Basically decentralized governance is objectively at three layers:
The market: coin holders choose where they deploy their capital, which affects whether or not there is funding and support for the other layers. They opt in or out with their money.
The repo: devs decide what is code is merged in the repo. Anyone can fork the repo and make different choices.
The software: operators determine which software to run.
The rest is consensus building between the layers.
Like last time, I am for the end of the dev fund. If not, lockbox with coinvoting for governance. My rationale is the following:
the devfund was supposed to end after 4 years. The community polling that made it continue was not sufficiently universal The performance of the ECC and the ZF does not warrant their direct funding. Obviously, there are some exceptional individuals and outstanding work, but the end result isn’t. I strongly believe that mainly making a wallet, maintaining/refactoring code, and clearing technical debt is insufficient compared to other cryptocurrencies.
I am concerned that there is just not much to look forward to. When I describe Zcash as the way to send coins privately, the conversation always end with them asking, “and?”
I have some suggestions about what to do / and not to do with funds in the future, but first, let’s figure out the governance.
Well - this is your opinion but we disagree on the layers.
Once the holders choose to deploy their capital on a product, they still have a say on the project. From what you describe, only the devs decide. You make it sounds as it is disjoint.
Your work is only funded if funding is supplied by coin holders, with trust that ZCG is allocating their money well.
I withdrew ECC from direct funding to give the community authority on what they would fund and to submit to accountability through objective measures.
Anyone is free to fork the repo and implement different rules of they have better alternatives. If the market and operators support it, then so be it. It’s how decentralized protocol governance works.
@hanh is receiving funds, yet his values and motives are very clear and he’s not willing to compromise.
ECC and ZF have taken advantage of the position of power they have refused to relinquish as they were supposed to. They have therefore lied, and them taking money from the dev fund is therefore indeed, stealing.
They can develop great things (debatable too), but when in a position of power, it’s irrelevant as the most critical things are values and principles and they have completely failed on that front.
You should be embarassed of your way of thinking. I cannot imagine that @zancas doesn’t see a problem with this.
Inflammatory.
You are saying that whether or not it was legitimate, at least, it propped up the price? Some people in here are next level dissapointing.
I didn’t say ‘at least.’ I’m saying according to your own logic, it did, at least some.
I have my own thoughts on the subject but now, I’m busy calling you out here: tagging people thieves and liars without decent reasoning is at minimum inflammatory and unhelpful.
It’s not. I’m expressing things as I see them, respectfuly. Either way, if you believe it’s false, it really shouldn’t affect you.
Josh being arrogant, is that also “inflammatory” and “unhelpful”? Or is it a problem only when someone says something you don’t like?
It is no secret the vote after four years was not legitimate given something like 0.1% of ZEC holders have participated to it. ZF and ECC were simply looking for an excuse to keep receiving money and they got exactly that. They said the result represented the view of ZEC stakeholders and because of the participation, it is reasonable to call this a lie.
From there, it is reasonable to say that they have been stealing from ZEC stakeholders, because ~99.9% of ZEC holders have not agreed to continuing with the dev fund tax. I personally bought into ZEC from the very beginning as I was told the dev fund would last four years, and given I had no care for this forum, I have missed the vote. Obviously if they really wanted to poll ZEC holders at large, they would have sent a warning on ZEC wallets and asked exchanges to do the same, but they have done nothing of the sort. Shameful, all of it really.
If you think my reasoning is not decent, feel free to correct where this is wrong.
I must admit that I don’t really follow your reasoning.
First you mention that Ycash forked to remove the dev fund (I am not too familiar with that as I wasn’t around). My question would be how did that work out for them? Is Ycash price or innovation booming?
Then my second question would be why do you seek funding from the dev fund for your work (which is great by the way)? Shouldn’t you do it for free or get external funding to prove everybody how redundant the dev fund is?
Good question! My position is that devs could be funded but not automatically via devfund.
I’d like to see the miners or Zec holders contribute to grants. Currently, the dev fund makes external funding not worthwhile. For instance, I developed a ZecWallet recovery tool. It received less than 1 ZEC in donations. With a 20% devfund, funding appears wasted if it is not used. IMO, it leads to unnecessary projects getting funded and a premium.
IMO, when you have both devfund and no devfund options, developers will gravitate to the devfund option because it is economically better for them. That’s okay in the beginning, but eventually you want to build a sustainable economy for the coin.
Projects cost more
Every project wants a grant. Not much is done for free.
Cryptocurrency is the frontier of cypherpunks. The top projects here require innovation and reasoning.
Punks do not take material and money-making as their primary goals. If you are still anxious about bread and stomach, you should find a more traditional and stable software development job (or a more hyped meme altcoin). Here is not a school for interns to practice, but requires professional skills and many years of experience engineers.
I would be curious to better understand what you see as the way forward @gotope. Would you mind detailing your vision for Zcash a little bit? Do you intend to participate to the upcoming vote? Thanks!
Verily, the days to come may shine with great brightness, and the path ahead shall be filled with hope. @outgoing.doze
For those who walk with faith and diligence, the future shall be as the morning sun, rising ever higher unto its fullness.
One thing I don’t understand with ECC/ZF & employees, is how everything is so clear for things convenient to them, but as soon as it’s not so convenient it’s complete radio silence. @daira would you like to comment something on the fact that it was also clear from the start that the dev fund was for four years? And how come it took 0.1% of ZEC holders to conveniently make that problem go away?
What Zcash launched with was a Founders’ Reward, which was the functional equivalent of an ICO (like every other coin was doing at the time, such as Ethereum), but much better than an ICO for the Zcash community as a whole (because it was not pre-mined like an ICO which could be offloaded at optimal prices for the recipients or create a pump-and-dump, but instead was drip-fed out over time). The Founders’ Reward incentivised the development and creation of Zcash in the first place before it launched, and its non-ICO distribution mechanism incentivised continued support over the first four years. This was described in multiple blog posts before Zcash launched, starting here.
Now, it happened that the founders agreed that a percentage of the Founders’ Reward would go to ECC to fund its ongoing development work. Similarly, a subset of the founders also chose to donate part of their Founders’ Reward to the future Zcash Foundation. But these were decisions by the founders on what to do with their funds, not any sort of protocol-encoded community dev fund.
14.74% to the founders, investors, employees, and advisors.
2.88% to the Zcash Foundation.
2.38% to ECC (the blog post called it ECC’s “strategic reserve”).
The exact percentages (other than the 80%) changed over time, precisely because the founders could elect to do so at any time because it was their own funds they were directing. See for example the ECC Q2 2019 Transparency Report in which it was disclosed that the founders agreed to increase the amount going to ECC to ensure it survived the crypto winter.
Zcash itself did not have a dev fund until the first halving, when the Founders’ Reward ended.
The process by which the community came to consensus on creating the dev fund lasted for two years. Some timeline datapoints:
April 2019: Ycash fork is announced for July that proposes to redirect the remaining 1.25 years of Founders’ Reward away from the founders etc. towards a Ycash Foundation in perpetuity instead (establishing its own permanent dev fund).
September 2020: zcashd v4.0.0 released with support for the Canopy NU consensus rules, including the dev fund. Nothing happens unless the Zcash community decides to run the software.
November 2020: The Canopy NU successfully activates without creating a persistent chain fork, indicating that Zcash full node operators (including mining pools, exchanges, block explorer operators, individual community members, etc) decided to run zcashd v4.0.0 (or later) including the dev fund consensus rules.
This was not a quiet discussion, and it was not limited to a small group of people.
Honestly, I am not sure how to react to your answers.
On one hand, I’m thankful. You’ve taken the time to do the research and lay it all out; that’s certainly dedication to defend your perspective. Thank you.
On the other, none of your points even begin to address the governance failure I have highlighted.
That’s good, I’ll call it “Founders’ reward” going forward when talking about the first four years. It doesn’t change anything, but at least I’ll be more accurate, thank you.
Yep, ok.
Cool. All those datapoints could almost make it all look legitimate.
So with two years of discussion, “not limited to a small group of people”, all y’all could muster is 0.1% participation? Did you ever consider that you have failed the most important part of the poll; getting stakeholders on the table?
And you thought, it’s alright, it must represent the ZEC stakeholders at large?
No. It never did and 0.1% never will, represent anything at large.
You’re clearly not following the rules of democracy, nor those of capitalism. So what is it that you think you are doing?
Lies and theft. It’s all it’s been as far as I can tell. And you’re getting ready to do it all again, through your refusal to clarify how the poll will be interpreted.
Slight clarification: As of the second halving (back in November), Ycash eliminated mandatory contributions to the Ycash Development Fund. So although it is true that the intent back in 2019 was to create a “permanent” dev fund, Ycash ending up abandoning that in November 2024 and now miners are free to take 100% of the block reward in perpetuity.