Given some of the discussions that are occurring within the community, it seems like a good time to start thinking about the Dev Fund and whether or not it should continue after the next halving in late 2024.
The current Dev Fund, which is governed by ZIP 1014, started in late 2020 and will expire in late 2024. Over a four year period, 20% of the block reward (1,050,000 ZEC) is allocated to three different entities: Zcash Community Grants receives 40% of the Dev Fund (420,000 ZEC), the Electric Coin Company receives 35% (367,500 ZEC), and the Zcash Foundation receives 25% (262,500 ZEC). All three entities are domiciled in the US. Zcash Community Grants is not an independent entity, but a committee under the Zcash Foundation, which custodies and administers its funds.
Let’s kick things off with an informal poll to try and determine community sentiment about some of the key issues related to the Dev Fund. Please also use this thread to discuss whether the Dev Fund should continue after the next halving, and if so, how it should be allocated. The next halving is right around the corner, and there’s a lot to discuss, so let’s get the conversation started now.
If the Dev Fund continues after the next halving as 20% of the block reward, a total of 525,000 ZEC will be allocated to recipients from late 2024 to late 2028.
Question #1: Which of the following statements best reflects your opinion?
The Dev Fund should continue after the next halving in late 2024.
The Dev Fund should end after the next halving and 100% of the block reward should go to miners.
0voters
Question #2: After the next halving, the Dev Fund:
Should remain 20% of the block reward
Should be less than 20% of the block reward
Should be more than 20% of the block reward
0voters
Question #3: Would you support more independent entities (in addition to the existing three) receiving a slice of the Dev Fund even if that means giving less % to the existing recipients?
Yes
No
0voters
Question #4: Given the current sentiment of US regulators and policymakers towards crypto, do you believe that at least one recipient of the Dev Fund should be a non-US entity?
Yes
No
0voters
Question #5: On a scale of 1 (best) to 5 (worst), how would you rate the Electric Coin Company’s performance as a Dev Fund recipient?
1
2
3
4
5
0voters
Question #6: On a scale of 1 (best) to 5 (worst), how would you rate the Zcash Foundation’s performance as a Dev Fund recipient?
1
2
3
4
5
0voters
Question #7: On a scale of 1 (best) to 5 (worst), how would you rate Zcash Community Grants’ performance as a Dev Fund recipient?
1
2
3
4
5
0voters
Question #8: Would you support Zcash Community Grants becoming a fully-independent entity?
Yes
No
0voters
Question #9: Do ZEC holders pay for the Dev Fund via inflation / dilution / issuance?
Yes
No
0voters
Question #10: The Zcash Trademark Agreement is a bilateral agreement between ECC and ZF that ultimately determines what is called “Zcash”. Among other things, the Agreement requires both entities to sign off on any protocol upgrade before it can be implemented. In addition, neither party is permitted to take actions that violate “the clear consensus of the Zcash community.” Enforcement and maintenance of the trademark is required to ensure it is not invalidated. Do you believe the Trademark Agreement:
Is necessary and should continue as is, between ECC and ZF
Is necessary; however, you would support a third entity being party to the agreement
I agree. I am specifically refraining from voting.
I’m much less clear about ZCG grant recipients, though. I personally would want them to participate, even though there’s a blurry line about their incentives. The reason is because I consider grant recipients, broadly, to be demonstrably engaged with improving Zcash while still being outside the DF orgs proper.
Also, that blurry line really also applies to anyone who may want to apply for a future grant, even if they haven’t ever applied or received grant funding. I personally want the number of people considering applying for future grants to be very large and basically every Zcasher.
I’m not here for the money, I took a significant pay and title cut when I joined ECC.
I’m here because it’s our world’s best hope for economic freedom.
I hold and use ZEC.
I voted my honest opinion.
I reject the assertion that devfund recipients should have less of a voice and should abstain from speaking.
Oh god, those who voted to continue the Dev Fund are killing ZEC.
The fundamental reason is that most of the users on this forum are members of ECC, ZF, and ZCG, and they are all 20% beneficiaries, most of they will support continue.
Whether to continue the 20% Dev Fund vote should be launched on a platform with a wider audience, such as Twitter or Reddit.
Can these dozens of supporters represent a large number of ZEC users?
It is unscientific and invalid to do sampling analysis in a limited set!
WE can’t have Dev Fund any more, make good use of what you already have.
This survey is a preliminary cross-section of opinions. It is possible that it will serve as a basis for understanding the need to add other issues to the vote. A real survey will be conducted for members of the ZCAP.
It’s always interesting to see the results of these sorts of polls!
I’d like to ask those who ranked ZF’s performance anything other than 1:
Why don’t you think ZF is doing the best job it can?
What do you think ZF should be doing that we aren’t right now?
Do you think that ZF should not be doing some of the things that it is doing (e.g. building Zebra and FROST, organising Zcon, making grants, funding research into PoS and programmability)?
Strongly disagree. Platforms you mentioned have troll accounts/communities which are constantly trying to dismiss Zcash as an inferior crypto than what they hold, even while wanting to adopt the tech that is made possible due to the dev fund. They would jump of the chance to hijack this kind of a pool.
Also achievements such as getting rid of the trusted setup, bringing shielded tx to ledger hardware wallet etc would not have been possible without the fund. Engineers need to be incentivized for the work they are doing.
I can understand people who came in three years and say that funds are killing Zcash. And it is not about innovations that came to zcash. This statement is nothing more than a question about the price. If would ZEC on average correlate with at least some old altcoins, then no one would ever say that the dev fund is killing ZEC.
But sometimes even I have a question:
ZEC for DF or DF for ZEC. Even though it is a system, some of this should be ahead in importance. And the absolute majority of those who in ZEC prefer the formula DF for ZEC, and if they don’t see a positive impact on the price, then they don’t understand why DF is needed at all. This is the motivation for such statements.
i think Zcash needs devfund.
but - lower the % if/wen possible.
Devs shud work on ways for Zec price to rise higher so devfund is worth more - so can dev more.
Developin solutions dat make Zec super usable/useful for everyday ppl will make price one day higher and support devfund more even at lower % iwo.
Yes its really hard to do/make happen in reality. Zec hodlers have faith and hope in devs and others.
time will tell.
Let me go out on a limb and speculate that some people vote in relation to the amount of funding ZF received. And for the amount of funding ZF recieve we expect more.
I will concede that while ZF has been very conservative (compared to ECC) with spending it does put ZF in a better financial position to ride out this slump in ZEC price.
But I’ve also heard more then once… “What’s the point of hording ZEC if it’s just going to be half the price in 12months?”. While overly pessimistic it does raise a good question. Is there a fuzzy line on what % of the ZEC received should be spent? If that line isn’t reached should ZCAP reassess if those extra funds are better allocated elsewhere?
This reminds me of that saying “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch”
Also, I do not think the powers that be in Zcash (eg. dev fund recipients) have ever had “less of a voice” in anything related to Zcash, quite the opposite, actually. All of you are ZCAP (even have a +1 derived from the latest ZCAP elargement) and get to vote on whether to extend the devfund, unlike 99% of the REAL zcash community.
So it is kind of a futile excercise to even have a (charade) debate on this, as the devfund will, without a doubt, be extended.
As I said before “the powers that be in Zcash never ever lose, actually they always win by a landslide”, and this devfund debate certainly won’t be an exception.
I don’t understand why one would argue in favour of no dev fund, could someone help me understand by strawmaning steelmanning that position?
If there’s no dev fund, all of the block reward goes to miners, whose function is to provide security against 51% attacks. Protecting against 51% attacks is important, but there’s so many more kinds of security Zcash needs to have; it’s a bleeding-edge cryptographic protocol that needs maintenance and people standing by to run incident responses to be secure.
Why should we invest so heavily in a specific kind of security to the determent of all other kinds of security, and avoid rewarding people who contribute code to Zcash? Is it an objection to the current recipients of the dev fund rather than an objection to the concept of a dev fund in general?
