I don’t recall this being said. ZF uses ZenHub and is switching to GitHub projects. I’m not sure what ECC uses but it’s something similar. They also use these DAGs to keep track of dependencies between issues. (ZF also has them but it’s not as heavily used)
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This is a very ignorant statement. No one is dragging their feet, you just need to monitor commit & PR activity to see that people are working hard. (If there is a problem, is the consistent underestimation of how long things will take, rather than people not working enough.)
And a job is a job. People have the right to move to other project if they want to. No one is “threatening to stop doing maintenance”, it’s just a fact that the space is competitive and people need to pay their bills. Developers are not identured servants who have the obligation to work forever for free on the project.
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Dev Fund 2024: Town Hall #5 on Twitter Spaces
@decentralistdan and I are hosting another Twitter Spaces event on Tuesday, October 10th at 12:00pm PDT / 3:00pm EDT / 19:00 UTC to discuss Dev Fund 2024. This town hall will feature a number of community members. We will discuss criticisms of the current dev fund structure and ways to improve it. Here is the link to set a reminder for the event.
We’ve invited the following participants: @Beth @GGuy @gottabeJay @noamchom @pacu and @pkr. As always, we will record 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.
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For transparency here is my proposal summary for the dev fund.
Dev Fund allocation
Starting at the second Zcash halving in 2024, until the third halving in 2028, 60% of the block subsidy of each block SHALL be allocated to a “Dev Fund” that consists of the following slices. The funds allocated to each recipient will decrease according to a declining schedule, using the function f(x)=(0.7**(1/420769))**x.
- 40% for Miner’s reward;
- 17% for the Bootstrap Project (denoted BP slice);
- 12% for the Zcash Foundation, for general use (denoted ZF slice);
- 5% for QEDIT;
- 5% for Shielded Labs;
- 20% for additional “Major Grants” for large-scale long-term projects (denoted MG slice);
- 1% for Zenate.
The slices are described in more detail below. The fund flow will be implemented at the consensus-rule layer, by sending the corresponding ZEC to the designated address(es) for each block. This Dev Fund will end at the second halving (unless extended/modified by a future ZIP).
Declining Schedule
The funds allocated to each recipient will follow a declining schedule, calculated using the function f(x)=(0.7**(1/420769))**x where x is the number of blocks since the last dev fund allocation was change. This in effect reduced the funding of each recipient by 30% every year. This schedule ensures a gradual decrease in funding, allowing recipients to adapt and plan for changes in future funding. This approach promotes financial sustainability and encourages recipients to seek additional funding sources to support their initiatives.
Moreover, this declining schedule promotes agility and accountability. It allows the development fund recipients to apply for a reevaluation of their funding levels periodically (e.g., annually) through a process overseen by the Zenate. This process enables the Zenate to adjust funding amounts each year dynamically, allocate more funding to high-performing entities, and introduce new recipients. This approach encourages a dynamic and responsive allocation of funds, fostering efficient and effective resource utilization within the Zcash ecosystem.
I mean, since we’re wilding out, why not go all in and get over with it already?
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Zcash Dev Fund: Town Hall #5 TwitterSpace Recording
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Hi @jelly5649, I think it’s important to first define Zcash’s value proposition that differentiates it from other cryptocurrencies. I believe the value proposition for coins is as follows:
Bitcoin - Predictable and safe
Ethereum - On-chain Compute
DogeCoin - Fun, Memes, and Community
Monero - Private Crypto focused on Community Driven Consensus and Decentralization
Zcash - State of the Art Private Cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, DogeCoin, and Monero have an advantage, they are relatively cheap! Becoming and staying “state of the art” isn’t cheap. That’s what Ethereum and Zcash are, state of the art. It’s incredibly expensive to retain that advantage. That’s why I advocate for an increase in the dev fund, because I believe the core value proposition of Zcash requires it. If Zcash fails to retain its status as the state of the art privacy coin why would anyone continue to care about Zcash?
Are you advocating Zcash’s core value proposition is not providing state of the art privacy, or are you advocating we try to change Zcash’s core value proposition?
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we need people who understand economics and money. To claim we are creating a currency and then make these arguments is frightening. the competitors creating currencies are going to pass zcash soon if development is not decentralized. zcash privacy tech may be state of the art, but it’s not prime time and it’s not useable for most people. so the privacy tech is largely the equivalent of sitting in the attic. or as some have said, we are just a beta test or sandbox for others to implement privacy. hopefully we get the wallet to work, ledger and SDKs and focus on the blockchain and blockchain assets.
The development fund is a tax. it’s not market based, it does not align development with customers needs. and it does not reward or offer the vast majority of developers a mechanism to build an ecosystem or community. we need to provide a mechanism to build a community of entrepreneurs.
to attract great people we need to offer them a way to create great applications without permission or dependence on anything other than making great applications for customers. and, to fund those ideas themselves, and then to be able to make a lot of money from transaction fees. the markets will force transaction fees to be fair and reasonable.
the dev fund is running out of money because they are not focused on creating useful privacy based blockchain and privacy assets. spending money on advertising, government relations, and so many other things is a waste when wallets dont work, transaction speeds are slow, and we don’t have programmability, zsa. stsblecoins.
you are acting like a government printing fiat. when the currency is weak, your solution is print more money. and then spend the money in a way that causes the currency to weaken more. the correct way is to strengthen the currency not do things that make it worse.
what everyone is missing is that privacy is one piece of the puzzle. it’s not the solution in and of itself. and to focus on one piece at the expense of the others pieces is a major problem. everyone claims privacy is so important; but they don’t charge anyone for it! 100% of the transaction fees are subsidized.
zcash needs to be the blockchain of private money and fully decentralize development. keep the dev fund; but transition to fees vs subsidies. it can be a combination of both. but in the long run, it needs to be fee based and keep the 21 cap.
This is what we are up against. And more is coming…
In a sweeping new upgrade, Solana is setting its sights on becoming a premier privacy-centric blockchain. Their latest v1.16 release has integrated “Confidential Transfers,” which directly competes with established privacy coins like Monero, Dash, and ZCash. According to a tweet by Collin Brown, the new feature offers heightened transaction privacy while also reducing the hardware demands on validators.
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I would google “what are fallacies of presumption” if I were you.
Then, I suggest you assess whether the arguments and logic supporting your proposal to increase the dev fund to 60% of Zcash issuance are rooted in any flagrant presumption fallacies. Whether you’re capable of figuring out where those flaws exist in your arguments or not, I recommend that, either way, you ask yourself, “how well do I truly understand technology markets in general, and marketing in particular?”
Finally after you have reach the conclusion you should definitely be reaching after having answered that last question, you can finish it all off by asking yourself “after all the things I just realised, am I really in a position to be pushing such grandiose recommendations to the Zcash community, or should I just very much delete my proposal because what’s the point of pushing such unfounded nonsense?”
You don’t even need to read your whole proposal to figure out all that I mentioned, you just have to read what you wrote here and it should hit you:
Though it is not unlikely that at least a couple of dev fund recipients heavily salivated when they saw your post, it is just irresponsible to introduce such a blatantly flawed proposal based on such blatantly flawed logic and understanding of the market.
There’s no justification for anchoring such an absurd figure in people’s minds, as when someone else comes around (not unlikely, another fund recipient) and proposes another irresponsible “hail mary” figure (e.g., 50% or 40% of Zcash issuance for the dev fund), as they certainly will, it will appear as a great and reasonable deal in the eyes of the community in comparison to your 60%, even if it would still be catastrophic for Zcash all the same.
Most people here know that Zcash is already moribund, let’s not allow for it to be abused to death.
If we halve the mining reward from 80% to 40% that should still keep us above 50% of the Equihash total network hashrate. I believe ZEN undergoes halving in October 2024 so the Zcash halving shouldn’t cause issues. So to reiterate, 60% dev fund and 40% mining reward.
. I address this in my proposal for the dev fund by including a declining schedule where the amount of funding for the dev fund is reduced every block and the excess ZEC is funneled to the ZSF which can be used at a future date. This reduces the risk of entities being overfunded and increases the communities ability to enforce accountability, transparency, and collaboration.
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Agree or disagree with GGuy, I would certainly identify that his proposal has explicitly shifted the Overton Window wrt Block Reward discussions.
The obvious risk of upgrading to a large % like >50 is that it is a severe attack against miner revenues, it would likely cause further, and significant, centralization of Zcash network hashrate. It would effectively make individual PoW mining prohibited (only a fool would mine against insurmountable ROI odds)
The flipside of the topic is that 50% Block Reward taxation could be feasible under Proof Of Stake - However we are again in a Catch-22. Proof of stake is 4-6 years away from reality, yet the Block Reward modification proposals intend to go live in about 12 months from now… I don’t think we should gamble with the risks of a post-halving, 50% Block Reward, and still PoW consensus/ security/ issuance regime.
If we could wave a magic wand, and make Proof of Stake a reality for Zcash tomorrow, then I would hypothesize that proposals for huge % Block Rewards would become more able to be rationalized.
It is crazy to the risk of death to pilot another bombing mission , it is sane to request not to pilot another bombing mission. all sane soldiers are required to pilot the next available mission.
I very much doubt that any proposal above 20% can be supported by the majority of ZCAP and we should hardly go this way, because in 2028 we will not be able to raise the percentage of contributions to the fund to 120%. I always liked the idea that early bitcoin investors supported the project due to the fact that their investments increased in price. There really is something fair and natural about this. I even dreamed that I would be able help to Zcash in this way after some time. But I continue to do this, constantly buying the coin. But we see that many people are running out of strength. I do not know how we can organize this if we have a trend towards collective responsibility or irresponsibility, but we should look for investors in the market. And it will be difficult to do, after headlines about increasing Dev Fund.
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And what is unfair here? The bitcoin model has worked and is working like this. People donate money to the bitcoin core for development. In the end, this motivates the price increase. And now we have nothing to spend at all. Do you know why the leaders of key teams do not participate in this conversation? Because they understand that if they participate in it and suddenly it seems that they support it (I mean raising the percentage to 60), then the opposite effect may occur. ZCAP will protest and vote for 0%. Because there’s nothing left to lose. So don’t be too zealous in this matter. My kind advice.
Yes, really don’t worry too much. There is always a backup plan. Everything will be as it should be.
I see the anchor trick is already working!, now 20% seems like a super palatable option to people as compared to 60%, and all it took was one silly post to achieve that.
Well played Zcash dev fund recipients!, well played!
Keep in mind that ZCAP membership is mainly composed by Zcash Founders, their friends, as well as past, present and aspiring dev-fund recipients. It is an extremely well oiled mechanism, really. One of the main reasons the Zcash Mafia never ever loses.
I’m also very suspicious by life. But, it’s totally an initiative @GGuy
I have no reason to deceive you, I honestly tried to look into it and all suspicions have been eliminated. Everyone is free to make any suggestions they want. @GGuy believes in this proposal and he has been consulting and gauging public opinion for months. It really is an open discussion, rest assured of that.
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So you’re saying this guy’s proposal would make sense in a world where Zcash was a completely different blockchain, with completely different economics, and with completely different technical features?!
That is a very savage way to say it is an incredibly irrelevant and meritless proposal given the actual reality of things, my friend.
You a proper savage 
I hope he will eventually realise what incredible nonsense his proposal is, in the same way it seems he did come around realising what incredible nonsense his previous “let’s connect Zcash Media directly to the dev fund and give them 2% issuance because of, well I don’t know, just because, I mean, I like watching videos on youtube” proposal was.
I’m assuming he came around to that realisation as he did not lobby for Zcash Media to get 2% of issuance this time around, so there’s some hope after all, I guess.
It does seem like there is a pattern with GGuy though, one where he’s just extremely generous when it comes to other people’s money.