Dev Fund 2024: Community Poll & Discussion Megathread

Governance
68

Now that you’ve reframed your original statement completely, I understand what you’re saying. To that I have to wonder out loud. As the block spam and wallet sync crisis unfolded in June 2022 (and prior to it even), it boggles my mind that ECC was staffing up multiple well manicured bloggers to be doing regulatory and Zcash adjacent media content. How did nobody at ECC engineering raise a concern about the risk of a spam attack because Zcash had never enhanced its fee mechanics? If Zcash has to live with one central party to drive its protocol features, then what are we to do when they’re instead spending money on suits in podcast seats?

This is all fine, I can here the counter points now. I do give to the point that this is a multi-fronted effort, but again the emphasis. ECC is it. They control how the protocol evolves. And looking at our past year, things have been up a bit (Halo delivered) but down a lot (most wallets rendered unusable, and a chronic loss of full nodes). I make the suggestion that there is a weakness with the upper guides at the ECC because i reject the assertion that we simply ran into bad luck. Fee mechanics are not a cutting edge realm of crypto network architecture, it cannot have surprised anybody. I suggest that there is a lack of prioritization, and partly that is a result of the salaries coming from an everlasting pool of inflowing ZEC from the dev fund. Its time to cut the dev fund and let all of these organizations work uphill against the physics of the market, and against accountability.

We’re all collectively airing out frustrations and I know that ECC has done a lot of self reflection about how it let down Zcash advocates and users in the past year. To move forward stronger, we’ve all got to be looking at how to best align incentives, priority, and synergy. Retaining the dev tax perpetuates bad incentives.

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69

As some of you already know, I’m the leader of the team that is beginning to build the Zcash-Avalanche bridge, funded by ZCG. I did not vote on the poll, but I would like to comment here with my two cents.

The truth is that without ZCG, no one would be building this bridge. We needed funding to pay our team, and though we looked elsewhere, the ZCG Committee was the only entity willing to fund this bridge at its earliest stages of development.

Sometimes the invisible hand of capitalism gets stuck, especially when technology is evolving quickly. Dev Fund money’s purpose is to help that invisible hand become mobile again, so that Zcash’s sophisticated incentives system can again take over and run smoothly. That’s what we hope the bridge will help to accomplish.

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70

Can you define what you mean by: “cut the dev fund”? Also what are your thoughts about Ycash who, I believe,stopped their dev fund completely reduced their dev fund to 5% . How has that worked out for them?

If you are suggesting that by stopping the dev fund from paying devs, who are exceedingly hard to come by, to fix all these issues, will somehow be better for Zcash? … I’m afraid I can’t agree with that.

What I can agree with is lowering the amount that is paid out over time as I suggested above, but imho Devs should be high on the who to pay list. I also disagree with the idea that the devs never raised concern about fees, look in the github issues. I also find it cute Bitcoin is now under a spam attack and further wonder who is really behind these seemingly similar events.

On this we agree :+1:

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71

I actually agree with this in addition to consumers. I think having a dev who specializes in on-boarding zcash devs would be super cool. You also probably support this grant although you never publicly said so.

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72

I would like to bring everyone’s attention to the fact that Bitcoin development is not entirely “free” as some may believe.

Contrary to popular belief, Bitcoin core development is at least partially funded. The above-mentioned funds are used, in part, to support Bitcoin core developers. Funding for Bitcoin development typically originates from for-profit companies either directly or indirectly through donations or grants. Without this external funding, Bitcoin development would be significantly hindered.

Regarding the Zcash dev fund, I believe there are two possible consequences if we don’t continue it (or reduce it too much):

  1. No external funding materializes from external sources, leading to a severe reduction in both core and product development, which could potentially harm Zcash.
  2. Funding is secured, but it may come from asset management groups, as exemplified by the tweet mentioned above. This could risk Zcash development being influenced by private companies or wealthy individuals.

It is my understanding that the Zcash community strives to be different and better than the potential pitfalls mentioned above. We want to ensure that Zcash’s future and direction are not unduly dictated or influenced by external parties. The dev fund is one way to maintain direct influence over Zcash’s future by holding ECC, ZF, and ZCG accountable for their decisions and actions.

Could we improve how we hold ECC, ZF, and ZCG accountable? Absolutely. However, that does not mean we should eliminate or reduce the dev fund.

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73

TLDR Zcash is the Yahoo of privacy coins.

Well, it’s quite the tragedy. Zcash, with its once-mighty technical and temporal advantage, has been brought low by a string of imprudent strategic choices. Yet, despite this sorry state of affairs, there are still those who pine for the old days when Zcash reigned supreme. Alas, without the devfund to sustain it, the price of this once-great coin will surely plummet to near-nothingness, as we have seen happen with ycash. The very developers who once championed Zcash are now abandoning it for greener pastures, leaving the project to wither on the vine.

And yet, some would have us believe that maintaining the status quo - and with it, the devfund and its stewards - is the only way forward. But we must ask ourselves: at what cost? Will we continue to allow these so-called custodians to squander the devfund while Zcash languishes, a mere shadow of its former self? It’s a tough pill to swallow, but the time has come for some difficult decisions to be made.

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74

Ecc and Zf isn’t accountable to anybody… So any improvement would be a major milestone.
We should know who’s doing what.
We should ensure devfund recipients aren’t doing politics with our money. Diversity & inclusion ? GTFO. Leftism narrative ? The hell with it ! Meritocracy ?? Hell yeah !!
The ECC/Zf CoC should be revisited and the leftist dogwhistles items removed.

But we can’t make them accountable because the mechanism of devfund is part of the consensus and isn’t revokable because Zf/ECC owns github code. Deadlock.

One solution is to scrap ECC and Zf devfund, directs everything to ZCG and ask ECC and Zf to apply for grants like everyone else. That would be fair.

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75

The market price of Zcash has been dropping like a stone. The reality is that accountability in the world of cryptocurrency is ultimately determined by the market itself.
And as the price of Zcash continues to plummet, those who have been entrusted with its development are being held accountable for their actions, but unfortunately so are the investors.

As the market value of Zcash approaches zero, the very idea of a devfund becomes meaningless. After all, multiplying any amount by zero yields zero. It’s a stark reminder that in the world of cryptocurrency, success is never a given, and that those who would seek to ensure its continued growth must always remain vigilant and adapt to changing circumstances.

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76

Yeah I support that education series. Should be interesting. I didn’t realize how much engagement the company had when they submitted it though, so I was apprehensive but came around to it.

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77

A forked version of Zcash supported by Shielded Labs and ZCG would be an interesting marriage.

78

Voting for the dev fund is generally a difficult thing. We do not know the prices, we do not know the result that we will get at the end of 4 years, and the money is not ours.

It’s like advancing on credit the purchase of a new car that exists only in someone’s fantasies and all this under the communist system.

It is very unusual that we are vote before someone outlines to us at least some horizons of what we want to see based on the results of the next 4 years of the foundation’s existence (if it is approved). Think about it, if you were buying some expensive thing, would you agree to just accept it as it is, without even realizing what it is?

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79

Let us be clear: the devfund money was ours. If you are mining this is unequivocally yours.
If you are investing only, it is also indirectly yours through dilution. Any other way of thinking can only lead to a mindset of reckless and wasteful spending, with little regard for the future.

It is concerning to me that many individuals in this forum seem to advocate for a policy of spending every last penny, as if there will always be more to come. Such an approach may lead to short-term gains, but it is not a sustainable strategy in the long run.

Instead, we must recognize that the dev fund money is a precious resource and that we have a responsibility to use it wisely and judiciously.

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80

Interesting aside - Adam Smith actually did not associate the metaphor of the invisible hand with capitalism. The mentions (the two main ones) of it in his work have to do with people who unintentionally support society even though they are nominally self-interested (act with no thought of society as a whole). First, how wealthy landowners, in their pursuit of luxury, would often support a local economy and thereby be acting to “share the wealth”, so to speak. Second, how “merchants” would often allocate capital in their own domestic markets, instead of foreign ones where returns might be better, since they are more familiar with the domestic ones. In so doing, they served to support their local society more so than they would have if they were solely interested in profit maximizing.

Also, Adam Smith recommended government to “erect and maintain” certain institutions for the betterment of all, including public education and infrastructure, whose returns might come too slowly to be done by private enterprise.

This last point I think relates to the sentiment you described about ZCG and your project. You are literally building a (digital) bridge (i.e., infrastructure) that can support commerce, which will be to the betterment of all in our Zcash society. This is similarly how I see the Dev Fund in other areas. There are certain areas where public funding is needed to do things that no private investor would undertake, or if they did, they may distort the enterprise to serve their own profit-incentive rather than the good of all. Without getting into detail (although much needed, and perhaps at a later date), I think Adam Smith would be very approving of aspects of the system Zcash has setup to “erect and maintain” “works and institutions” that are to the benefit of all.

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82

We could use something like the OKR framework to define what success means for the next iteration of the dev fund. Then, we’d have an agreed-upon benchmark for evaluating the performance of the dev fund recipients. I’d start with something like this…

…and I’d also add some more about points about keeping the network secure and other things of that nature.

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83

There’s a multitude of factors but the ones I think are most important are:

1. Zcash’s core functionality hasn’t evolved significantly since its launch.

Fundamentally, the functionality of Zcash today is little different from the Zcash of late 2016. There are two important differences: you can send shielded transactions from a mobile wallet (thanks to the Sapling upgrade) and you can have greater confidence in the security of its crypto underpinnings (thanks to the Sapling and Orchard upgrades).

However, the core function of Zcash (receiving, storing and sending ZEC) is the same today as it was when it was launched.

Fortunately, that’s set to change with the deployment of ZSAs (which will turn Zcash into a platform for issuing and transacting digital assets, and (:crossed_fingers:) atomic swaps (which will turn Zcash into a trustless settlement platform for DEXs).

2. Zcash isn’t an attractive platform for building “Web3” apps and businesses on.

Zcash isn’t smart (i.e. programmable). With the exception of the shielded memo field, it has no features that can be used to build the sort of apps and businesses we see getting deployed on smart contract platforms like Ethereum.

ZF did a great job fostering the early Zcash ecosystem. It was the original source of grant funding for projects like Zecwallet, Nighthawk, and Zbay, and it gave the community a voice in Zcash governance by creating ZCAP, and appointing ZF’s board based on ZCAP polls.

With the benefit of hindsight, I wish ZF had built a core development capability, and started work on Zebra earlier. I think everyone underestimated (a) how much technical debt there is in zcashd, and (b) how big a job it is to build a new node implementation from scratch, especially with NU5 moving the goalposts!

See this section of my opening address at Zcon3.

We’re building Zebra to provide a solid foundation for the future development and evolution of Zcash.

To quote Sean Bowe from ECC:

Zebra is probably one of the biggest endeavors in our project’s history and essential work if we want to escape the C++ hellscape we inherited from bitcoin. Naturally, it’s a long-term project so it doesn’t get the love it deserves and ZF engineers don’t get the praise they deserve for working on it. It will increase our velocity in shipping new features in Zcash when it’s finally at feature parity (and it’s getting close!) and overall its existence strengthens our project’s decentralization and security.

FROST fills a critical gap in shielded Zcash’s functionality, and its adoption will remove an important obstacle to broader adoption of and support for shielded ZEC. It will also help with interoperability.

We’ve commissioned a SoK-style paper on privacy-preserving programmability from a team including @therealyingtong and @LeCryptoMath that will be presented at Zcon4 and will inform discussion and planning towards adding programmability to Zcash.

We’ll continue to support the community and ecosystem by maintaining these forums, running Zcon, supporting Zcash Community Grants, and making Minor Grants to build a pipeline of developers and teams who can contribute to Zcash.

Most importantly, we’ll keep listening to the community. We’ll continue to solicit community input when appointing board members, to ensure that ZF is governed by a group of people who have the Zcash community’s best interests at heart.

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84

This is a great post @Dodger! I’d like to see a similar one from ECC!

I agree with this point wholeheartedly; I personally don’t think programmability is the right feature to focus on as a solution to that problem. A few reasons for that:

(a) We haven’t gotten our chops making usable and attractive libraries for the protocol we already have. Programmability is an even more complex API, so I see more importance in making the base protocol usable to developers first before we try to tackle something like that. There are lots of use cases for Zcash I’d expect entrepreneurs to be building if they weren’t so hard to develop because of performance issues and because all of the available libraries assume some sort of familiarity with protocol internals.

(b) There are other projects working on private programmability. I don’t think we could beat them to market with a better product given all the other work we have going on to maintain a live chain.

(c) Programmability has attracted a lot of developer activity on other chains, but I’m a bit skeptical that much of that is being used by people who aren’t just crypto developers or speculators themselves.

I could be wrong—maybe programmability is the key to bootstrapping a bigger ZEC economy. Even if that’s true, our priority should be learning how to make our fancy protocol tech usable by developers.

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85

Speaking on behalf of myself only, I like these questions and the idea to pitch, dialogue, adjust and decide. Perhaps something like this could be a part of Zcon4 @Dodger?

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86

I don’t think we should worry about being first to market (although I suspect there’s some low-hanging fruit we could deploy relatively quickly if it were a priority).

Doing private programmability well is more important than doing it first, and Zcash has some important advantages, not least the fact that we have L1 privacy.

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87

We’ll certainly have panel sessions at Zcon4 to discuss the future of Zcash but that’s nearly 3 months away. There’s no reason the discussion can’t or shouldn’t get underway here, now.

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88

The Zcash Foundation is directly accountable to the Zcash community by dint of the fact that it solicits community input (by polling ZCAP) when appointing board members.

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