Community Poll: Unlocking "Zcash Ecosystem Fund" Forum Thread

Community Poll:

Regardless of the merits of @ericmeltzer’s “Zcash Ecosystem Fund” proposal, the forum thread discussing the proposal should be unlocked.

  • Yes
  • No
  • Abstain

0 voters

A “yes” vote shall not be construed as support for the underlying proposal, and a “no” vote shall not be construed as opposition to the underlying proposal.

I understand why it was locked but I think a better clarification was called for and then directing the discussion to a more workable solution. There has been some excellent discussion on the Zcon0 channel of Telegram and I feel that a lot of that context is lost on here by simply closing the thread.

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I say yes, although what it originally intended to do was simply not possible (you can’t mess with FR, it’s not “ours” to mess with). The discussion should have been steered to alternatives and the RFC amended to reflect other potential ways to implement it. It should have been treated as a living working document that was extremely “Alpha” in maturity. Open it back up, but make it exceptionally clear toying with the FR is not an option.

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You say the founders reward isn’t “ours” but the users and community use the coin, without use, the founders reward is not valuable. It should be under some kind of control of the users. I love the idea of it, but as history has shown, contributors have had issue getting paid for their valuble work. How quickly would a mac wallet or z TX capable android wallet be developed if there was a reward available for support? Would benefit the whole ecosystem.

Look at it this way. You provide funding at a pre-determined rate of return (stock/coin) to get Company “X” off the ground. I’m customer “Y” and I use said services of Company “X”. What your suggesting is that I should be able to tell Company “X” to suddenly give you less (Stock/coin) because I want to divert it somewhere else. Even though you have a contract/agreement you think I should be able to break it because “I” decided you shouldn’t get the agreed upon return (stock/coin) on your investment?? Nowhere in the business world does that ever play out or is even considered. If some like this were to occur, pretty sure the investors would have grounds to sue.

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The thread was closed on a point of principle: we can’t, shouldn’t, and won’t debate proposals that violate people’s consent or rights (in this case, the property/contractual rights of the affected FR recipients). I’ve explained that reasoning here: https://www.reddit.com/r/zec/comments/8x259a/comment/e20t00k . Eric or anyone else is completely free to start another thread with a proposal that doesn’t violate that principle.

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If thats the case there is a lot of very important things we cannot discuss. If we cannot discuss, what are we left with?

My initial thought was «let’s just fork off the forum» but this is problematic since many of the inputs the community wants and needs are from the CO and Foundation which are bound to pay most attention here.

Outright threats, violent language, doxxing etc. by all means moderate. But every contentious issue is bound to violate someones consent.

The answer to the proposal has been given and reopening discussion here would accomplish little to nothing.

I strongly disagree. There’s no evidence for this whatsoever.

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I think the discussion should be allowed. I think any change to the FR would have to be voted on by ONLY those who receive the FR in proportion to their share of it (or however the FR receivers agree).
I support @daira 's stance that it is wrong for one to vote other people’s money into ones own pockets. (guess my stance on government taxation and US fiat banking)

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The founders reward is the reward for founding zcash just like your mining reward is a reward for mining zcash
You would have to Fork because without their consent, it is stealing just like somebody taking your mining rewards without your consent would be stealing

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To make my position explicit: I think the thread should not have been shut down (discussion just moved to Reddit and Telegram anyway) but I largely agree with Daira’s critiques of the ZEF proposal.

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The thread should be unlocked immediately – we can have another poll thread for if it should be re-locked, but the current state is stymieing the free discussion of quite reasonable ideas.

Even if the issue is the implementation details of Eric’s proposal, it certainly does not seem that way. If Eric’s proposal, in it’s RFC form, does ‘violate consent’, shutting down the discussion prevents the community from finding a way of accomplishing the goal (community fund) without ‘violating consent’.

p.s. scare quotes around ‘violate consent’ because I don’t think that is what Eric’s proposal would accomplish, even in RFC form. FR agreements were made over a decentralized protocol that is largely out of the hands of the Z.Cash company, which is what the participants agreed to.

I don’t support @ericmeltzer’s proposal and I don’t support tinkering with the Founders Reward, but I disagree with the general assertion that proposals affecting contractual rights are inappropriate for this forum.

A participant in the Telegram chat wrote, “[T]here are ideas that are outside the realm of discussion when they interfere with basic consent issues. From [sic] example we can’t have a civilized discussion about whether to break into your house, or have sex with someone against their will. Just discussing them creates an environment of violence and disrespect[.]”

But these examples (burglary and rape) are both common law crimes; breach of contract is not a crime.

I think this distinction is useful for the purposes of moderating the forum. Discussing the commission of a crime is likely inappropriate. In contrast, discussing proposals that may affect contractual rights (or even explicitly call for contracts to be breached) should be allowed.

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I like the idea of a community supported fund similar to the The Bitcoin Cash Fund for the Bitcoin Cash community. The Zcash fund should be independent from the ZcashCo and could receive operational assistance by the Zcash Foundation and volunteers.

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I disagree that crime / not a crime is a useful distinction.

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I don’t think blockchain protocol is considered a legally binding contract (maybe some smart contracts are), I also don’t know if there is a legally binding contract concerning the FR recipients where in which case they could potentially fall under ius quaesitum tertio (again idk)

Jay decided to unlock the original thread: Proposal to create a Zcash Ecosystem Fund directly funded by the Founder's Reward - #22 by jaygraber

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A vote to divert FR by a majority of recipients would still violate the consent of the minority.

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For transparency’s sake, this is the comment the Foundation gave to Token Daily: “We disagreed with the moderation decision to shut down discussion on the Zcash forum, but we share Daira Hopwood and Ariel Gabizon’s concerns about making changes to the Founders’ Reward, or indeed with changing Zcash monetary policy at all.”

That matches up almost exactly with my personal views, but it is a reflection of discussion with Executive Director @acityinohio. Full statement with lots of detail and nuance coming tomorrow. I’ll post a link here once we publish it.

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