Dev Fund 2024: Community Poll & Discussion Megathread

Governance
363

In a round about way, yes.

Under Proof of Stake, I think that the ecosystem, security/ consensus considerations, and ZEC economics will be so vastly different than they are today with Proof of Work, that it wouldn’t be totally unreasonable to hypothesize about a much larger Block Reward.

Under Proof of Work today and for the foreseeable years ahead I don’t see any rational means to support expanding the Block Reward. Miners are already in a precarious revenue situation, and the network’s hashrate is already highly centralized… to the point that some major Zcash service providers Coinbase are creating steeper transaction confirmation thresholds.

Hashrate centralization around 1-3 private mining pool operators creates additional risk to Zcash that may cause it to be delisted from more exchanges. Thus making it less accessible, less permissionless, and less usable :frowning:

Taking away additional revenue (lets say 10-40%) from miners would create a mass exodus, and correlating cliff dive of Zcash network hashrate.

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364

my rough math is 3,641 zec coins are issued every day. that is 3.125 coins every 75 seconds. This is the cost per day to a) transact and b) hold ZEC. it’s $91,000 per day and we only collect maybe $100 per day in fees. the difference is largely the subsidy zec holders are paying so that transaction fees can be engineered to appear lower than they truly should be.

we need two things

  1. a recapture mechanism to offset the issuances. currently zcash holders subsidize all transactions.
    so transaction costs are massively understated. the solution is a dynamic gas/fee structure where the treasury receives zec on every transaction. something like

$1.00 min fee and $100 max or 2%.

so if 1 million zec transact inside the bands, 20,000 zec goes to the treasury. the fee gets triggered when sending and not receiving. more fees can be added for special features- like instant clearing.

  1. longer term the goal would be to split the fee further where a transaction can be drilled down to an application level. so for example if 3rd party wallet generated 1,000 in fees, they would get 400 and 600 in zec goes back into the treasury. this incentivizes third parties to fund development and integrate zcash. ultimately we want a privacy stable coin and that’s where the huge upside is. that offers the scale required for long term success as an L1 blockchain.

this type of structure is sustainable. but we need the fee structure in the protocol. and there is a massive opportunity to reduce the dev fund so they can focus on the blockchain and L2 assets. then let 3rd parties take over the edge use cases of which there are too many for the dev fund to manage or fund or approve etc etc, not to mention the failure rate and risk on the edge use cases are very high.

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366

There is no evidence, and it would be historically irrational, to expect Zcash to achieve Proof of Stake in less than 4 years.

This is my speculation based on all of the historical precedence from the Electric Coin Company’s record of protocol deliveries. (And considering that the ECC has been stuck in Emergency Mode for almost 1 year, and their staffing has been stripped down). One fact is certain, they can never be taken for their word :frowning: all products have delivered long later than originally, and revised, delivery estimates. Until the trend changes, guilty (of poor estimates) until proven innocent.

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367

It would be very beneficial for all, that detractors of @GGuy’s or other people’s proposals expose and propose their ideas.

@gguy did a very interesting thing on the twitter space:

  1. he did some rough numbers on what’s the current spending of Zcash main initiatives that have high acceptance and are very expected by the community. Someone call this the “napkin math” (I believe it was either @aquietinvestor or @BrunchTime)
  2. Then he explained how the halving would affect the funding of those initiatives, at current and other hypothetical prices.
  3. he explained what he thought the outcomes would be if funding was not met
  4. He made a proposal to attempt to fund those initiatives.

I encourage those who are actively criticizing his proposal, to make their own proposal and explain it on simple terms like this “napkin math” thing. So that we can discuss constructively.

It’s very easy to just come to a forum and trash someone’s idea, but if you want to be taken seriously, it’s better to propose.

What are the main things you believe Zcash should be developing? (Eg: state-of-the-art privacy, ZSAs, PoS, HW wallet support, privacy UX, etc…)
How much would that cost over time?

What’s your proposal for the Dev Fund 2024?
How will those things you’ve explained before be funded if your proposal is accepted?

Then we can discuss without attacking others.

I’m not an economist and I confess I’m really bad at trading, that’s why I hold ZEC and work as a developer. :sweat_smile:

I do recognize others having interesting ideas, like @Jgx7 for example. But also I’ve read @Jgx7 ideas across many posts and topics, so it’s hard for me to actually have a clear picture or panorama of them.

I believe that most people here have real concerns and are invested in Zcash’s future, and that’s why they express themselves with such high energy and passion. I’d like to turn that passion into concrete work so that we can get ourselves out of this infinite loop of discussions and then have some paths forward that we can debate and study.

I apologize if it seems too much to ask since I don’t have a proposal myself.

edit:

There’s also this new thread from ZF. The Future of Zcash Ecosystem Development Funding

Maybe that one is a better venue for presenting proposals?

7 Likes
368

@pacu somethin like this where coin issuance is replaced with customer transaction fees. ultimately coin issuance has to be eliminated or zec goes to 0.

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370

Polkadot is also providing a few factors more use cases than Zcash. Currently Zcash only provides opt-in privacy features to a tiny number of technically saavy users. Otherwise it is simply a Bitcoin copy-paste, without the store of value, without the brand recognition, and with 9-10% supply inflation rather than sub 2%

Polkadot is a multi-chain operable, programmable base layer with battle tested Proof of Stake validation. Comparing Polkadot to Zcash is much further than an apples to apples comparison.

My opinion is that Bitcoin Cash is the best L1 Bitcoin-altcoin to compare with Zcash. Both share 21 million supply cap, both are proof of work, both provide notionally different/ better features than Bitcoin Core, etc etc

372

Of course these are factual speculations… but I thought we were speaking about today!

374

100% agree here and make no mistake, I think the only way for Zcash to evolve to be more than only a Bitcoin clone is to eliminate its Transparent Coins and Transparent Transactions.

That is only for starters, the other major initiatives would be to eliminate the Halving Cycles (via the Zcash SAFE upgrade), and to evolve past the energy wasting, cost prohibitive Proof of Work consensus implementation (via Proof of Stake).

All of those hypothetical upgrades are years away from reality. Until they become reality, I don’t see any benefits to be debating about Zcash vs. Polkadot or Ethereum :man_shrugging:

376

they will in the future. nothing can exist long term without creating value and issuing coins without a plan to add real revenue generating customers will cause them to fail if they don’t. you are looking at today and not the future. they are buying market share. it’s what facebook did before they started selling ads. then ad revenue replaced stock sales. basic economics 101

377

we agree here. but the money is not being well spent on innovating. there is a lot of wasteful spending.

we need to add more privacy coins to the blockchain not issue more zec.

we need a viable economic ecosystem. and that is it even on the radar for most people. i think @nathan-at-least kinda starting to get it

379

14 posts were split to a new topic: “Zcash Mafia” conspiracy theory

380

etheruem has a burn. the burn is the economic value add and the economic model that drives innovation. they also have gas and an open decentralize development model. zcash is a closed model and has no economic engine.

382

i’m not inventing things. i’m proposing proven economic principles. they all will implement them or fail. etheruem is just the smartest of the group.

you can get away with issuance for a time. but eventually people lose confidence. that’s were we are now with crypto.

the ones that have real economics will become the next microsoft or google or apple. if that’s not what you want, we might as well pack up and go home.

money requires massive massive scale and hundreds of billions of dollars in depth. it’s hard to sell 1,000 zec without driving the price down.

384

those people were right! the models did change. etheruem makes sense now. bitcoin will
change more too and they will charge fees somehow someway…. those people in early days lacked faith! if i thought zec model would be static and not change. i would sell immediately. i’m fighting for creating a real coin and move it on a sensible direction.

386

how do you explain the foundation selling zec for usd ? no one here eats their own cooking. privacy is not cash. we can write numbers on a piece of paper and just because it’s private means nothing. you claim to be implementing satoshi vision; but you don’t have a real understanding of money. if you were really for private cash you would be agnostic to what people want to use as cash. zec is not cash. to be agnostic as to cash and add privacy would lead to you collaterozed USDz, or pigs or beads. or whatever people want to use. you are in love oath privacy and forgot about the cash part.

398

inflation is a tax. we need sound money. that means the people using zec need to pay for their own costs and not be subsidized. the ecosystem looks like it’s designed by a socialist. now i only say that because no one is advocating for an ecosystem that stands on its own two feet.

at the very least show us how people pay for the cost of their own transactions without being subsidized. the cost is $90,000 per day. where will this come from? hint: it should come from gas/transaction fees. relying on a zec tax will just drive the price to 0 unless people can see zcash ecosystem has economic value.

404

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1 Like
405

Hell no!
In a POW scenario only the one with the cheapest electricity will win. Miners in China and Russia. The assumption that Zcash has the majority of mining behind compared to Komodo, Zen,… will not be true anymore. Tell me I am dreaming.
I do not back this policy. It’s dangerous and reckless.

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407

no inflation.

the costs are the same no matter what is done.

those costs are 1. mining 2. core blockchain development 3. high risk edge use case development 4. wasteful spending and bloated overhead 5. hopefully a zec yield or buyback in future

there are only two ways to pay for the costs

A. inflation where it’s a hidden tax on the ecosystem. if you want this, there are many start up gold mining stocks in canada you can look at. i’ll send you a list (joke). in this scenario we all end up being diluted to zero.

B. transaction fees and gas. this is where users pay for the value created by the protocol. this is the only way forward for a viable, vibrant, open and fully decentralized ecosystem.

The time is now to get the structure right. to set the vision and mission. the more zcash relies on issuance, the more risky it is. the whole point of having a 21m cap is because we can’t trust governments to stop printing money, and now this community is considering giving into temptation for the exact same reasons governments do it. to cater to their constituents. don’t do it. zec will implode if its not moved to a system where transaction fees / gas is greater than the cost. there are not that many fools left (most have lost all their money). The transition can be done over time. but show the market that you are driven by economics and not a scam coin.

Create a market based system that can thrive on its own.

409

create a new L1 token and do what you say. make zec an L2 token. then we could even cap zec at 15m coins which would be hugely positive. and move funding to the new L1 combination of issuance and fee/gas and burn. important to get the economic model right.

so the new L1 token becomes more like etheruem. issue existing zec holders a proportional share in the new L1

the new L1 layer becomes a platform for a suite of privacy based currency options. this is a back up the truck and buy zec plan. UDAs, stable coins and zec all work on top of the layer 1 and generate fees/gas. it’s a plan to scale privacy.

this is essentially what i proposed in a more detailed write up on another thread