ECC Roadmap Update

[Jbenisek]

I agree. Zooko you say to embrace and love failure but you constantly filter Twitter users and others providing feedback loops from any comments or feedback about zcash, users frustrations or perceived failures or concerns from customers and users. If you really wanted feedback why are you not allowing comments on your posts or hiding content here?

I understand not wanting feedback on your personal Twitter feed, but you don’t use it as a personal feed you post zcash news and related content all the time, if you don’t want feedback there then you should be running and posting zcash related content on an ECC twitter account so we can provide feedback and have a conversation instead of using only a personal account then being upset you get feedback there.

These are RED flags that must be addressed. It seems like the belief is usage and adoption is low because the apps suck. Please provide any evidence of this. IME the adoption is low because there is no marketing and 100% working use case still.

It’s like Linux before Android. You’re preaching about it’s features vs Windows when it can’t even run office and do the basics of what I need in my daily life still. A custom ecc app wont fix this.

Your solution so far is to make a clone of Office, instead of making the entire process work in my daily life.

[earthrise]

@pkr, @Jbenisek Thank you for candidly expressing your opinions. Some might interpret parts of these replies as attacks, but I see them written from a place of caring about Zcash’s success, and I think there are valuable points to be found in them.

p.s. I think the post censorship may have happened automatically through forum members flagging it, rather than explicit moderator action (the message that gets displayed when moderators remove something is different). I happened to have left a tab opened on that thread so I could see what you said and I thought it was a good point.

[Jbenisek]

Thank you, It’s an interesting point to take these as attacks. $10 says 95% of the people here are analytical brain sets not emotional ones. It didn’t even cross my mind someone would take any of this personally. We’re talking about launching a product to solve problems, in my mind emotions aren’t a factor, which is why I’m divorced and live alone. So… It’s a great point to bring up, Thank you @earthrise

I will be very clear

I at no time, in no way, mean any of my comments to be offensive, an attack personally, or a statement of hate. They might be cold but so is math and logic, that’s who I am.

I do intend to express my passionate opinion based on my decades of experience launching products and dealing with users and gui’s.

While Zooko is an expert Cypher punk, I’m a gui and interface junkie. I still remember fighting zooko over uninstalling Windows 3.0 because it took too much space. We got 1 day of a Windows Gui before back to CMD and PKZIP, which I still hate to this day. Currently I’m technologist and game developer and weekly I get harrased: “why dont you program…its great…” Because I hate it, I love gui’s and interfaces.

This is why it blows my mind the CLI junkies want to be in charge of GUI/User Interfaces/Apps. Like the world flipped upside down. IE ass backwards when Unix/Linux die-hards start focusing on app development and gui’s.

There is a right team for a professional well designed app project for the dumb everyday user and a wrong team. IMO this is the wrong team for this project. If you wanted to make an app for programmers not the normal everyday user fine. But you don’t speak the same lang as the demo you’re targeting which is why the messaging and adoption is so poor and you can’t figure out why.

For the amount of money and time going into these projects it seems to me you could pay a pro team to easily do it much better and skip the “Learn how to launch an app” Nightmare. Muchless support, device cycles, marketplace hellholes, it’s a full-time company just to manage this.

Its a full-time company to manage zcash and cont dev on zec

I don’t believe both can be done at 100% by the same people. IME thats not possible. But we’ll see. In 6 months if we have a great working app with no sync’ing nightmares. I’ll admit I was wrong. But I bet its closer to a few years, and the work to keep it updated and a good app will take alot of the bandwidth.

Edit:

This is not just a problem with ECC but all the zcash apps on the market right now.
There are too many big brains working on these projects and not enough gui designers or normal users on these teams that understand everyday users. These are basics missing. If users don’t even have the basics how do they adopt it for daily use?

I personally had to ask the dev team what a few of these buttons in the app even mean or do because there isn’t any help or hints at all and I was 100% wrong what I thought they did.

Few yt videos show what things even do. In this generation, they need and want hand-holding because that’s how schools teach. Programmers by design don’t understand this which is why they make horrible interact designers.

I spend alot of time doing game development support with 8-80-year-olds in Minecraft and you’re not even in the right ballpark to meet your demos needs.

Even basic app 101 stuff is missing
Help Screen
Contact Screen
Support Screen
Help overlay for all the buttons on first start/usage
Defining what each button does.

Just look at Zingo. I bet you can’t find a top 100 app in the marketplace that doesn’t have a help/support/contact… Most have help overlays on first use and hordes of hints. You never want a confused user and crypto is already alot of teach a new user.

[hanh]

It’d be great to have a designer work on a UI/UX for a shielded wallet. I have heard many times people say: “why can’t you do the same as wallet XYZ?”.

1. They are all transparent wallets and creating addresses is “free” of resources. ZecWallet followed the same model and eventually, some people created 100 shielded addresses because they heard that each transaction should use a new one. Their funds are now lost in the spam.
2. They are missing a lot of features that are specific to zcash.

I think that once the spam is over, Edge will come back as a strong option for a simple shielded wallet.

[cybrowl]

Do you know if the designs will be made available for review here. I want to take a look at the figma design file. We really need a great wallet. I feel like most wallet’s don’t capture how great ZEC is.

[pkr]

Thanks for that support @earthrise. I’m not malicious with my intent, but I’m also not afraid to speak my mind. Some may think it’s crass but it’s reality.

@Jbenisek

Just look at Zingo.

Absolute waste of dev fund money. Just go back and re-read the proposal. Nonsensical jargon with an end result being a poorly designed, low usage app.

Uses a verb instead of an adjective for “receive”.

And all those “Options”:

1. About - I don’t care
2. Server Info - why should I care?
3. Settings - maybe useful?
4. Wallet seed - should be in settings
5. Rescan wallet - move to settings
6. Sync / Rescan report - just do this automatically why should I care?
7. Fund pools - wtf is this and why would I care?
8. Financial insight - give me a break.
9. Change to another wallet - what does this even mean and why would I want to do this? move to settings if anything.
10. Restore last wallet backup - move to settings

Also why is the hamburger menu still a hamburger? The menu is “open”, so change it accordingly…

And using “Options” as a menu heading is absolute bush league.

[dismad]

@earthrise

@pkr, @Jbenisek Thank you for candidly expressing your opinions.

IMHO, these are the tough critics we need to win over. IF we can do that, that is a win. I do wish they would tone down the intensity though.

[cybrowl]

Honestly, most devs don’t care about UX/UI design until the very end when they have shipped the product. I see it everywhere. It is not unique to ZCash.

[hloo]

• Clearly defining the specific use cases where ECC will focus
• Identifying use cases well suited for decentralization, to improve resilience and sustainability
• Mapping out the transition between ECC support and end-of-support for specific use cases (i.e., Do we stop working on these things completely, wrap them up, and/or transition them to others?)
• Meta transition planning where appropriate, including how to identify and safely transition responsibilities to other Zcash contributors
• Beginning the transitions

Reminds me of the white board in Office Space: “Planning To Plan”.

[Jbenisek]

I’ve watched this movie countless times and never stopped to read it. What a screencap.

[joshs]

How’s Ycash?

[hloo]

./ycash-cli getblockchaininfo
{
  "chain": "main",
  "blocks": 1701579,
  . . .
  "valuePools": [
   . . . 
    {
      "id": "sapling",
      "monitored": true,
      "chainValue": 4085019.05561727,
      "chainValueZat": 408501905561727
    }
  ],
  . . .
}

[joshs]

Lol.

The point is, building something meaningful is difficult. Building global digital cash is something near impossible.

Instead of throwing cheap shots like a common school yard bully, a thoughtful assessment of what we’re doing here, and some recognition that it is a good and responsible thing, would land better.

[SexDrugsAndZcash]

so the plan is to do nothing in the coming year?

[conradoplg]

I think working on a wallet may make sense, but I agree that getting the UI/UX right is fundamental so it doesn’t become yet another kinda OK wallet. Does ECC plan to hire UI/UX experts to help with that?

[joshs]

Yes, when we can afford them. It might involve outside firms at times. @nick is on point.

[pkr]

@joshs

a thoughtful assessment of what we’re doing here

I think that’s what most of us are trying to figure out… What exactly is the ECC doing?

@joshs

some recognition that it is a good and responsible thing

Recognition comes from good work… Not to say that the ECC has done awful work, but the congestion issue took awhile to resolve, and I personally think the product direction is not focused/has had any meaningful impact outside of the general ebb and flows of the bull and bear cycles.

@joshs

It might involve outside firms at times.

IF this is the case, I would highly recommend spending the money and hiring Metalab. It would be well worth the money.

[joshs]

@pkr

I think that’s what most of us are trying to figure out… What exactly is the ECC doing?

Currently:

1. Released a new website, finalizing a new SDK, finalizing the base wallet, working on PoS research, working through a couple partnership deals to be announced later.

2. Developing plans for the safe decentralization of certain ECC-owned functions. More information on plans for decentralizing digital assets (Z.cash, Twitter, Cipherpunk Zero, Readthedocs) is scheduled for this week.

Other information is in the blog.

@pkr

Recognition comes from good work… Not to say that the ECC has done awful work, but the congestion issue took awhile to resolve, and I personally think the product direction is not focused/has had any meaningful impact outside of the general ebb and flows of the bull and bear cycles.

Fair enough. Thank you for the candid feedback.

@pkr

IF this is the case, I would highly recommend spending the money and hiring Metalab. It would be well worth the money.

Good suggestion. Appreciate it!

[hloo]

@joshs

Instead of throwing cheap shots like a common school yard bully, a thoughtful assessment of what we’re doing here, and some recognition that it is a good and responsible thing, would land better.

You’ve apparently lost your sense of humor. If you sincerely believe that a harmless Office Space reference constitutes “throwing cheap shots like a common school yard bully,” then the house of cards that ECC marketing has constructed is more fragile than I thought.

To your question, “How’s Ycash?”, I should have answered, “Too early to tell, sort of like your 30-year vision”.

[joshs]

@hloo

You’ve apparently lost your sense of humor.

I’ve got a great sense of humor. You just aren’t funny.