Community Sentiment Polling Results (NU4) and draft ZIP 1014

To get the complete breakdown of opinions, it should be something like:

Do you support…

  • The original ZIP 1012
  • The modified ZIP 1012
  • Neither
  • Abstain

EDIT: By the way, this makes more sense if the modified proposal does not include monthly funding caps / volatility reserves by default, and the option of adding these are addressed in a separate question.

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An update on timelines here after discussion with the ECC: given the fact that the winter holidays are right around the corner — and we want to honor the rare opportunity for community members and ZF/ECC employees to reflect and relax — we’re going to put a pause on assembling the poll and the final Helios vote until after New Years.

I know that may be disappointing to some, but I suspect it will lead to more engagement and a better outcome on the final poll. Thanks for understanding and I hope everyone has a good holiday break.

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Yay! Everyone gets a holiday this year! Thank you, Cin. :laughing: Looking forward to drinking scotch and playing video games with my kids all day. :christmas_tree: Happy Holidays, everyone!!

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Happy holidays everyone! :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

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Hello everyone,

I was asked to contribute some of my thoughts here in the hope that it can be helpful in some way.

For context, I think one of the few things the Ethereum project got very wrong was leaving out a vesting schedule for the first 50-100 people who contributed. Nearly all of those people are now working on competitors or furnishing their holiday homes.

Here is the debate I engaged in on Twitter:

I was lucky enough to stumble across Stripe in 2012 and Ethereum in 2014. I have seen two projects go from around 30 people to thousands. I have seen their value go from millions to billions. Money is a weird thing.

With each project, I was only involved for a matter of months. I then saw what happened over the years afterwards.

I would strongly recommend having a 6-month cliff and an increasing amount of reward over time. Snapchat gives people more stock each year for 6 years. If someone lasts 6 years, they are usually extremely valuable. If someone is toxic in the first few months, they need to go.

I am sure this is not a new sentiment. I just thought it might be somewhat helpful.

Good luck on everything!

Cheers,

Richard

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I remain concerned (speaking for myself, not for ECC or as a ZIP editor) about the ECC’s status when applying for Major Grants, relative to other applicants.

@tromer has said that “If ECC is not allowed to compete for Major Grants, then its dedicated slice [would need] to be much larger.” However the Major Grant awarding process has an inbuilt bias against ECC, specifically:

This is very likely to preclude ECC from actually being awarded any Major Grants — even in the short term, if alternative applicants show up immediately. Under these conditions, how can ECC management and developers have any confidence they/we are not just wasting time and effort in making Major Grant proposals?

It might be fairer and more effective to just increase ECC’s dedicated slice and bar them/us from applying for Major Grants. (Again, to clarify, I’m not speaking for ECC here.)

An advantage of that approach is that ECC would no longer be financially incentivized to cast work that it would need to do anyway as Major Grant work, which arguably would be a perverse and unproductive incentive.

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I just noticed that the current PR has a recently added extra sentence relative to ZIP 1012 (and what @tromer quoted above):

[new sentence in bold]

This introduces a couple of problems:

  • There is a perverse incentive for ECC to drain the Volatility Reserve in order to be able to apply for Major Grants (especially, but not only, if the amount in the Volatility Reserve is fairly small compared to the potential grant allocation).
  • If the short-term coin price spikes so that a Volatility Reserve is created, then ECC is immediately excluded from applying for Major Grants — even if plans to make a grant application were in progress. In other words, ECC is effectively penalized for the coin price going up!

IMHO these are serious problems and the extra sentence should be removed.

Together with the following paragraph:

… ECC could be virtually excluded from obtaining Major Grants.

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(Speaking for myself.)

I am skeptical about the funding caps in general, but I’d like to ask a more specific question: why are the caps $700k/month for all slices, rather than being in proportion to the percentages in each slice? Also, how was the figure $700k/month decided on?

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Historically: I picked $700k/month in my draft ZIP 1012 because ECC’s expenses have been floating around $700k/month for a long time according to the transparency reports, so this seemed like the natural choice for ECC’s side of the “maintain the existing teams and capabilities in the Zcash ecosystem” goal. Especially when ECC’s plans for growth can be accommodated by Major Grants and/or the Funding Target adjustment mechanism.

why are the caps $700k/month for all slices, rather than being in proportion to the percentages in each slice?

Historically: My first version version of draft ZIP 1012 had 3 equal slices, so setting the Funding Target of each slice to $700k/month was proportional. When I made the last-minute to the slice percentages (35% ECC, 25% ZF-GU, 40% ZF-MG) to harmonize with Matt Luongo’s proposal, I left the $700k/month unchanged. You’re right that an alternative would be to make the Funding Target be proportional to the coin percentages, i.e., have identical ZECUSD threshold at which extra ZEC goes to the Volatility Reserve. This would not substantially affect ECC, but it would change how much funds are available for operational use by ZF-GU vs. ZF-MG slices at at high coin prices. It would also be a bit slightly more complex to specify and understand. I don’t think it matters much, and I don’t object to changing it.

I stress the historically because these were the judgment calls of one person, informed by his imperfect and possibly outdated understanding of community sentiments. So it would be very reasonable to adjust these.

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I agree that the “new” here is bad. My mistake. It’s inconsistent with the explicit goal of this ZIP to “maintain the existing teams and capabilities”, and to the extent that it applies to ECC, it’s redundant with criteria 3 of Major Grants.

I addressed this, and some other clarifications, in the Clarify Major Grant criteria #2 proposed changes (pull request) which I submitted now.

Update: ZF has merged these changes into its draft ZIP 1014.

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In my opinion ECC is severely understaffed at that funding level.

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Would’ve been great to discuss this before sentiment collection, no? Not that it’s not worthwhile at any time, but concretely what are you proposing – another cap-related poll question?

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What do you think, how many employees should be in the state and what average salary should they have? How much additional expenses are needed per month, just when they say that 700 thousand is not enough I have a question “why not enough?” it is a lot of money in the real world, where production works and there is a real economy. Of course, any company wants to get billions, but is it real? From open data, the salary of a doctor in the USA is 300 thousand a year (on average), considering that there are 10 people in the ECC staff, on average 70 thousand a month or 840 a year is obtained, that is, if you are equal with doctors, you can have 30 employees -average.This is an example for illustration, maybe someone has the same questions.
A company that provides services to a project that has not received distribution I think can’t say that this is not enough, let’s better divide the percentage of the amount at a price of zec 1500 dollars per coin, and then I think everyone will have enough (you can say that this will not happen, but I can say that it necessary to continue work- total fair value for the product in the project)
You can not sell the product below cost.

ECC has made their/our position very clear: there shouldn’t be a USD cap. Dev Funds Should Be in Zcash, Not United States Dollars - Electric Coin Company I agree with that.

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But the community voted for another proposal, also ECC has the opportunity to release a fork of zcash with its vision, zcash 2.0.
And I agree that the ECC still has not agreed to work on the current proposal, and changing it under the ECC is not entirely correct, because another developer may also be dissatisfied with the conditions, what was the point then in voting if you need to repeat at any outcome voting, and so on, until the right option is adopted, so-so democracy.
I said from the very beginning that the ECC needs to draw up its proposal and put it to the vote, and then the community would have voted for this particular developer or just for the proposal they liked, and now when the vote has ended, the ECC is just pushing its wishes, although before that it was said that to intervene will not. Like this! As I saw the situation from the position of the fund- After the state will be signed a contract in the amount of zcash for a certain period, and the development team will execute it regardless of the price of zcash, as this is the task of the developer. And what we get, we get what the central government is, and what it says it will be, the voting was not just not necessary, it did harm (will do) when everyone understands what they have come to.

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ECC stated, well in advance of dev fund ZIPs being written, that it “planned to spend” $1M per month. ECC: All in on ZEC - Electric Coin Company

I don’t know why it didn’t reemphasize that figure or explain it in more detail; that wasn’t my decision.

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It is because zooko opted-out of the conversation.

I thought it was 1.1m but the transparency reports told us it was 700k. this number was banded about many times and got no pushback from the ECC.

Is changing it now too late?

I have asked about x times about 7 months ago that the ECC clearly states what they need for what and/or come up with an own proposal. The reason behind that is that way proposal makers have exact numbers they can work with.
An ECC proposal was clearly refused with the argument that the community has to make a proposal and the only numbers available for proposal makers are the ones that figure in the transparency reports which are around or below 700k US$.

There are a number of proposals which have no 700k cap, but these unfortunatly for the ECC didn’t get the majority of votes. I personally think that the community decided that these 700k funding is enough to keep the ECC operational, as it’s today and the whole last 2019 year.

Now if the ECC wants/wanted more a wishlist approving than a community voting/decision than we could have spared us all the whole voting process and proposal making.

I’am not sure i understand this completyl. I mean right now the ECC has to work with 500-600k funds monthly, so having 700k funds available should even improve things a bit.

Beside that, in my opinion ( i could be totally wrong here!) i think the ECC made a strategical mistake by not accepting and not going to convert to a non-profit company but keeps the for-profit status. I could bet that with a non-profit status the community would have been more willing to allocate more funds to the ECC, but that’s of course just my personal impression.

The more the proposal gets changed, the less it has anything in common with the proposal the community voted for.

This discussion now makes me think that there is maybe a missing part in the proposal that should be adressed. Maybe adding a point what happens if the ECC decides NOT to accept the job or withdraws at some time and how the ECC funds are allocated than.

@tromer, would it make sense to have such case included? I mean we have that case that IF there is nobody applying for the major grant funds that the ECC meanwhile can use them. The same way it would make sense to have the an reserve/emergency option with the ECC funds in case they opt-out or whatever. For example 1/2 goes directly to the ZF and 1/2 to the Major grants? Or 3/4 to ZF and 1/4 to the Major Grants?

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That’s an oversimplification. We obviously didn’t completely “opt out of the conversation”, and ECC has made several statements that bear on this issue.

The transparency reports were always clear that they referred to the amounts that had been spent in a given period, not the amounts needed for sustainable operations. As I’ve said, in my opinion ECC is currently severely understaffed. Partly that’s due to difficulty in recruiting the right people, but partly it’s a matter of money. (This is my understanding, not an official ECC statement.)

The $1.1m/month figure is from Electric Coin Company Statement on Sustainability - Electric Coin Company I don’t know for certain the reason for the discrepancy with ECC: All in on ZEC - Electric Coin Company , but the latter says “about $1m”, so I guess the reason is probably that “about $1m” is intended to be $1.1m.

As far as I know, ECC does not object to needing to apply for Major Grants in order to get more than a 35% slice. Putting the USD cap aside, my concerns above were about whether it will be able to do so on a reasonably level playing field with other applicants. @tromer has filed a PR against ZF’s draft ZIP to change the wording slightly, which I approve of as far as it goes.

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Maybe my thought is in bad English, but what i have in mind is: What happened with the funds/slice for the ECC and IF the ECC decides it does not or can not work further on Zcash or for whatever reason decides to stop working on Zcash.

For such case there must/should be a mechanism that accolcates the ECC slice/funds elsewhere to people willing to work further on Zcash, be it towards the ZF or Major Grants or shared somehow.
IF i didn’t miss something i think such mechanism and wording is currently missing.
I think it’s literally the same like the major grants wording/mechanism. IF there is nobody that applies for the major grants the ECC could take it or parts of it.
In short, there should be a mechanism that allows the ZF and/or the major grants to take the ECC slice/funds in case the ECC stops working on Zcash at a given time for whatever reason.

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