I see a bifurcated world where only the government approves which ETH txs go through, and which lightning tx’s are allowed. Forget about full nodes, those are illegal.
they are a player. they are getting the scale needed to survive. we will have privacey. it might not be 100% perfect as you define it. but i’m confident we will get it. i just don’t think zec will be the one creating it because of the extremist perspective. we will never get the scale of we don’t start now.
modularize zec if needed to work per the rules. plus its probably the wallets that get regulated, not the coins. zec has to work inside the jurisdictions it wants to operate. there is no way around it.
another reason for stable coin. we need to keep transactions on the zcash network. make it easy to transfer between zec and a stablecoin. zec is for holding and transfer into a stablecoin for spending. it’s keeps it all in the ecosystem
There is always a way. 
I will never stop running my full node. This is exactly why I’m bullish on education. The more folks who understand the how, the less they can do to stop it.
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people dont care about the how. I hate to say it; but they just want it to work. Zcash doesn’t work for its intended purpose currently. Do I really care how my car engine works? I just want it to go fast. Do I really care about how my TV works or my phone? Do I really care how Visa works? I just pull out my card and it processes the transaction instantly. if someone steals my card, they pretty easily pay me back. I dont lose the money from theft. When im in another country, they give very good exchange rates. They have build massive trust. Zcash needs to build trust with its customers. Thats going to be very hard to do when you tell someone its cash and they lose money very quickly. So you need to get beyond this whole privacy is everything narrative. Money is about so much more than privacy. We might have 2 out of the top most important 10 things going for us. We need to work on and perfect the other 8 before we start spending so much on marketing and education. There is a very good Steve Jobs interview on marketing. Marketing quality is a waste. Customers determine quality based on experience. Its worth looking up if its searchable.
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We need to strive to be better than the status quo. I do, and I hope others as well. We can and will do better.
I dont use Apple products, clearly his marketing didnt work on me 
I’d like you to try your idea, lead by example, and start a community crowdfunding campaign to develop a coin holder voting mechanism to demonstrate consensus for ending the DEV fund. Proof will be in the pudding.
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my solution doesn’t end the dev fund it changes how its funded and it increases funding under the existing agreement
- gas / fees to supplement block rewards, its additive to block rewards. so it provides more money to the dev fund, not less without changing the existing issuance schedule
- crowdsourcing platform. this adds to funding. it doesn’t subtracts and it decentrlzes development. let’s
the organization focus on large projects while small projects get community funded.
so don’t put words in my mouth about ending the dev fund. my solution increases funding to the dev fund and transitions it for long term viability.
you are very in order
Hey everyone - I know I’ve advocated for a renewal of the dev fund in the past, but the more I’ve spoken with people in the community I’ve started to change my mind.
I’m not totally convinced that renewing a structure, that hasn’t produced results that many community members are content with, is the right move. I’d be curious with what a donation based system and/or grants fund only dev fund program would look like. I’d also be interested in exploring if/how venture capital investments would work for companies who are building in the ecosystem (those who are not non-profits ofc). But, any new structure has to be agreed upon by ZF and ECC. That seems to take a bit of power away from the community in my mind.
Determining Zcash’s success is hard to do. On one hand, it’s given so much to the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem. On the other hand, coin holders have had no real return on investment and haven’t been able to take their profits and reinvest it into the ecosystem. If that world existed, we wouldn’t need a dev fund.
I’m not as tapped in as I’d like to be, but through some discussions, there seems to be a lot of disappointment with the lack of engagement around the next dev fund.
I’ll be at devconnect this week. If you’re in town, and want to chat about Zcash funding and development, please let me know.
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I agree with you on this sentiment that renewing what we have now is not positive.
On the other hand, I’m profoundly convinced that sustainable and predictable funding streams are much needed. I personally don’t believe that donations solely will provide that.
Crypto software dev market is a VERY competitive market even in times of lay-offs and budget cuts.
To attract more devs, we must be able to present a thriving ecosystem that has perspective of a good future. No one wants to jump into a project and not know if they are going to have a job in three months. Zcash has GREAT DEVS. But all of our devs are people that are profoundly convinced of Zcash value and mission. Zcash needs to go beyond that and expand its horizons.
How can we come up with a funding mechanism that provides both sustainability, predictability while enforces accountability of recipients and does not look neither like a blank check to zOrgs or a micromanagement hell that nobody would like to go into?
I feel that dev fund that most people seems to want resides on answering this question.
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Does a Zenate and the declining rate of ZEC to recipients answer some of those questions or is there something missing you’d like to see addressed?
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This is a funding mechanism that has a track record of working. Builders, Investors, and Merchants are all attracted and retained by a growing coin value. It is the least coercive, and the most business effective. As Ray Dalio might say, it is the virtuous cycle for a project.
Until Zcash presents that sort of picture on the asset chart, we will always be missing a necessary foundation block or two. In the world of crypto, coin price and the downstream affects by it are a critical part of the equation.
If any of us had a magic wand to wave, that would revalue ZEC back to $100.00 - we wouldn’t all continue to be subjected by these same tiresome hypothetical what-if discussions.
We’re in a problematic spot in the crypto landscape where unfortunately we can’t think our way out of it; rather we’ve got to start praying for the invisible hand of the market to lift us up rather than press us down.
To the other aside; the block reward is a driving meme behind what Zcash was, what it is now, and if we decide to keep things the same, it will cement the project in place for the next +5 years. As I’ve said many times before, I think we have to change the meme (eliminate the block reward). It may be painful for another year or two (until Proof of Stake is complete), but I am certain that those temporary pains will be worth their weight in gold in the long timeline.
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If the price remain the current level, the community should distribute funds to more developers & organizations. If we believe the price of $ZEC will rocket to moon in the future period of time, the community should even boldly distribute funds to more developers & organizations. Transparent, governance, OKR are other stuffs to discuss, but at first the community need to consistently developing cutting edge privacy tools for Zcash network. So the community should empower the developers who support and empower the Zcash network.
I’m a bit behind on my forum activity. I’ll try to read deeply the proposals in flight soon.I believe Zenate could be one of the answers. But then we have to pose the same question to the Zenate reproding the same issue
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Every time, the tactic is to pull out the stopcock in case of a sudden decrease in order to collect the necessary amount of funds. In a bull market, this is redeemed, but in a bear market, it just kills our chart. Coinbase or whoever does it like that for our respected structures, it’s just damn noticeable. Because ZEC is the only coin that behaves this way, and its main difference is the presence of mandatory monthly expenses.
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I’m guessing Dodger is in charge of all of that given his previous finance background and position at “the foundation”.
At some point in time, this obvious conflict of treasury interests will have to be resolved by hedging out of those huge BTC and ETH positions. I’m convinced that the time is now. Maybe I’ve got to run another community poll?!
66 Bitcoin and 12 Ethereum are worth about $2,750,000 today. To align incentives, those alt-ZEC-coins ought to be hedged out into either ZEC or dollars.
possibly have them buy the zec coins (or swap) from ECC with 1/2 the money. Then we need to stop all extraneous funding to stop the selling. Marketing and education should be community funded or volunteer. but in any case we need to reduce and eliminate all non core projects that require selling zec to fund.
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I believe funding the ecosystem is the correct long term approach, but too slow in the short term.
We can move faster by focusing resources and energy on 2 things:
- wallets (including browser extension) - handled by ECC
- exchange, bridge, and “point of sale” integrations - handled by new group/entity
Distribute 100% of funds/treasury to ECC and a new separate group/entity focused on exchange and bridge and Point of Sale integration.
The network and wallets need to work, reliably and quickly. Everything else is a distraction until that is completed.