It has the potential to push all existing organizations toward swift and meaningful reforms, benefiting Zcashers at every level of the ecosystem, inclusive of small grant recipients. I prefer that over extending guaranteed direct funding to any organization beyond November 2025. Guaranteed funding removes the incentive to evolve, leading to a high opportunity cost. We’ve seen plenty of that. But then again, the Pure Coinholder Funding Model could brick all development funds, which would halt critical progress. Either way, it will be an interesting experiment. We’ll be alright. I’m very curious to see what the community decides.
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Hi Zeeps.
I edited the top post to include all the ZIPs submitted through yesterday, along with AI-generated summaries. I also updated the timeline to reflect the delay in coin holder polling.
Happy reading and look forward to ongoing discussions.
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It may be a minute detail but, what is the meaning of “Owner” in the context of those proposals? I see you as one such “Owner” in the “Pure Coinholder Funding Model” and that is making me curious to understand the implication.
Thank you @joshs.
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I submitted my proposal within the timeframe required, was it removed for some other reason/ or mistakenly not included in the updated list?
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Sure. It’s the owner listed on the ZIP. That is generally the person or people responsible for the idea, wrote it up, and who will steward conversations about it and make any changes based on those conversations.
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I didn’t see a ZIP but happy to update the list if I missed it.
Besides that, it was my understanding that you wished to keep consensus as-is, which will be an option in the poll.
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If I need to duplicate the proposal into GitHub somewhere, I’m happy to. Based on the prior community debate, for some reason I mistakenly thought that proposals could live just in the forum going into the voting process (but I think that is my misunderstanding the expectations).
As we’ve both mentioned, my proposal is impressively simple! So there isn’t a lot of legwork needed on describing its implementation details.
I’m not sure that this is correct, do you mean that by default the protocol would be updated to end all block subsidies, if no other proposal gets clear support/ setout for implementation (?)
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The instructions are up top.
Under the current implementation (no update needed), all funds will go to the miners in Nov. ZCG, and the lockbox will no longer receive any funds.
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Ok thanks for clarifying, I don’t need to take any action then because my proposal is redundant to the default outcome.
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I’m so confused. Mainly with where you are standing, which matters a whole lot to me. Either way, maybe it’s not something you are interested in elaborating further on so I’ll drop it and hopefully I’ll understand you someday.
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Per ZIP 0 which specifies the ZIP process (which is what the Zcash community uses to make changes to the Zcash consensus rules):
The Owner(s) of the ZIP (usually the authors(s)) are responsible for building consensus within the community and documenting dissenting opinions.
[snip]
Each potential ZIP must have Owners — one or more people who write the ZIP using the style and format described below, shepherd the discussions in the appropriate forums, and attempt to build community consensus around the idea.
The ZIP process does not require that an Owner personally support the ZIP they are responsible for. The Owner role is about doing the work to ensure a given ZIP makes progress rather than stalling out.
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If this ZEC had not gone into development funding, it would have gone to miners, correct? How would that have changed anything at all for coinholders, except that much less development work would have been done?
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With all due respect, where the money goes is not the point.
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I think this assessment is not wrong. We cannot be 100% sure, but most likely miners would have sold the “extra” ZEC, resulting in additional sell pressure. I do not see miners as the typical group of holders. Whereas developers/contributors are more incentivized to hold ZEC (and only sell the portion of ZEC that they need to cover their living costs) if they believe that the Zcash network is improving through the development and thus the value/price will rise in the future. Also IMO developers/contributors are more likely to use the network as intended (digital cash) in contrast to miners who probably are more focusing on fiat ROI.
→ The development funding is actually more beneficial for ZEC holders than giving everything to the miners. But I also think this is the general consensus of most people in this forum.
The core of this debate should be about giving every stakeholder a voice/voting power in the system. And this includes ZEC holders as the financial risk bearers and fiat providers. I am not saying give them 100% of the decision power, but make them part of the decision making process and give them a voice.
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It rather is the point when one claims that money has been stolen.
The simple fact is that the presence or absence of the dev fund does not, and has never, changed the block subsidy or the emission rate. Saying that coinholders should have more voting power is fine; characterizing the choice of the community to allocate some funds to development instead of network security as theft is simply stating a falsehood.
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I’m sorry but I still don’t agree with you. Stolen means it was taken without permission. Robin Hood was the King of Thieves.
Note that I don’t necessarily agree with the OP verbiage, or share his opinion.
I think his point was that the devfund was supposed to end after 4 years. Kinda like 2 terms for US president.
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The point of the 4-year bound was that it required a renegotiation to continue. Just as the 1-year bound on the extension requires a renegotiation to determine whether part of the block subsidy will continue to be allocated to development funding. In either case, there has never been any proposal made to alter the block subsidy; while a miner might regard the dev fund as competing with their profits, I can’t see how a coinholder could reasonably claim a loss.
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I wasn’t there when the project was created. From what I understand now, the tension arises from the expectation of the devfund duration. You seem to consider it as renewable but for some it has a hard limit. As a matter a fact, Ycash was forked because of this very reason.
In any case, personally I consider it is a social contract as important as the fixed supply. However, I am also not surprised that it got renewed and will likely be renewed again.
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I think I agree with @nuttycom and @spectre on this point.
Whether or not the additional 4 years of dev fund was ‘legitimate,’ if anything it probably propped up the price of ZEC, because miners would sell right away. If there are any significant counter examples, I don’t know of them. IIUC, following the logic of @outgoing.doze (and their threats to dump a large amount of coins), this would drop the value of each coin as the supply outpaces demand (in the mining case a steady leak rather than a sudden flood). The same amount of ZEC exists on the same timeline either way, with or without the prolonged dev fund. Without it, IMO there would be more selling pressure, and more depressed price.
If @outgoing.doze is a miner and not (only) a zodler, I could see their grievance more clearly (you would get less coins per kWh on a given mining rig system - if anything the dev fund pre-possessed a rather large number of coins from miners), but just as a zodler… I think they have the argument backwards on this particular point.
To say something was stolen is also a stretch: misguided or inflammatory. Miners can just not mine anymore, any time they want, they are under no contract. They are presented with a take it or leave it option, so those that remain are agreeing to the rules of the network, which is not hidden, but beyond that there isn’t coercion. Mining is the network’s social contract at work, literally. Those that don’t like it can stop, or run nodes with other rules, which then in that case there is a fork.
The way to take a stand would be to fork the chain yourself or with your friends, or buy the coins of someone’s fork without the dev fund, not to complain that something that was never possessed, and was not ever promised to you was ‘stolen.’ It just doesn’t make full sense, so I prefer to think it’s a misunderstanding.
By all means, try from here to get coinholder control! I am not arguing against that. But the reason it’s an uphill battle is that this was never the deal.
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I don’t really understand what is the alternative proposed to the dev fund?
Should we expect talented people to work on Zcash for free? Why would they do that?
External sources of funding? Ok from who? Blackrock? Does it come with strings attached?
Or maybe Zcash is completely mature today and all development should stop? (like it happened to BTC with glorious results).
I see the dev fund as a transparent and ingenious way to fund Zcash work and in all honesty since the latest halving, it doesn’t equate to that much funds anyway.
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