Imagine how long it would take Bitcoin to change the fee formula…
The devfund entities speed up progress! Not slow it down…
Is my response really hyperbolic? In what sense?
If you have a constructive idea for how to improve the way funds are allocated then i suggest you submit your proposal for a community grant. The best way for the community to progress is for all members to take an active role in putting forward their ideas for how to make the ecosystem a better functioning decentralised project.
Get your proposal submitted 
I wasn’t replying to you.
To you, I say: One should be able to report a problem without being asked to fix it. When you see a house on fire, you call the firemen don’t you?
Here’s an idea: Stop funding people who use their position of influence to enrich themselves. To know who, read the minutes of the ZCG meetings.
Except the point about Zcash is that all token holders are stakeholders- we all own a part of the ‘house’.
If I saw my house was on fire i would not just call the fire brigade- i would also do evrything i could to put the fire out myself.
After all i dont want my house to burn down.
It seems that you are angry or at least very frustrated about the way zcash is being shepherded by the block reward entities. I was simply counselling you that the opportunity exists for you to take part in how the ecosystem is developed. Perhaps if you were actively involved you would be more reassured about the future and could push forward the changes you clearly desire to see.
What you do is a form of “shifting the burden of proof”. This type of response implies that the burden of solving the problem rests solely on the person making the complaint, rather than on the person or people who are responsible for solving the problem.
Not at all.
I am just responding to your concerns regarding the dev fund. You have concerns that it is not spent wisely and i am merely pointing out that the devfund is a fund available to all community members who apply for and are succeful in attaining a grant from the fund.
I’m not at all saying it is your sole responsibility to fix the problems you perceive. The point is that this is a decentralised ecosystem and a broad church of ideas and priorities. Clearly you feel that there are some issues that you would like to see handled differently and i am just pointing out that the tools already exist for you to leverage the use of the devfund to improve the ecosystem as you believe it should be improved.
I.e. the commmunity grants process etc
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PS i think in a decentralised project like zcash we are ALL responsible for improving and developing the system into the thing that we want it to ultimately become.
Not just the entities charged with managing and distributing the communty’s financial resources
Yes, someone else can submit a proposal and help but,
No, it’s the responsibility of the people who are already receiving money from the devfund to fix the issues because they are paid for it.
If they don’t, they should not be paid.
They are not managing the funds. They are using it.
I think it is fair to say the entities responsible for marshalling the block reward endowment are both managing and administering the allocation of funds to community projects AND using a portion of the funds for core development of the zcash protocol.
Both are beneficial, and I would say imperative to the long term success that will be enjoyed by the whole zcash community.
Even a decentralised army needs a hierarchy of authorized generals at the helm in order to conquer the world 
Please, don’t even attempt to build grand narratives about Zcash when it is not usable.
Zcash’s focus should be on LATAM and Africa. Those are the regions where the financial conditions actually make people want to use cryptocurrency in their day to day life.
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What exactly is causing you difficulties at the moment?
Can Reduced DEV Funds Fill With ZSA Liquidity Funds? holder and dev team can have good results
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Commenters here seem to be polarizing this debate as if the Dev Funding would stop tomorrow, and all existing funds with ECC, Foundation and ZCG would disappear. That is not what we are debating.
This is a graciously proactive debate about taking action for the upcoming halving in late 2024 November or December. Things will be continuing exactly how they are now up to then.
The community and the teams seem to have reached consensus that Proof of Stake is a near term upgrade for Zcash. Under that feature many great traits are gained, and a significant change to coin issuance happens. Existing ZEC holders when allocate their coins for validation will receive yield in the form of new ZEC.
This is a feature that acts as a silver bullet for our community, both the dev tax teams and for the ZEC investors, and for the decentralized global community of builders.
With Proof of Stake we as Zcash builders and Zolders gain the benefit of materially shared interest (network consensus strong, many decentralized validator nodes, small cost barrier to become validator, and value accrual of ZEC)
The devtax can confidently be removed in late 2024 because at that junction the path to Proof of Stake will be far underway. Only a small period of time will exist between the ending of the devtax from PoW miners, and the beginning of the ZEC validator era. All three devtax orgs will have a long runway to plan their savings and their spending in the lead up to this epochal change.
By late 2024 all 3 of our devtax orgs will have safely accured 200,000- 300,000 ZEC coins which can then become validator assets and let us suppose a 4-5% yield, with an average value of $200 per ZEC (I am speaking about 2-4 year look ahead). Under those conditions the annual validator work yield would be 10,000-15,000 ZEC with dollar value near $3,000,000 -$4,000,000. If ZEC is valued higher by then, the funding mechanics become even stronger. All 3 current devtax groups can sufficiently thrive for decades into the future without relying on the devtax income.
On the flipside, if we keep the devtax in place for another halving cycle, and the consensus goes to PoS, there will be a coin distribution issue… the devtax orgs will quickly shift from receiving their share of the 20% to now also receiving their large chunk from validation yield (on top of their share of the 20%)! Too Many ZEC in the hands of too few in my opinion.
Once again i am emphasizing, this is a debate to action not undertaken until late 2024, many months ahead. And we’ve also strictly got to think about the dynamics that PoW vs PoS grant to our future.
Extending the devtax beyond the halving is overburdening the future ZEC coin supply and reliance of the ecosystem on too small of a group of people.
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Just going to present some information for the community.
Below are examples of token allocations from AVAX, FIL & SOL
- The Zcash dev fund is currently part of the protocol. The dev fund recipients & amounts allocated are possible to change.
- Because of the nature of what Zcash is looking to accomplish it should be expected that efforts to prevent, slow or destroy progress towards roadmap items will be made by adversaries.
-Will a change of recipients make the project more or less vulnerable to attack?
A new metric available for investors is tracking Github Contributions of coins.
Do you think a change to the devfund is likely to increase or decrease this activity?
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this is a great write up, Africa is strategically positioned and ripe, the inherent conditions makes it a fertile ground for zcash adoption, i am of a very strong opinion that an additional “entity” should be in place, focused on Africa
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I would like to share some thoughts regarding these two questions, thank you for these!
Regarding question 2, I’d like to point out how one define’s Zcash’s performance matters. IMHO, how we measure something is both deep, and interesting. Like probabilities, it can be manipulated
1. Learning curve is steep (Question 1):
Comparison to Bitcoin in 2009
- Most Considered a scam unless was a highly trained dev / educator
- Bitcoin priced in US Dollars did not matter because no exchanges existed /
- Was new, exciting, break through tech, no middle man, self bank
- No public dev fund (that I know off)
- Post 2011, in the search for more liquidity CEX’s were born, CEX’ly transmitted diseases born and spread rapidly
- No/little regulation – Too new, taboo, and under the radar.
Comparison to Zcash in 2022
- Many Consider a scam unless highly trained dev / educator
- Zcash priced in US dollars matters more because crypto adoption more widespread . Wealth inequality is also at an all time high.
- CEX’s are the main gateway into the crypto industry. “Sudo crypto” used instead of real crypto, similar to old system of stock trading, easier to use and understand, simplified => increases reliance on $ price
- Sudo crypto use is retrograding away from the tech break troughs Bitcoin introduced in the first place.
- If used properly, Zcash has new exciting, break through tech, no more trusted setup, shielded addresses, ZKP, recursion, etc …
- ZIP 1014 (dev fund)
- DEX’s, DeFi, Interop,POS being introduced
- Massive threat of regulation, no longer under the radar.
Overall thought
Both Bitcoin and Zcash had/have breakthough tech for these particular time periods. Majority of the Bitcoin/Zcash ecosystem users currently seem focused on $ price despite the US dollar overwhelmingly being considered a shitcoin. (Irrational) I suggest we ask why this is? 1 ZEC = 1 ZEC
When folks learn of something completely new and hard to understand, they think its a scam. NFT’s are a good example of this. ZKP’s, shielded address, and ZSA’s will probably have the same issue.
IMHO, overpopulation + limited resources is causing massive wealth inequalities around the world which puts most users focus on assets priced in the US Dollar. Users tend to use what is simplest, easiest,
and most fun. Zcash is neither simple nor easy, and because of the headwinds from wealth inequality above, sell pressure is strong.
2.) ZecHub (Question 2):
Because I believe education is one of the most important roadblocks in Zcash going mainstream, I have decided to help run ZecHub. I think education has an indirect relationship with price; hard to measure but important none-the-less. The challenges of education are enormous:
* Time
* Language barrier
* Skill set
* Regulation headwinds
Time
How much time do folks really have to commit when they much rather be spending time earning income they need to survive? Even as grant recipient I can’t spend as much time as I like working on ZecHub because I have bills to pay that almost always have to be paid in US dollars. I’m fully aware that 1 ZEC = 1 ZEC,
Why on earth would I want to sell any earned ZEC now?! … for US dollars that mean nothing in the long term, unless I absolutely have to?
This means I must find other work to survive which limits my time.
Language Barrier
The world is diverse and full of thousands of amazing cultures. Being on the same page, communication wise, its freaking hard. With AI becoming more highlighted right now, I think this area in particular
could be huge in more easily communicating intended messages both accurately and completely. As a student, light bulb moments happen when you fully understand the language the teacher is using. Math, programming languages, it’s all the same!
Skill set
Folks around the world have different sets of skills they have either learned or are gifted with. Zcash requires a certain subset of these skills to more easily be understood and used properly. As seen here:
In many ways Zcash is {computer science, mathematics, economics} U {infosec, political science, cypherpunks}. The slope of this massive learning curve is necessarily steep and intimidating and yet the folks who will ultimately make/break the success of the project have barely scratched the surface of what needs to be understood. What three things should be prioritized to help bridge this shortcoming and what parallels from other areas of study can be used as models?
Regulation headwinds
The fact that governments around the world are starting to heavily resist privacy preserving technologies should be alarming to everyone. More importantly however, it should also highlight that these technologies must be working for if they didn’t why would they care so much? I think for Zcash, the ECC and Coincenter among others, are providing incredible front line defenses in this area of concern.
My position:
Speaking for myself, I think for Zcash to properly be recognized we need to keep our heads down and stop bickering internally as much as possible and just get to work. Lets become more unified. I will be focused on user education
- I think DevFund should be continued but at a lower rate to encourage folks to work harder (deadlines work!). The rate should decrease over time. I think by the time POS rolls out, we should be close to 0% (staking rewards would take over)
- I think more independent entities is crucial
- I think More than one non-US entity should be a recipient of the DevFund
- I think ZCG should be independent
- I think Shielded Labs should be one of the independent non-US recipient of the DevFund
Since the ZecHub grant was technically submitted by me and because I work for the ZecHubDAO, I will let the community decide whether we should be considered for a slice of DevFun directly. I already feel honored to be able to help with Zcash education and am grateful for all the community support.
I will state what Ive tried to be consistent with:
I'm bullish on education, but understand others have strong opinions where funds should go
If you made it this far, I appreciate your time. 
p.s. It’s possible I mistyped something or my thoughts are confusing, please reach out if you need clarification – a lot to unpack 
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Have you got an evidence to back up this statement, is there some kind of ECC and Coincenter battles against regulators that is happening in private that isn’t disclosed to the community?
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Just to be clear, when I say providing front line defenses, I mean via educational efforts. It’s not against, rather helping educate making sure everyone is on the same page. Here are just a few examples:
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The reality is the majority of people don’t care or want to be educated before using something that essentially boils down to private Bitcoin. Do you think the people aping into PEPE coin knew that the developers can blacklist addresses?
There is too much friction to use the Zcash. Period. @hanh is the only person close to solving the “it should just work” issue. Getting rid of t-addresses and defaulting to private only could be a good solution. As it is, you need a state machine just to figure out how to take advantage of the project’s selling point (private money).
I suggest ZinGoneWithTheWind and any other teams building on Zcash purchase a copy of https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded-ebook/dp/B00E257T6C.
Education should be targeted towards developers, not consumers.
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