I was listening to the first (and great!) episode of Zcon Session with @nathan-at-least and he mentioned that he would be discussing on Discord on a “R&D” or “Proof of Stake” channel. I couldn’t find those channels, if someone could clarify this, I’d appreciate.
However now, let me get this straight. We, as a project and community, pretend like we care about privacy and decentralization, but our communication tool of choice is Discord? Polkadot mainly on Matrix, with a bridge to Discord. If we can’t lead those basic things, we could at least copy those doing better than ourselves.
We’re one “updated Terms and Conditions” message out of Discord(or Telegram) from losing the main way the community communicates.
I started the Zeal Center to try to bring the community out of the walled gardens, so far the people that have joined (and there’s not that many of us) have successfully funded the server through next year. We could do the same for a Matrix server, it needs the community to come together and chip in.
Is Zeal Center a non-profit somewhere? Just so if we migrate we can sort of ensure low-risks of having the service close on us in a way just as likely or more so than Discord.
That aside, likewise indeed, while I definitely believe we should have a presence on Twitter, ideally it should be through a bot that replicates a more decentralized, less nuts, Fediverse account.
It isn’t. It’s me running the server. Ideally, it should grow to have enough engaged members to form a DAO (a la ZecHub) of some sort to take over, and to have at least a few moderators.
But no one wants to leave Twitter (or Discord, or Instagram…)
Personally, for things that require trust, I’m most comfortable with non-profits located in “friendly” jurisdictions, like Cayman or Switzerland, as @aquietinvestor is doing with Shielded Labs.
I’d say that it would likely help with convincing Electric Coin and Zcash Foundation to consider those channels as “Official Zcash”.
What good is a decentralized tool if no one uses it? Who’s willing to spend time learning a new tool ,when most see zero benefit? I think connecting with peers, where they are, is a great first step. I’m one of the few members who’s willing to try other options like zeal center but, and this is a common theme, most just dont care . They dont care about privacy, decentralization or any other pillar privacy geeks love. They just want to connect, have fun, use what they know. Forcing anything will drive folks away, the direct opposite of what this post is trying to do – build up community.
Says almost every vendor out there on whether to accept ZEC.
See how yours line of thinking is not going to lead anywhere?
We must show support (even if little) to projects that are sharing our values. Just like the very few vendors that are accepting ZEC today are absolutely critical to our future; they are the precious early adopters.
I think what you mean is we need more people to lead by example. That doesn’t fix the problem of being alone on some island though. Without a map, everyone is lost.
I’m US based, if clear rules were in place, this would improve. RN too much risk, for most people. I dont like it, and there are folks trying to find solutions, but the reality is clear.
#1 It may be a detail, but I think it is important for us to not just be willing to use tools aligned with our values, but also strongly inclined to do so.
#2 Neither Mastodon or Matrix are islands. If anything, we are more of an island of our own making on Discord and Twitter. Just observe where are the important projects are communicating? Tor? GrapheneOS? Signal? Given our lack of ability to lead by example (on this topic), maybe we could at least follow the recognized ones who do?
#3 Most of Zcash is controlled by two US organizations at this point. I’m not here to discuss pros and cons. However, they certainly hold the keys on whether we are present on the more decentralized platforms. I am not sure who to tag here to be honest but I really want to know their perspective on this matter.
I’d love to see some data on this, does anyone have some research on where folks are actually talking? If its more private, decentralized, is it necessarily harder to quantify?
It sure would be nice, and indeed probably harder to quantify for the reasons you mentioned.
Personally though, the equation remains solved: we must be both on legacy as well as more decentralized platforms. Legacy because still many people are there, and more decentralized because the key actors are there.
I guess? We should follow our own path, not what monero does. I like that monero exists, but just because they use those platforms doesn’t make me any more likely to use it.
I disagree here. I think one of the community’s issues is that many of us post on the forum about how ECC and/or ZF doesn’t do X, or Y, when the community could go ahead an build as we need.
ZecHub is a great example, no one waited for ECC/ZF to approve or endorse or sign-off. People got together and built something for the community by the community. We need more of that.
This plan, Decentralizing Zcash Digital, is exactly that. How to do it, and who will organize the teams to do it, is the first step and it’s being taken now.
There are no “official” chat rooms wrt to Zcash. Communities are gathering organically in places where they already hang out. For example, I believe there is a Matrix/Telegram/Discord bridge setup for Zcash Global. I want to do something like that for ZFAV but I don’t want it to just be a room on Matrix.org and my overcomplicating of that issue has blocked it from getting done.
A Matrix server on zeal.center would also make sense, to me. We don’t need to depend on ECC or ZF for anything here and I would rather not even bring them into the conversation because this is a community/social problem and not in their area of expertise nor service.
If you want a Matrix Zcash server then, please, start a Matrix Zcash server. This goes for any kind of community thing that anyone thinks Zcash needs. DIY. Hack the planet.
I’d be happy to collaborate with something like that. Unfortunately, Mastodon takes most of the resources of the current box so it would have to be a separate one (otherwise I would have already set it up). If we can come up with a way to host that server, we can plug it into the Zeal Center domain
Additional note on my personal use Twitter v. Mastodon: It’s simply a matter of building a new habit and not getting enough engagement to reenforce that behavior. I will keep trying to remind myself to post there.
Use social.z.cash as domain for the community Fediverse. Use https://masto.host/ as service provider.
Some clarifications:
Using the z.cash domain, I believe, is important for brand recognition. Using different domains may add to decentralization, but it is also my belief that it also adds to confusion. When new people land on this project, they will want to do it through a well known domain (at least initially).
Using professional services is important. Why? As soon as projects successfully scale up, non-professional hosting tend to struggle with more advanced setups of load-balancing. This generally leads to downtime, which in turn has a negative impact on the project.
Given trust is a key element of web2, as mentioned earlier I tend to believe that this should be setup through a non-profit, such as Shielded Labs. In the same vein, I expect that the z.cash domain “keys” will never be in the hands of an “individual”; rather one or multiple organization, in strategic jurisdictions, will have control over those.
