That’s an interesting point and I get the argument for the dev fund having that effect, but miners also need to sell to pay their electricity bills, and it seems like the alternative would be to cut off development funding. In the no dev fund scenario, who maintains the code and works to make Zcash more usable?
3 Likes
I think we should design the future dev fund, assuming there is one, to solve the problems I wrote about in Decentralization and Alignment.
I personally would like to see some funds going to a new entity, not based in the US, with new leadership that has a track record of launching usable products for developers and users despite complex technical challenges. I’d look at getting great people from outside of the cryptocurrency world to join, who aren’t caught up in the industry’s groupthink.
I also think it’s incredibly important to keep funding existing Zcash engineers—the knowledge and experience they bring is irreplaceable and it would be dangerous to cut funding (both from a security point of view and from a point of view of simply being able to continue making progress).
11 Likes
I think you are looking for the steel man argument for why the Dev Fund is actively harmful to Zcash compared to 100% of block rewards going to miners.
Frankly speaking, I think most of the recent arguments against the Dev Fund arise from ZEC’s comparatively poor adoption (and hence poor price performance). Put another way, if ZEC were a top 5 coin (making everyone who bought ZEC much richer), I don’t think people would be complaining about the Dev Fund (probably the opposite - praising it to high heaven).
There are other philosophical arguments about whether the Dev Fund is “good” or not, but I don’t think those are really worth getting into. From what I’ve seen, I think most Zcashers are bullish on being able to support people to fulfill our shared mission. And there are other options to participate in if one objects to the Dev Fund.
What I think is more important, and a lot harder, than discussions about whether the Dev Fund is good and how to allocate it is: the actual strategies for getting more people to use Zcash. (We can argue til the crows come home if “Zcash adoption” is the precise mission of the overall community, but I do think it is a, if not the, principal component of our mission).
What I would like to hear most from Dev Fund recipients is:
(1) critical analysis of why they think Zcash is not a top coin by market cap (as a reflection of awareness, usability, adoption, etc.)
(2) how their organization’s strategy and execution have or have not contributed to Zcash’s performance (what do you think has worked well and not so well)
(3) what do they think needs to change in order for Zcash to become a top-adopted coin
(4) how their current and future strategies will make (3) a reality
I think it is only possible to rationally allocate resources to Dev Fund recipients based off a combination of track record, vision for the future, and proposed strategy to get there.
P.S. As a side note, I think it is fair to ask that the Dev Fund recipients provide their “pitch”, as opposed to putting the burden on the community to do that work. Of course, there should be a reciprocity where informed Zcash citizens voice their concerns and incumbents/candidates for Dev Fund positions listen and incorporate those concerns into their pitches and strategy. However, being able to demonstrate first principles thinking about how to facilitate Zcash adoption is an important characteristic for those we elect to leadership positions.
12 Likes
I agree with the points you make in that post, as well as the ones you’ve made elsewhere. The problems you point out have mostly to do with coordination, which is a core problem that a decentralized project like Zcash has to figure out. Zcash has a lot of talent, technical prowess, patriotism, idealism, etc. but it needs to be formed into something that is simultaneously cohesive, yet decentralized. Simultaneously idealistic, yet realistic. Not easy, and also requires people to step up and dedicate their whole working lives to Zcash, not just be able to chime in part-time.
4 Likes
one idea popped up.
wat if all dev fund wud work in a way grants work atm?
ECC, ZF and each products teams workin on their part create proposal and it gets voted on and so on.
and get funding after milestones
How ZF did with Zecwallet ?
Exactly, and also why devfund today at $36 looks like a perfusion system and at what point do devfunds recipient will question themselves and acknowledge failure ? $25 ? $10 ? $0 ?
4 Likes
By 2024, we have given dev fund for eight years,
-
It is true that cutting-edge technology requires human and financial support. When BTC was released in 2009, it was also a cutting-edge technology. Satoshi Nakamoto did not set up a Dev Fund for this, and the maintenance in the next few years did not rely on selling Bitcoin for money (Bitcoin very cheap in the first few years).
-
You can use a table to compare what upgrades and changes ZEC has made in the past eight years. How much zcash did the three major organizations get?
Some goals that should have been completed in the short term of the release (in 2020) were delayed to eight years. -
Zcasher is often compared with Bitcoin, saying that it is better, and it is an enhanced security version of Bitcoin.
Getting more people to accept and admire is not about boasting, but about Bitcoin’s fair open source and dedication. -
Are you worried that zcash will stagnate without a team maintenance? That’s even more wrong. You can see the solution to the wallet problem recently. Hanh, an external developer, provided a very good Ywallet, and the cost is fixed to get a complete and easy-to-use product. In addition, why does Zingo’s wallet that is worse than Ywalle get more funds allocated? Wallets developed later such as Zingo should not give a little money unless they have more functions and performance than Ywallet!
-
When children grow up, they should also do something on their own. Let Zcash play freely in the market instead of having a nanny to follow anytime and anywhere. This will make other people unable to approach and unwilling to communicate and get to know each other. In the end, ZEC can only play alone at home.
If it is an excellent project, there will naturally be excellent developers to grow together. -
After the Dev Fund is stopped, ZCG will be left for fund management and distribution. If it is done well, some people will donate funds to help Zcash grow, so it is not a problem to worry about not having excellent developers and funds.
10 Likes
Though everything you say is quite sensible, you are overlooking one vital thing here: the nature of Zcash insiders and what Zcash means to them.
Anyone who thinks there’s even a slight possibility that the dev fund won’t be extended hasn’t been paying attention to the political economy behind Zcash.
In other words, these are the chances of Zcash insiders ever allowing ZEC holders to stop paying tribute to them:
Better if you all come to terms with this reality.
4 Likes
Yes, because any of the voters who are getting paid by the Dev Funds are obviously voting Yes to keep and increase their paychecks. Happy to see that Nate realizes the conflict of interest and not voting.
My votes are to eliminate the block devtax at the next halving. In between now and then almost 2 million more ZEC goes to circulation so thats another 400,000 of devtax. Because we are going to Proof of Stake the devtax orgs can keep their big ZEC bags and turn into validators to generate the money needed to fund ongoing work. Going into Proof of Stake and keeping the devtax is going to end up giving way too much future ZEC to the big 3 devtax orgs
Its crazy to even let the devtax people vote in this shadow poll because we have no idea about how many employees of the devtax are making up the current majority of votes who say to keep it.
This is like giving a company a shadow poll and wondering why all the employees voted to give themself a 20% pay raise
For dodger’s questions, I gave ZF 3s because its done a lot of good work but its also been unsuccessful to accrue value to ZEC or generate sustained organic growth of Zcash network. We’re only running 170 full nodes right now. Bad results 
but 3-5 is a passing grade
Good points from Artkor Chammy and GGuy gotope in the comments. I highlight the below
8 years of DevTax is plenty and by the end of this halving all three orgs will have plenty of reserve funds ready for Proof of Stake which can give them yield on their ZEC for decades of the future. Going to Proof of Stake is a logically sophisticated way to perpetuate the DevTax under a different technical structure.
Gotope comment about the child kept in the home is striking and it makes me think of a metaphor of Zcash as a caged bird under the control of the American devtax companies. We are ready to let the bird go free after 8 years.
And we understand that the devtax employees are all loved and we want them to stay with Zcash if that is where they have passion, but also know that Zcash to become a global force for good must grow beyond a few American companies and the small leadership from Bootstrap, Electric Coin, and the Foundation.
6 Likes
I voted. Former ECC employee and current ZF minor grants recipient.
5 Likes
I agree with you.
Network adoption is the key issue. Zcashers would all find it self evident that the devfund provides value to the ecosystem if adoption was better and marketcap and ZEC price reflected as much.
However, i believe that Zcash remains undervalued by the wider market simply due to its nature as a privacy technology which is only just starting to register in the collective public consciousness. Like with the advent of the internet it was only when mass adoption reached critical mass and online commerce became viable and run of the mill that the secure https layer became highly valued by the entire internet ecosystem.
Zcash has remained the most scientifically advanced privacy solution throughout its existence, and mass adoption of bitcoin and crypto is only likely to fully come to pass during the next cycle maybe 2025 onwards. In my opinion this mass adoption of crypto in general will result in all users flocking towards the best privacy preserving technologies. I.e. zcash.
At that point market cap and token price will pump in line with community sentiment and appreciation of the strides in this technology amd ecosystem that the devfund has been making possible.
People will understand the importantce of the devfund once the world understands the need for privacy on blockchains.
Both are right around the corner
7 Likes
Hey everyone,
So, I’ve thought about whether I should weigh into this discussion, but I wanted to provide some thoughts based on my personal experiences within the Zcash community.
Disclosures: I am a previous employee of ECC, I created and advise ZecHub (which is funded by ZCG) and I received a minor grant from ZF.
These are my opinions and do not reflect any organization that currently receives funding from the Zcash Development Fund.
Alright, so my initial thoughts
I think to say that the Zcash Development Fund has provided no value to the Zcash community is short sighted. Zcash, while not represented by adoption and token price, is one of the most widely respected cryptocurrency and development communities in the industry.
Most privacy technologies were built on the things that Zcash created, and many projects are continuing to add Zcash tech to improve their own tech in some form or fashion.
So, the Zcash Development Fund has provided value. Unfortunately, that value is not reflected in the token price and has not benefitted Zcash holders in terms of price appreciation.
Build for adoption
An area I really struggle with. I see a lot of comments saying that we should build for adoption, even though we don’t define what that is.
And to be honest, I think it’s extremely difficult to define that strategically within a decentralized (and further decentralizing community).
When I think about “crypto adoption”, I think about crypto solving for a specific use case for a group of people (some NFTs tbh), or people ideologically using something because they think it’s better than fiat. Both are great in my mind.
And some people may agree with me here, but it’s also possible that others don’t and they have different ideas for adoption. I.e. Zcash being the anti-inflationary, censorship-resistant store of value for cosmos! Cool, that’s something worth exploring and building towards.
But, a problem with the current funding model is that it’s centralized between three orgs (two orgs, legally speaking), and those orgs have certain objectives and cannot build for every other possible outcome.
These orgs have slices of a pie. And, if the next dev fund is implemented, then the might pie get divided up more and get smaller if the price of ZEC decreases (or doesn’t increase really)… Well, we can run into some problems!
So, instead of asking what adoption looks like, and how the dev fund can get us there… why don’t we ask what building looks like, and who is most capable of doing that.
More apps = more possible paths towards adoption.
Zcashers should be compensated and work full-time
In full transparency, I voted “yes” to continue the dev fund, and would agree that all three current recipients should each receive some percentage of the next dev fund.
Saying that, I really struggle with the current incentive model in Zcash. Let me explain.
Everyone (excluding those who live in OFAC-sanctioned countries) can apply for a ZCG or ZF grant, or apply to work at the ECC or ZF. So basically anyone, in unsanctioned jurisdictions, has an opportunity to receive a percentage of the Zcash dev fund in exchange for compensation.
People know that. When someone starts contributing to Zcash, they add value to the community, and they see others adding value. And maybe others are getting a stipend or salary to do so, and the new person feels like they’re providing equal value, so they apply for a grant / job.
If they get the position, that’s awesome, but we also have to acknowledge that the money takes away from the already divided up pie. Meaning that new contributors, coming in afterwards, won’t have the same financial opportunities / incentives to contribute to the Zcash community.
If the person doesn’t get the position? Then they might feel slighted, unappreciated, etc., and leave the community. You can say “well that person doesn’t care enough about Zcash”, but I think that’s a really unfair and shortsighted point, especially when contribution incentive models strongly correlate with the dev fund.
This is something I’m starting to see in ZecHub, and transparently, strategically it’s a good move short term. I.e. “ZecHub becomes the contributor onboarding hub for zcash”. But, I also fear that paying for every contribution, and encouraging contributor progression, can lead to misaligned incentives with newer community members and isn’t sustainable long term.
We need to talk about our incentive models and sustainably growing our contributor community more.
Additionally, I find the idea that classifies Zcash contributors between full-time, part-time, or passively active token holders, as off-putting.
We can’t say “people wouldn’t be mad at the dev fund if ZEC price was high”. Because it’s not. So people are mad and want changes to the current set up. They invested into the token that pays out dev fund salaries + grants, and we can’t justify the next dev fund by saying token price appreciation will come if we (as dev fund recipients) continue to receive salaries and grants.
Additionally, working for “sweat equity” is common in the start up world, and I don’t see why we wouldn’t want token holders/buyers to be more incentivized to contribute to the ecosystem.
Why can’t we create an incentive model that shows that if someone contributes, then that could directly help the value of their ZEC holdings? This gives the ZEC economy, and contributor community, more purchasing power and opportunity to do more good.
Nice thoughts, but what do we do next
Honestly, I don’t know. I worked full-time in the dev fund, and I think we did good work. I think ZF and ZCG do good work. Building a widely adopted cryptocurrency is really *@&!^@% hard. Especially in volatile market conditions.
I agree with this point from @earthrise. We have to fund the engineering talent we have at our disposal. I also don’t think we can say that marketing and ecosystem efforts were for naught, this past year especially.
What I do believe, however, is that this discussion should also be used as an opportunity to discuss funding and incentive models outside of the dev fund. I’ve been doing some FOSS work lately, and I can assure you there are plenty of people who will contribute for free, and in their spare time, if they are ethos-aligned with a project. Especially if earning social capital is a part of the incentive model for contributors.
That doesn’t mean create an environment where people only work for free, but it also means we shouldn’t create environment where everyone expects to be paid from the dev fund.
We have to find that balance somehow. And with more recipients of the pie on the way, the conversations should start soon.
20 Likes
Those are famous last words spoken by hundreds of other altcoin project diehards. There is a deeply under appreciated risk that seems common with us Zcashers its a belief that we have an inevitable time in the sun. Sorry to burst bubbles but people lets be rationale here, time is not on our side today and its not on our side in the future even if there is a big privacy themed crypto cycle bubble. Theres now dozens of privacy L1s L2s and daisy chain apps, right now Zcash is deep under the fog with no established brand dominance. It aches my mind to see the constant repetition of the same old hope and dream that Zcash has something owed to it, some kinds of inevitable surge to relevance. That is not going to happen as a force of nature. It will happen if the ZEC reclaims value, if ZEC rewards old and new investors, and if the Zcash infrastructure is eventually repaired and supports wallets, full nodes, and other features that have been broken since the spamming attack. We really need to be looking at our collective future through skeptical and traumatized lenses, not through naive dreamer lenses. If the past 5 years hasn’t taught enough of us the lesson, what could possibly another 5 years teach? Nothing comes free nor easy. And thats why again I vote to remove the dev tax in November 2024
5 Likes
Hi all! I would like to share these topics below and if they gain traction by likes, I will share the motivations:
-
After Zcash halving the dev fund goes to 10% divided by 5 entities.
-
ECC, ZF, ZCG + now adding two new “entities” = 5.
Add - 1. Shielded labs (non-US based) - 0,25% of total block rewards.
Add - 2. Zechub/Zcash Global as a new NO KYC (an offshore org called Zcash global that rewards zechub operational grants), this is for all the global ambassadors, with 0,25% of total block rewards - the main focus on Web3 and DAO concept.
- Need to update this flow to better understand.
11 Likes
This is a valuable point of view setting priorities. Thank you, Ian, for writing this.
This topic is very exciting me that there are so many people in ZEC, but so few voices when we need them all the time, and not only when it comes to how we should proceed with dev funds.
If at least 10% of ZEC holders would behave actively and daily spread the Zcash mission around the world, we would not need any ambassadors (for example) and the price would be completely different now. This is what I realized 5 years ago, long before I was suggest the post of ambassador.
4 Likes
Ambassadors, zechub, media videos, … None of that make a difference when the product has fundamental issues of performance, usability or scale.
6 Likes
Do you mean a spam attack?
It is thanks to the developers’ fund that today the zcash network has an unprecedented software solution at the protocol level, which, in the presence of the lowest commission for this type of asset’s transactions, effectively combats spam attacks. The network is coming out of emergency mode and we are now confident that the network will be able to withstand a huge number of transactions without congestion, which the Bitcoin blockchain has and without thieves’ fees, which the Ethereum blockchain has. Zcash is improving and is already at an unattainable level, thanks to development funds. All that’s left is to make it popular.
5 Likes
I can understand your frustration as a long term Zodler, but if you are feeling let down by the lack of progress the project has made during the past 5 years when there was a devfund in place, how on earth do you imagine things wpuld improve without the devfund? The zcash ecosystem wont be improved on its own- just look at how slow Bitcoin is to evolve with no devfund. Also, surely the same inflationary pressures will present whether the devfund is used to fund development of the ecosystem, or if it is ended and miners receive the full 100% bounty from the block reward. Either way the miners or the block reward entities are obligated to sell zec tokens to finance their operations. In fact i would venture that the devfund portion of the block reward is probably less negative to the ZEC price as the block reward entities are not obligated to sell the ZEC they receive from each block immediately in order to pay electricity costs. So in fact abandoning the block reward could feesibly cause further price declines, rather than increasing the price of the ZEC token, which seems to be your main goal.
Finally, I would gently caution you to stay strong and retain the courage of the initial conviction that led you to acquire your ZEC holdings in the first place:
If early Bitcoiners had lost heart after 6 years, when they saw the arrival of competitor coins like Lite Coin, ETH and Zcash taking market share from Bitcoin, then they would have sold just before the 2017 bull rewarded patient believers in the utility case of the token.
It is the same with Zcash. 6 years in and yes, market share has been lost, but a rising tide lifts all boats and it is better to take a smaller slice of a bigger pie than 100% of a tiny insignificant one.
The whole financial system is up for grabs. Privacy preserving technology is about to become the most important part of this transition away from the old system.
Zcash is well positioned for the coming wave. Without the devfund it would not be where it is today. I consider the devfund a massive plus for the ecosystem.
8 Likes
I don’t share your level of confidence and hyperbole. When it takes 1 year to change a fee formula, I’m afraid it shows some deeper problems.
The network has not come out of emergency mode yet. I don’t see what the unattainable level is.
There should be a devfund but there should be a way to fight against the waste of funds.
1 Like