Community Sentiment Polling Results (NU4) and draft ZIP 1014

Community Collaborations protocol
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In my previous comment I told you why I care so much about Coin-Holders Petition that I think we should keep pushing it forward despite the risks.

Here are three simple, actionable, observations:

  1. If you’re considering participating in a Coin Holders Petition, and you’re concerned about the risk of your coins being lost to accident or theft, then just use a fraction (like 1%) of your coins in your petition. That still shows that you exist and raises your voice while leaving the vast majority of your coins as safe as before. Of course, it also means your vote only weighs 1/100 as much as if you voted all your coins. Your call.

  2. If you’re worried about the risk of your privacy being compromised by participating in a Coin Holders petition, I would say this. At the risk of oversimplifying, it’s all about where you store your ZEC long-term. If you’re currently storing your ZEC in a t-address, and you use your ZEC, or part of it, in the petition, then on-chain data will allow blockchain-observers to link your vote to the t-address of your stash. And moving your ZEC through a z-address will not help. You have to store your ZEC in a z-address if you want on-chain privacy. But the good news is that if you’re currently storing your ZEC in a z-address, then you can participate in a coin-holders petition with basically no real loss of on-chain privacy. There are probably valid exceptions or arguments to that, but basically if you store your ZEC in your z-address, then it’s pretty damn private.

  3. See how I said “on-chain” whenever I said “privacy”, in Point 2, above? Point 2 is all about on-chain privacy, but that’s not the only kind of privacy that might matter to you. One particular off-chain data leakage that you should be aware of is the network layer. Even if you’re using z-addresses, someone who is watching the network layer will be able to see the IP address and the timing of when you make transactions. That means that even if you’re using z-addresses, they’ll probably be able to link your vote in the Coin Holders Petition with other transactions you make from the same IP address, including shielded and partially shielded transactions, even if they can’t learn anything about which z-addresses are involved in shielded or partially-shielded transactions. Whether this is a problem for you in practice really depends on your situation. Participating in the Coin Holders Petition probably doesn’t, for most people, make this problem substantially worse than it already is. If you’re a real privacy ninja, you could mitigate this risk by using Tor in a particular way.

Conclusions:

  1. Only vote with as many of your coins as you’re willing to risk moving.

  2. If you store your coins long-term in a t-address, then blockchain observers may be able to link your vote with your long-term holdings and your other transactions. Blockchain-only observers won’t be able to do so if you store your coins in a z-address long-term. Moving your coins through a z-address does not change this. What changes this is whether you store your coins in a z-address.

  3. Think about the fact that a network observer can link your IP address with other transactions you make from the same IP address. The consequences of this are confusing to think about, but if you have concerns about your privacy even though you are using a z-address for long-term storage, then you need to think through this network-level privacy leakage.

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