Love it. Hanh Labs it is 
.
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Hanh works solo.
It is just a silly Star War joke
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If we are worried we could enforce a 3 of 5 frost address as the Dev Fund recipient for individual. Hanh has 2 keys, ZF, ECC, and Shielded Labs have the others. Hanh makes reasonable requests to move funds to transaction account. Hanhās funds are at less risk of US based coercion.
If Hanh has trouble crossing the road one time ZF, ECC, Shielded Labs could protect/recover funds.
Is this better or nessicary? 95% is a big number. Also no ZCG middleware.
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I didnāt mean custody-wise but entity-wise
Entities should use frost as a good practice for sure but what I meant was mostly about plain and simple human life stuff like, people retiring, moving on, getting hit by buses 
and all.
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Again I donāt have a take on the proposal Itself, but this makes me think one thing.
Making the fund recipients easier to change is a good thing though.
Today changing recipients takes a lot of time and software changes, and updating nodes and all. Which is good because rigid is safe, but also it can be a risk on its own if thereās a more adversarial context for a project like ours.
If any of these huge geopolitical actors start a war against Privacy on crypto, this will be much needed. Imagine that they start sniping each recipient, by shutting down the entities, blocking the individuals and all you can think powerful political groups could do.
It would be very handy that Zcashers could dodge those bullets.
I canāt come up myself with an on-the-fly idea of a solution that makes a verifiable way of setting a variable list of grantees of the share of the dev fund without that being in the protocol itself no matter.
But yet itās still interesting to think of.
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Some random thoughts :-
I canāt think of an org that has reliquished their āpower to levy a taxā - once aquired its maintained at all costs, when an org is replaced it assumes that power & taxes continue.
Was also thinking on projects supported by fanatics (ie: Bitcoin) vs mercenaries (paid staff) and how that evolves. Fanatics become mercenaries when they get paychecks, but you canāt convert a mercenary into a fanatic.
Human nature isnāt noble but it is predictable so I doubt much will change regarding funding - altruistic fanatics are extremely rare (and theyāre both busy).
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If you guys want to justify the dev tax or even increase it, show us that the money is well spent. Compiling on aarch64 has been problematic for months, nobody bother looking at. And it took almost a year (?) to end that spam attack. I run zcash on my computer, and itās not always on so syncing had been always painfully slow until spam attack is fixed. I canāt imagine the horror for light client users.
I voted anyway, knowing that average users like myself donāt matter here. In my honest opinion, that tax should be at 0 and shoud have been after first halving. This forum is almost a ghost town, and ZEC subreddit is basically one guy posting everything. This community keeps getting smaller and smaller because people are leaving quietly, weāre disappointed.
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Big 
Btw, the strategy to grow the community canāt be Zooko continually posting that he corresponded with Satoshi and that Satoshi was interested in privacyā¦ Get some new material.
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You couldnāt be more wrong, but your welcome to believe what you want! Sometimes if you dont like what you see, you need to be the change you want to see: less talk ā more do.
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These can essentially be regarded as verifiable facts. You may disagree but a quantitative analysis shows a significant drop in both metrics. We were even unable to secure a sufficient number of candidates to conduct a legitimate ZCG election.
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You couldnāt be more wrong, but your welcome to believe what you want! Sometimes if you dont like what you see, you need to be the change you want to see: less talk ā more do.
The argument for dev fund in this thread is that Zcash canāt rely on altruist contribution, but youāre asking for that from me, or any unhappy user. If you want Zcash look more like a community project and not a product, removing that dev fund would be logical step, isnāt it?
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Iām not sure thatās what anyone is saying. Anyone can certainly help the project without payment if they want. You care enough to complain, but not enough to do work, and I ask why? DEV fund would allow you to be paid, if you wanted. So no, Iām not āasking that of youā, youāre choosing that.
wrong, why you think this, Iām not sure. Iāve been trying to help, but I guess that doesnāt count ?
wrong, we are clearly having conversations.
Again, you care enough to login and check, but not enough to offer to help? (Might even get paid too!)
Iād like to see your evidence for this? All I see if the same 3-4 users who love to sing the same narrative.
I read this as your disappointed, please donāt assume everyone else is. I can agree improvements can be made. Iām trying to understand and help but help me help you.
Itās late here, so hopefully I didnāt botch my response, but my bottle line is I hope we all care enough about this project to be willing to help make it better (AKA do work) instead of just complaining.
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Do reporting technical problems count as contribution? It should.
If you agree that altruist contributions can carry this project forward, dev fund would be pointless. And if you donāt, go demand the work from the people getting paid to do it.
Not wrong. It is stated in OP that this is informal poll and its mere purpose is surveying the sentiment. It is unlikely to decide the dev fund.
Not wrong, this forum were a lot more active. Evidently only 6 topics updated in last 24 hours. Two of them were because I posted something.
I care enough to report unfixed issue thatās been going on for few months. Anyone willing to pay me for that?
So, without those 3-4 users this forum would look even dead? Is that what youāre saying?
You want evidence? Look at the number of full nodes with up-to-date block height. Hint: most of them donāt bother upgrading.
I care enough to voice the concern instead of pretending that everything is fine. I hope you do get paid for PR work youāve been doing.
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lmao 
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this is why gas is needed. the gas pays for maintenance and improvements. and if people that actually use the products donāt want to pay the gas, the why should zec holders? funding losing ideas is bad for the ecosystem, bad for the brand, and bad for long term survival.
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I wasnāt planning on writing this today, so bear with me. Iām responding to some of the ideas here and here.
Specifically:
At their limits, funding from block rewards or fees are similar. In both cases, the incentives are to increase either the value of ZEC or the amount of fees collected. In both cases, there are real-time signals to measure success (price of ZEC or value of fees accrued). In addition, right now, every ZEC holder is already paying a fee via a token dilution mechanism to fund Zcash. That fee is currently ~10% (the current rate of dilution of the ZEC supply) - a portion of which (20%) goes to the Dev Fund. If we switched to fee-based funding, fees would have to increase drastically to sustain costs, at least until txn volume increases by orders of magnitude. Maybe this is better than a more behind-the-scenes dilution mechanism, maybe not.
However, ultimately, the main reason I think the difference between block reward funding or disbursements of the ZSF funded by a combination of block rewards/fees/donations will trend toward the same result is that everything is socialized in Zcash. If somebody creates a killer app or marketing campaign that results in huge demand for ZEC - everyone else benefits just as well, or maybe even more! Theoretically, this is fine - weāre all in it together right? Weāre all equally capable and equally hard working. But I wager itās closer to a group project, where everybody can get the same grade for unequal contribution. So how do you solve this group project problem?
Get rid of the Dev Fund and individual app developers can charge a fee, either txn-based, downloads-based, etcā¦ If their app does well, they benefit in proportion to that. Problem solved right? Well - why shouldnāt they add in other blockchains, get more paying-users? Oh, turns out thereās way more users for other cryptos? I guess ZEC support goes on the backburner for now.
Or letās say the app creators donāt abandon ship and stick to their ZEC-only guns, what about some compensation for the developers who made the network possible in the first place? Do they not benefit from creating something of value which then others used to create more value? Without a socialized funding mechanism, can people work on things that just benefit everyone else? How do you decide the compensation for someone that helps to lift all boats? Put the software under a business license and make money from licensing? That wonāt fly in crypto-land.
Ok, keep everything open source, but install a 2% fee for txns as a kickback for network developers. But wait - thereās more than one org doing network support? How do we know the proportion of the fees to give to each group? Did one do something that led to more Zcash adoption than the other? How do we know? How do we change the rules to reward good contributors or remove unhelpful ones? I guess we need some governance ability to be able to change things.
But wait, how do we do governance? The most clear governance mechanism is administered by one of the orgs that receives the Dev Fund? Isnāt that a conflict of interest? If I donāt like the way things are - I can just leave, use another coin? Is there another coin that has everything I like about Zcash and nothing I dislike? No? Dangā¦ Fork Zcash and make my own project? Hmmā¦ thatās an uphill battle and I like the people in Zcash, I donāt want to do that! Oh! Maybe we try coin-holder voting? It could be representative of every Zcasher, allow for permissionless voting, and weighted by those who have the most skin in the game! Wait, who would even be in control of what gets put to a vote? Would anyone even listen to the results? Thereās a possibility that voting for whatās best for ZEC price in the short-term may not be best for the long-term? Even worse - itās possible people may vote on things when they have absolutely no idea whatās best for Zcash?? Oh, coin voting isnāt even possible anytime soon? Never mind thenā¦
Anyway, it is my belief that Zcash is actually much more similar to running a country than we may think. And also that many mechanisms that have been tested for at least a few hundred years will ultimately serve Zcash best in some combination we have to decide. I think a mixture of public (socialized) and private funding models are needed. And I think active and agile democratic governance mechanisms to decide on the things that affect everyone are needed. I donāt really think forum posting alone will do anything either. People have to work together, form coalitions, come up with proposals, have discussions, etc. Everything we love and hate from the real world.
Also, to at least put some sort of conclusion to this that may result in an inch of progress, I think I largely agree with a lot of the ideas in @joshsās post. I donāt know the ins and outs of all consequences of changing the trademark agreement, but I would really like to see the Zcash community develop a self-administering and democratic governance process. Itās important for many reasons, not least of which is creating legitimacy around future funding decisions to avoid both real or imagined self-dealing.
Ok, back to work! I hope this was enjoyable to read, and if not - I get it.
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They are not similar at all. Not even close. The current framework is a subsidy (or forced donation) by ZEC holders to the users of ZEC. The proposed framework is an exchange of value where users pay ZEC for the value they (the users) receive. That is, we created this blockchain/ZEC coin. Now when you use it, you pay a fee because we are creating something of value that you want and need.
100% true. This looks like socialism (or actually more like communism). And just like any socialized movement. The people that are subsidizing the work will get tired of it after a while. Not even the developers want to work for free in the name of the Zcash movement. And if the products are given away for free, shouldnāt the developers work for free. Otherwise, the people using the product need to pay for it. Right now they are not. ZEC holders are subsidizing the use of ZEC. Paying for development with inflationary token issuance is a bad idea. I thought that was the reason BTC was created to begin with? So, you basically lose all the maximalist who believe in non inflationary money with this funding mechanism. I thought it was not a bad idea to start. But its time to move on and start transitioning to a market based system.
The solution is gas. The people that create the best killer apps make the most money. Self funded projects should be the goal. Especially edge use cases.
The dev fund is needed to maintain and improve ZEC. Its the mechanics of how its funded that needs to change.
Again this is all solved by decentralized development at the edge. We need centralized development for the blockchain (the foundation) and ZEC (ECC). Someone has to lead development. Now for the edge use cases, the best mechanism is gas and developing the framework for how gas is split up between the parties. Paypal just built on top of Ethereum. Is Etherurm giving away the L1 use for free? Now I dont know exactly what Etheruem charges, but that seems like a pretty good data point for what the L1 blockchain is worth to someone to process money transactions. We also have a good idea of what Paypal charges its users to move money around. So there are very good data points for how the market is evolving. And its pretty clear, its not moving in the direction of free. because no one wants to work for free do they?
This is a perfect example of why decentralized development is needed. No more organizations funded by block rewards. I really believe more and more, the rewards are a forced donation. We should eliminate block rewards immediately if the idea is this is a social project. People should not be forced to donate. It should be a choice. Especially if the thinking is this is a socialist movement where the products are given away for free. Otherwise we will continue to get this ideas on how to tap into forced funding by ZEC holders.
- The foundation focuses on the blockchain
- ECC focuses on ZEC
- The only new organizations should be the ones creating on the blockchain. QEDIT for stablecoins. etc. But ideally, these new organizations fund themselves and the foundation just makes it easy to use the blockchain. The same way Paypal tapped into the Ethereum blockchain.
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The community already awarded millions and millions in $ZEC for 4 years to the people āthat made Zcash possibleā. It was literally sold to the community as a āFoundersā Rewardā. It is my understanding that Zooko alone was making multiple millions of dollars from it per year, he even presented a slide on it at Zcon0:
I think it is just really hard to argue that the community has not already given back more than enough to founders, but hey, maybe it is just me, maybe they still deserve to collect many millions more from zolders for years to come.
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If thereās no dev fund, how will it impact the Zcash network and the ZEC price?
How can the absence of such a fund ensure the networkās and coinās value?
Iām struggling to understand. Whether we have a Dev fund or not, the inflation rate remains consistent.
Either 20% is sold by miners who are already performing their duties, or itās sold by organizations that support the network through means other than just mining.
We definitely need better transparency in terms of work accounting and a more sophisticated governance system.
For now, and in the foreseeable future, weāre heavily reliant on these organizations that are doing commendable work. Mistakes happen; after all, to err is human. Yet, the Zcash network is thriving and has seen numerous improvements since its 2016 launch.
As Iāve mentioned before, letās collaborate on the areas we agree upon. This collaboration can guide us in addressing topics that the community has differing views on.
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I have a question that I do not know the answer to:
Since ECC has recently cut a significant portion of its responsibility to the community; IE: Partnerships, Regulatory, Marketing, Zcashd. Is the community obligated to continue to distribute the same amount of funding to them until the next dev fund vote or can we/should we revisit this funding earlier?
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