Dev Fund 2024: Community Poll & Discussion Megathread

Governance
298

Part of my thinking about why the Dev Fund needs to be eliminated is that it removes the corrosive (moral and productive hazard) elements from such a large chunk of the ZEC emitted per halving cycle.

Whenever people are given Free things without accountability or obligation (especially affluent Westerners, re: ECC and ZF stakeholders) it creates a negative dilemma.

Eliminating the Dev Fund means that all 100% of ZEC emitted to miners or stakers are Earned as a precondition to receipt. The Earning of all ZEC assures that they will be treated respectfully and valuablyā€¦ They will be less likely to be spent on a whim for silly PR stunt projects, or the 19th re-invention of ZecWallet Lite, et al.

The pitfall of the Dev Fund model is that Free ZEC are given to the block reward orgs, and they are never earned in a correlative to work sense. Because theyā€™re Free it has created a huge ongoing productivity/ mission/ interests crisis. Nowadays many block reward stakeholders are over spending time and resources making their case as to why they should continue to be given free block rewards.

It is a backwards system. Compensation should come after delivery of goods and services, and the compensation amount should be meritocratic/ based on measurable value-add metrics.

In the current model, Free ZEC are spent with no respect to the hazards of value-less work. A great example is the Zcash parachute adventure, another ongoing example is the Zcash Media grant. $1,000,000 for 12 youtube videos? But we havenā€™t received a single tweet from @ZcashMedia the entire 2023 year!~?

A clean future for the Zcash ecosystem means a fair and equitable future. No more Us vs. Them

Eliminating the pitfalls of the block reward model eliminates the us vs them ecosystem. We are all in this together bringing different skills to the table, we need to be all treated fairly. Until the block reward model is eliminated, the Zcash ecosystem will never have a chance to be unequivocally fair.

4 Likes
300

We should have spent the money on this:

3 Likes
301

Full agreement. Investing in explicit views and impacts with an influencer like MrBeast is exactly what the ZCG should be spending some of their funds to. Spending $200,000 for MrBeast would assuredly generate views, engagement, and throughput. Spending $200,000 for an extra YouTube video or two from Zcash Media is more akin to playing a scratch-off for social media engagement.

4 Likes
302

Ok, I think I understand your idea.

Question: Would more accountability within the current system solve this problem for you?

The current structure was established three years ago when, in my opinion, there was no other way to move forward. Since then, weā€™ve received valuable deliverables like Zebrad, Orchard, ZSAs (work in progress), FROST, and others.

Mistakes have been made, which is normal. No one can be right 100% of the time. I plant many seeds, but often only about half of them grow into what I desire. So technically, I waste water and time on those seeds. Itā€™s natural.

Now, looking toward the next halving, we want to leverage our past experience to plant seeds more effectively.

The ZPF (which I also like to call the SAFE fund) could be funded by transaction fees, offering a potential solution. In Zcash, fees reflect adoption: they show whether users enjoy using this blockchain. If the recipients of funds from the ZPF want more money, they will want to see more transactions. Therefore, they would work on scalability, optimizing the system, enhancing the product, and gaining more users, which in turn would increase transaction fees.

The same applies to wallets. I believe each wallet should implement its own fee for every transaction made through it, independent of the ZPF. Users will vote with their usage, effectively choosing the best wallet.

One thing I donā€™t want to change is the involvement of ZF, ECC, and ZCG as the main contributors to the project. Some may need to improve their accountability, but if someone could do the same work for less money, they probably would. Those who maintain the network should have a fixed monthly salary. Maintenance isnā€™t necessarily something new from the userā€™s perspective but itā€™s still work. Maybe PoS will eventually solve this.

We should also encourage more contributions through grants for projects that donā€™t require ongoing maintenance.

As for marketing, itā€™s a complex area where mistakes are bound to happen, but itā€™s essential. Zcash needs marketing to communicate its purpose to outsiders and to improve communication between users and developers. Cryptocurrency is largely driven by speculators, and since Zcash isnā€™t a coin that you buy low to sell high, price canā€™t be the sole marketing strategy.

Itā€™s always easier to focus on the negative points rather than the positive ones. I donā€™t want to give up on my optimistic views just because of a few past failures. The protocol should be under constant development and maintenance.

6 Likes
303

I think it would be great if we could keep these orgs going for brand recognition, but I agree with Joshā€™s proposal here that it would be beneficial to see new leadership in Zcash so I would like to see the next round of the dev fund implement some mechanisms that allow the community to vote in leadership and hold those leaders accountable for delivering. I am also hoping to see the creation of new organizations to pick up where ECC ceased its efforts.

For example, if all ECC is going to be focused on after ā€œexiting emergency modeā€ is PoS research - it seems like we should pare back their funding allocation and reallocate it to other organizations that are actively building/marketing etc.

I agree with this. And since this is an area i help with part-time, please let me know if you have specific ideas for projects.

I appreciate this sentiment and your optimism. I agree that we should always be under development. From my observations, peopleā€™s frustrations have increased due to the speed at which things are completed and their overall net impact. There is a percentage of the community who feels that the dev fund recipients operate within a black box and do not take community feedback into account.

Zebra took three years to get out the door (I think, someone correct me if that is wrong), NU5 took around the same and then has had several issues negatively impacting users since (for over a year now). At that same time, multiple ZK-based protocols have entered the picture, many of which have extensibility that allows them to build ZK-based dApps in a way that we cannot with Zcash. Crypto has largely moved away from being ā€˜token-basedā€™ and more about building entire ecosystems where tokens are the medium of exchange - I think the decision-makers have failed to keep up with this growing trend despite the writing being on the wall for some time now.**

*To be clear that doesnā€™t mean I donā€™t think there are valid use cases for payment projects still. I am simply acknowledging the changing face of the industry.

When you look at these things converging: opacity into the dev-fund organizationā€™s decision-making, delays, and breakages that seem to drag on endlessly coming up against depressed coin prices - makes it challenging for folks to remain optimistic.

All that being said, I tend to be more of the ā€œstay optimistic but also change the system to work more effectively.ā€ school of thought here. If we continue the dev fund or decide to increase it we have to directly address the mounting concerns of the community within the governance/funding model that we choose.

I think ZCG would benefit from having a full-time dedicated employee or something to that effect. Right now, everyone working on it also has other things they are accountable for professionally so they donā€™t have the time (or the pay even) to dedicate significant portions of their time. (To be clear that is not a slight in any way, just a reality). Even the work that I do for ZCG, Outreach, really should have more time dedicated to it. For example, most protocols have whole global teams of folks dedicated to marketing and Business Development. I work 1 to 1 and 1/2 days a week on Zcash when we really should have several people full-time if we want significant traction.

However, it is all for not if we donā€™t have a more cohesive ecosystem growth strategy that includes meaningful product enhancements and feature additions, and even with that - if we cannot move faster we are going to fall further behind in adoption.

7 Likes
304

Sponsorships like this are on ZCGā€™s radar and we will explore them fully down the road. The risk of pulling the trigger on something like this at the wrong time is that it could easily be overshadowed by performance issues and the depressed price. If we are able to do something like this in conjunction with larger positive news it will help create a snowball effect and create long-term adoption.

9 Likes
305

Itā€™s a tricky one. I believe a good engineering piece of software is NOT when thereā€™s nothing more to add, rather nothing left to remove.
So while I agree on ā€œmaintenanceā€ of your argument, protocol development should be minimal unless it is about scalability and or being future-proof.

2 Likes
306

Dev Fund 2024: Town Hall Meeting #3 on Twitter Spaces

@decentralistdan and I are hosting a third Twitter Spaces event on Thursday, September 7 at 12:00pm PDT / 3:00pm EDT / 19:00 UTC to discuss Dev Fund 2024. This town hall will be focused on governance. Here is the link to set a reminder for the event. We will plan on recording the event for those who are unable to attend live. Community members are welcome to join to listen in, ask questions, and contribute thoughts and ideas. Weā€™ve invited the following participants:

Speakers
Co-Host: @aquietinvestor
Co-Host & Moderator: @decentralistdan
ECC: @zooko
ZF: @Dodger
ZF: @amiller
Community member: @joshs
Community member: @januszgrze
Community member: @David_Heisenberg

Note: Since we missed an event in August, weā€™ll be hosting two events September. The second one will be with ecosystem engineers and is scheduled for Tuesday, September 19 at 12:00pm PDT / 3:00pm EDT / 19:00 UTC. More details about the event will be provided in early September.

10 Likes
307

Is there a reason why nobody is representing the anti block rewards cohort?

The #3 event speakers list appears to be 100% fully paid on salary/ grant through current block rewards?

Arenā€™t we an ecosystem hand waving embracing diversity of thought?

4 Likes
308

Hi @noamchom. Thanks for calling this out. I should have addressed this in my post earlier today. This event will be focused solely on governance and will essentially serve as a continuation / do over of the non-technical Town Hall panel in Barcelona. Youā€™re more than welcome to join during the Q&A session, and feel free to submit questions or comments in advance and Iā€™ll be sure to address them.

In October, Iā€™d like to host another town hall focused on the anti-block reward and critical of the current dev fund structure cohorts. There are a lot of really good points that have been brought up recently by you, @pkr, @Beth, @joris, @Jgx7, @gottabeJay and others that have a lot of merit and I want to ensure are heard outside the forum. Iā€™ll reach out later this month to the people I tagged to discuss scheduling an event. Or feel free to DM me if youā€™re interested.

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309

fwiw, as a volunteer board member I donā€™t personally get anything at all from dev fund

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310

Dev Fund 2024: Town Hall Meeting #3 on Twitter Spaces

Starting in 15min

https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1vAxRADqQNPJl

3 Likes
311

i wasnā€™t reading a lot in this thread, but iā€™ll drop my idea.
5% ZCG
5% Foundation
5% ECC
and 5% to the new organization in Switzerland

2 Likes
312

For me, there is no talk about extending the Dev Fund until there are major changes to governance. I urge all ZCAP members to add their voice to this conversation.

5 Likes
313

Dev Fund 2024: Town Hall Meeting #4 on Twitter Spaces

@decentralistdan and I are hosting another Twitter Spaces event on Tuesday, September 19 at 12:00pm PDT / 3:00pm EDT / 19:00 UTC to discuss Dev Fund 2024. This town hall will feature ecosystem engineers. Here is the link to set a reminder for the event. We will plan on recording the event for those who are unable to attend live. Community members are welcome to join to listen in, ask questions, and contribute thoughts and ideas. Weā€™ve invited the following participants:

Speakers
Co-Host: @aquietinvestor
Co-Host & Moderator: @decentralistdan
ECC: @nathan-at-least
ECC: @ebfull
ZF: @conradoplg
QEDIT: @jonmrjr
Community member: @earthrise

10 Likes
314

You are not correct. This commit was critical to fixing the bug in Zcash, and it is freshly written by me, Str4d, and Kris, not a backport: Ensure that CNode::{addrKnown, filterInventoryKnown} immediately take Ā· zcash/zcash@c5b8807 Ā· GitHub
In general there were quite a few differences between codebases in the fix that was needed.

2 Likes
315

(Speaking for myself.)

On the main topic of this thread, I donā€™t have much to say except this: bear in mind that the mining reward will be halved again in 2024, so any particular percentage will go half as far, all else being equal in terms of price.

316

The sandblasting and related wallet performance issues have not been due to NU5, if thatā€™s what youā€™re referring to. Itā€™s more the other way around: the sandblasting has stopped us enabling Orchard support in the mobile SDKs. But precisely because itā€™s not enabled except in the zcashd wallet yet, it hasnā€™t had much effect on user experience, negative or otherwise.

1 Like
317

How many workhours did it take (if you are allowed to disclose such info), when itā€™s worth pointing it out as an obstacle which required great effort to resolve?

318

Enough for me to be annoyed by the implication that it was a trivial port.