. They should have then done like Ycash and listed their separate token on an exchange.
Fact is and remains, Zcash had an unambiguous agreement that no further funding should be allocated to investors and founders and this agreement has been broken and still is to this day.
I personally think abolishing the trademark or simply letting Ycash use the Zcash name is enough to rectify the unethical behavior, because I believe Ycash has not suffered significant damage because of the trademark, because I believe they would never have taken off anyway because all the core devs went to the dev fund chain. This is obviously not an objective truth because I can’t predict alternate realities and it is theoretically possible Ycash value would be a lot higher, which is why I added that at most you should be asking for reparations.
Either way, that’s just a single angle how this situation is illegitimate. As discussed, they should have created a separate token with whatever rules they wanted. They should have then done like Ycash and listed their separate token on an exchange.
They literally did this. When there is a protocol change there is a fork, and if some nodes keep running the old software you will have two parallel tokens. What has happened is that all non-devfund forks have either died out or been prevented from being called Zcash by the trademark. What you are describing still boils down to a trademark issue. They literally created a new separate token with new rules, they just continued to call it Zcash and convinced all the exchanges to call this new token Zcash too.
Fact is and remains, Zcash had an unambiguous agreement that no further funding should be allocated to investors and founders and this agreement has been broken and still is to this day.
That agreement (I don’t think it’s possible to have an agreement with a blockchain btw) has been upheld by this Zcash blockchain: https://yecblockexplorer.com/
Indeed, we are here talking about the trust that stakeholders have put into the founding team. Trust that they broke the moment they have decided to, mostly unilaterally, break an unambiguous agreement.
Ycash is not a Zcash blockchain, another non-sense. Also btw, it’s been upheld in my testnet at home too (doesn’t matter either).
Can we focus on Zcash?
Did the founding team have an agreement with ZEC-holders that they would never fork the chain and create a new chain with a renewed dev fund? Because that is what they did. The old non-devfund chain continued to exist under the name Ycash (which you can now call Zcash again).
I think you are intentionally missing my point. With the new trademark agreement it is just as legitimate to call what is commonly known as “Ycash” for “Zcash” as it is to call what is commonly known as “Zcash” for “Zcash”. They are both forks of the original Zcash blockchain. Who are you to decide which fork is the true Zcash?
The technical concept of fork is not really necessary in this situation. The founding team said there was an unambiguous agreement on the termination of the dev fund, also they are the ones that have broken this agreement.
Not just that, and that’s another very clear dishonest move, any way you look at it. They’ve said the “Dev Fund pool shows consensus” on a vote that had 0.1% participation. That’s how they’ve justified breaking the agreement. 99.9% were not part of this, think about that for a bit.
The founding team, same ones that have created the initial agreement, who broke it.
- They, were in control of the code and pushed the modification
- They, were the ones in contact with the miners to run that code
- They, were the ones in contact with the exchanges to make sure it would go as they wanted
In PoS, stakeholders, will get to decide of that. We got played and we couldn’t do a thing about it.
It’s true. You can’t really argue with that.
So basically to summarise the situation from my understanding
- Yes there is a ‘dev’ fund that is controlled by insiders
- Yes it’s a tax against coinholders through inflation
- The ZCG and ZCAP benefit from said fund (through direct financial benefits, e.g. stipends tripling in 2025).
- The ZCG and ZCAP (which roughly consist of 200 people) ARE the ‘community’.
- The insiders know better than the ‘countless/unlimited’ coinholders so we won’t be giving these naive coinholders a direct vote for ZCG elections/the 8% fund.
- If you don’t like it, leave.
To add to that, the argument being made is that a ‘whale oligarchy’ (whose interest is tied to coinholders), is bad
but
what we have a ‘grantee oligarchy’ who have incentives to pay themselves more from the fund, is good?
/me ignores for now the discussion between @Milton and @outgoing.doze.
Consider this alternative solution which addresses that lack of perceived legitimacy…
While ZCG’s legitimacy from Continuity (expert legacy) is strong enough, more Fairness (shared power) can give more legitimacy by changing to a ZCG committee of both ZCAP-appointed (majority of seats) and coinholder-elected (minority of seats) members.
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This is a good suggestion that’s going in the right direction. A bridge towards giving coinholders direct representation without destabilising the project in the short term too much.
It would literally remove the independence of ZCG. I cannot believe I’m the one that has to say this, but ZCG being independent from stakeholders is actually a critical piece we don’t want to lose…
My suggestion of merely having an on/off switch for stakeholders to control whether they accept to fund ZCG is a lot more neutral. ZCG could (maybe should) have multiple sources of funding. If the quality of their work is good, not only will they have no problem being funded by stakeholders, I’m sure they could find additional generous donators.
Come to think of it, ZCG should really just be a yearly grant just like every other ones we vote for. Every project remains fully independent that way, only the funding part coming from stakeholders inflation, gets decided by… stakeholders.
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But why is that a bad thing? Under @vaspholdings proposal, the ZCG members voted in by ZCAP would still have majority vote. But it would give coinholders a direct say for legitimacy. It provides checks and balances.
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