When can we get some stablecoins as part of the dev fund?
Some people want to buy more ZEC and we, need to ensure that we can pay for the awesome work of the Zcash community, over the long term. Selling a bit of ZEC to get some financial stability may make sense.
Worldwide financial crashes happen and, while yes Zcash is awesome, it can easily be impacted negatively in such circumstances.
tl;dr: not all eggs in the same basket.
I agree it may make financial sense, but I would oppose this solely on principle.
I believe that keeping the lockbox and its disbursements in $ZEC is an expression of a shared commitment to the mission of Zcash, which goes beyond financials.
Maybe, maybe 10 years down the road if there was some sort of decentralized, DAI-like stablecoin implemented as a ZSA. I would reconsider? But if the world financial markets collapse fiat is the last place I would want any money at all.
I could be wrong. The Ethereum Foundation’s sells ETH liberally… but the lockbox is not The Ethereum Foundation 
Finally, this qualifies as formal “Treasury Management” and I would be hesitant to make any decisions regarding what happens to the lockbox funds without a strictly defined process on how such decisions are made.
Yeah, I get it, fair. But also not necessarily wise imho.
And I really dislike USD for many reasons. I’m thinking we should start discussing how we can make this happen in a way that is aligned with our values. The direction of reflexer.finance is certainly interesting as far as I am concerned, for example.
ECC got in a really bad financial position because the funds were essentially mismanaged. Again that’s a personal opinion, but essentially what I’m saying is I don’t want to have to heard whining of different orgs whenever things turn south for a while. And I believe stakeholders have a role in helping those orgs, hence this post/question.
Yes! Reflexer is another example like what I had in mind with DAI. So at least we’re looking in the same direction there.
But regarding ECC, imo it’s apples and oranges. I think it’s fine if ECC or ZF or SL decide to do whatever they want with their own treasuries and I think it’s fine if stakeholders want to work with the orgs in that regard.
The lockbox is a different animal, is all I’m saying. IMO that needs a well-defined, strict, transparent process for decisions around allocation.
True, but I also think sometimes devs don’t understand anything about financing and that shouldn’t be a death sentence for them. Stakeholders should be able to retain financial firepower in all market conditions, so we can keep the ecosystem humming.
I don’t disagree with what you are saying, but I’m saying we do need to find a solution to the above imho.
Why do you specify the “dev fund” here?
Does your general position, which I take to be that
“diversification increases resilience”
have a specific implication for the dev fund, or is it just as true for other value stores?
I would rather see separatin from USD entirely. Applications should specify an amount in ZEC. That way, the applicant accepts the price risk or benefit, not the ecosystem fund.
If a project requests 1 million USD and the price of ZEC drops by a factor of ten, the approved grant would suddenly require ten times more ZEC than expected. This can strain the treasury without any change in the actual work delivered. If grants are denominated directly in ZEC, the request is fixed from the start. Asking for 1000 ZEC always means 1000 ZEC, which makes Lockbox cashflow stable and predictable regardless of market swings.
Indeed, stablecoins do not necessarily imply USD, as mentioned above.
At the end of the day devs need to eat and pay their bills. We’ve been there when the ZEC wasn’t worth much, and ECC was on the brink. Not a good idea to specify amounts in ZEC.
I think we will disagree on this point, and that is fine 
I don’t agree with @shieldedmark on this assertion:
I don’t agree that we are necessarily talking about any coherent “it”.
What is the it that “may” have some property, i.e. “making financial sense”?
I don’t know.
I don’t know because the form of this proposition was never clearly stated. The opening post of this thread uses a rhetorical technique that is aimed at persuasion by eliminating possibilities from the consideration of the reader.
This is a classical rhetorical question:
The remainder of the post makes a case for selling ZEC from the dev-fund for stablecoins.. I guess.
Personally I am left confused.
Doesn’t some of the dev fund already hedge in various ways?
Why stable-coins?
Why the dev fund?
Why not close this thread and start a fresh one with an explicit proposition to be reasoned about?
If we want to have more resilience by diversifying assets I suppose my first question is:
What’s the current state? Is it not diverse enough?
Sorry @zancas for the lack of clarity.
The “it” preposition in my sentence was referring to the opinion that we might hedge against any future $ZEC falling price action by converting some portion of the lockbox to a stablecoin. (An opinion that I could agree with financially, but I’m still in principle against.)
That was at least my inference from the OP, correct me if I’m wrong.
Ahh.. this is clear.
Thanks.. but it is in fact something that you inferred.
It’s highly likely that I have used rhetorical devices like the rhetorical question before.
Nowadays, I have changed my mind, (because I am reading Agnes Callard), and I no longer think that it’s a good idea.
My plan is to ask questions until I feel clear about what we’re discussing.
Or at least MORE clear… total clarity might imply a lot of questions.
Zcash Community Grants, which receives 8% of block rewards, does hedge a portion of its treasury in USD. As of our last meeting, we aimed to keep around 10% in USD. That percentage naturally shifts over time because, for example, as the price of ZEC rises, the USD value of our holdings increases, which would require us to rebalance to maintain the target.
Btw, the benefit of hedging during a bull market is that you are effectively “providing liquidity” by selling into strong demand, rather than selling in a bear market when it can feel like you are “dumping on holders” and adding unnecessary sell pressure.
For the 12% of block rewards allocated to the lockbox for the Coinholder Grants Program, there is no practical way to hedge because those funds are not custodied by any single entity. They are jointly controlled and disbursed by the Keyholder Organizations through a multisig setup.
That’s literally perfect and exactly what I looking for, for the dev fund.
And that, is why I am initiating this conversation. Ideally we should be able to do the same as what ZCG does. Evidently as things stand it is not possible. But maybe someone has some interesting idea on how to make it happen in the future.
Let’s try it?
We’re about to have support for ZSAs, right? So, potentially, we could eventually get zDAI on Zcash, right? Ok, just like we fund projects and trust them to deliver, we could fund a trusted entity with a reasonable amount of ZEC, for them to convert it to zDAI and send that to the dev fund, right?
Could it work? Either way, it doesn’t matter if the above is not possible for some reason, the point is that a solution to the problem I’m exposing would be good. So if it would be good, it’s worth at least a discussion about eventual ways to address it.
I believe that the lock-box is best configured to hold only ZEC.
Here’s my argument against configuring the box to hold non-ZEC assets:
If more than one representation of Value is chosen to diversify the agency in the lockbox, then a specific other Value will necessarily be chosen.
How can we pick that representation?
Any other asset chosen as the “diversification” necessarily redefines what we Value.
no stablecoins.
thank you for your attention to this matter
Does anyone understand how staking will relate to lock-box funds?
The current Crosslink design does not alter the dev fund allocations at all.
I think this conversation is important because the dev fund stability is something real for the long term. I understand why some people do not like the idea of using stablecoins or non ZEC assets in the lockbox. But at the same time I think exploring some kind of stability in the future could help during a global crisis or a long bear market.
Maybe later we can try something more native for Zcash for example a ZSA based asset that works similar to DAI but inside the Zcash ecosystem even if it is hard without full smart contracts. I only want to say that | like the idea of searching for stability but without breaking Zcash values.