Dev Fund Proposal: Increasing Monetary base by 10%
Advocate: boxalex
This is a so far unique approach on finding another way how to garantee funding for the ECC & ZF as i’am not aware another proposal suggests increasing the monetary base by a given amount.
Main Goal:
By increasing the monetary base of Zcash from 21M by 10% the monetary base would result in a total of 23.1M ZEC.These additional 2.1M ZEC would be used for founding the ECC and ZF.
Secondary Goals:
- increasing the monetary base by 10% would equally spread the founding to all groups involved and not a single group like suggested in most other proposals, the miners. Increasing the montary base would effect holders, investors, miners, even the ECC and foundation themself.
- It would be in my opinion less risky than giving miners various options to opt-out, burn or even give them more influence eventually.
- It would result in a more predictable situation. With opt-in/opt-out we still have no idea if the miner will choose all to burn for example which again will leave the ECC/ZF without any funds at all. Allocating a fixed number of ZEC will at least give a certainity how much funds will be available for a given period.
Funding Timeframe:
This proposal suggests securing the funding to result in having enough funds for the ECC and ZF to operate for 8 years. IF the funds are not enough the ECC/foundation have to make internal adjustments and economics to fit the funding available. This is not fixed at all, if logic arguments can be provided it could be as well 5, 6, 7, 9 or 10 years.
Funding Mechanism:
I’am not yet sure what the best way would be to release 2.1M additionally ZEC and there are several options for discussions and maybe even some other options that could be suggested by the community. With all options suggested it should be of highest importance not to increase the anyway high inflation rate or at least only minimally increase it.
Option 1: Lend Lease from miners
The ECC and ZF leases blockrewards from the miners that lend them to the ECC and ZF. In a later period, beyond the Funding Timeframe, for now 8 years, the additonally monetary base gets released delayed and available for mining after the year 2028 (if the 8 year funding timespan is kept).
Advanages in my opinion:
- The biggest inflation rates in the next 8 years would not be effected but would spread on anyay way longer inflation rates coming after year 2028.
- The miners would only lend temporary part of the block rewards to the ECC and ZF but at a later time get them back from the increased monetary base.
- It would keep the promise that finally 90% of the minted/mined ZEC goes to miners as promised in exchange for breaking the promise of 21M coins. In my opinion this is a better trade-off as someone could argue that anyway a portion of the 21M coins won’t be accessable anyway, be it due lost coins, lost private keys, whatever. Means in theory the broken promise could have less impact than the broken promise of 90% to miners which of course are active.
Option 2: Superblocks
Due easyness for understanding i’am referring here to a date and not block number a given Superblock is mined for example every 15th of the month. This would need more calculation as another halving in 2024 would have to be taking into account. But the idea is that with every superblock the according part of the additionally 2.1M to be released ZEC gets into circulation at that given day and be available for funding of the ECC and ZF.
Option 3: “Airdrop” or “Premine”
Another option would be an Airdrop or Premine of the whole 2.1M in advance but only to be partially released at a given date, let’s take again every 15th of the month for example to keep it simple at that stage: Means, while the whole amount of 2.1M is practically allready mined the according only 1/96 of this amount gets release monthly. Or even more simple: Every 15th of the month 21.875 ZEC get released and are available for usage until after 96 months the last part of this amount is paid and the whole 2.1M ZEC are released and brought into circulation. This option would hurt the inflation rate most in my opinion as from the beginning the 2.1M ZEC would be in circulation even they are not usable at all.
My personal opinion is that the Lend & Lease approach in option 1 would be the most gentle to inflation rate adding the least inflation pressure.
Fund Splitting:
- Preferable 50% to ECC, 50% to ZF, integrated into the protocol up to what option is choosen.
- New split of 40% ECC, 40% to ZF, 20% to a common fund or maybe 45%/45%/10%
Idea of a common fund:
A common fund could be used for researches or work that IF not funded by a common fund both the ECC and ZF are doing overlapping work. For example the ZF would grant or finance or work on a mobile wallet with x features. The ECC at the same time could work as well on such mobile wallet using it’s own funds. It would be a waste of resources not to have both researches & work involved bundled. In such case a common fund could be a good source to finance efficient such matters instead of having resources wasted on seperate work which leads to the same outcome.
Unknowns:
- I’am not sure how this could/work out for the ZF as a 501c3 foundation and the charitable funding character that is needed. This requires further research and what circumstances such a funding model would and could fit the ZF requirements and it’s status.
Further Requirements:
- The ECC should change to a non-profit status to become a recepient of this proposal.
- The ECC and ZF should increase further even beyound the non-profit and by law status for transparency, openess and accountability voluntary
- The ECC and ZF should release every 3 months a transparency report on how much, for what when the funding was used or not used.
Additonally requirements: New Governance Panel
A new enhanced Governance Panel should replace the current Foundation’s Governance Panel:
This is just an idea below to show how a better, more fair goverance panel could look like:
- ECC, 10 member
- ZF, 10 member
- Zcash Founding Scientists, 7 members IF not employed/paid at/by ZF or ECC allready.
- Mining pools, biggest 10 mining pools each 1 member, results in 10 members
- Hardware producers, Innosilicon & Bitmain: Each 3 or 5 members, results in 6-10 members
- Investors like placeholder, blocktown, grayscale and such, each 1 or 2 members, results in “unclear”.
- Zcash community: Every forum member registered on the official Zcash forum for at least 3 months? Eventually a minimal post count or other restriction could be added to avoid people joining just for voting reasons, results in unlimited unclear members.
Other possibilities to include"
- Zcash affilated or Zcash supporting projects like parity, wallet creators, such like, 1 member each.
- pretty sure i forgot some groups, this of course can be included as well.
The reasoning behind such design would be that indeed every arm of the Zcash community would be represented, would have a voice and even a vote and can influence important decisions that have to be made.
So far everybody is talking about community decisions but nobody is even near a plan on how this could be done fair, promising and working and accessable to literally everybody interested. Here at least a solution that tries to include all the different streams of the Zcash network.
Edit: Just thought that the more “normal community members” join the less influence the ZF, ECC, investors and so on would have.
I think a possible solution would be that the fixed members for a given organization should be per 100 people that vote. Means if the new governance community panel gets for example 200 members the members or vote count of the fixed members should be double to garantee a fair voting power distribution.
In my example this would mean that the 10 ECC members would have/get double the voting power resulting in 20 votes at the point the community panel reaches 200 members. Just as an example as there must be a mechanism that the bigger the community governance panel gets the influence of the must members like ZF, ECC doesn’t get inflationed.
Voting, Polling, Results:
- Every member of the new governance panel gets invited to take take part in the discussion around a given proposals, changes, whatever and of course later a vote in the governance panel.
A voting must result in a suggested 75% majority to be accepted, maybe 66% could be an alternative level as well. Up to community discussion what the best level in % would be to replace a wider community agreement.
Voting/Polling by the New community governance panel should be seen as binding even if not ultimatly and not like now just some polling. Eventually some pure highly technical aspects should not be taking into the new community governance panel, that’s up to further fine adjustment on what would qualify to be decided by the new community governance panel.
This proposal is of course up to further discussion, improvement, fine-tuning, adjustments, whatever, enough there is a wish by the community to do so.
despite the post being well written and having useful arguments in it.