ECC’s position on the Zcash Dev Fund

[noamchom]

@Chammy

Ideally, we get rid of the dev fund, which is the source of what I perceive to be a native corruption within Zcash, and also the cause of all this non-stop infighting and power-grab attempts. Instead, the community starts voluntarily funding projects on a direct and “per case” basis (similar to Monero’s CCS). If such an approach does not gain the needed traction, we pack our things, go home, and hope a less-corrupt project eventually integrates and/or picks up on the R&D the community has funded so far to bring financial privacy to the masses.

As it turns out, this opinion has aged very well… given the recent ECC Dev Fund concept update.

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Some of you may recall that I originally was also vocal advocate for expiring the Dev Fund this November, but in the ~year since, my opinion has changed.

It is very challenging to (speculatively) weigh the memetic and economic and intra-org impacts of (a not-mutually exclusive list):

1. eliminating the Dev Fund
2. reducing it
3. expanding it
4. reducing the Dev Fund org count
5. increasing the Dev Fund org count
6. leaning all-into grants only/ retroactive compensation
7. adding more governance
8. reducing governance

I’ve come to believe that my proposal might stand-out as a tolerable compromise to all sides of this debate, by simultaneously aiming to:

“keep things sort of as-is” - retain a direct Dev Fund model- albeit at notably smaller %s, don’t tinker with current governance, but encourage governance reforms post-NU6

while adding technical/ Zcash SME change agents
expanding the Dev Fund org count (+we get a global R&D footprint in this scenario/ +Switzerland- Shielded Labs +Israel/ EU- Qedit)
I believe that currently SME is highly concentrated within ZF & ECC, it would be a great step toward SME decentralization to have Qedit and Shielded Labs committed to spending resources learning/ researching/ developing for Zcash over the next 4 years. Decentralizing SME is not trivial, and I believe that an explicit financial incentive is necessary to begin the process

and assuring that Zcash teams remain Zcash/ZEC pot-committed
The halving in combo with smaller Dev Fund % will economically make ZEC quite scarce to future Dev Fund recipients, as compared to how today’s recipients perceived them. By receiving ZEC Dev Funds, teams are obliged in some extent albeit this will relatively speaking, be diminished to continue Zcash support/ retain the staff needed to do so

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What would be ideal?

All of the following:
Ecosystem voting/ ZCAP
Coin holder weighted voting
ZF/ ECC board/ C-level input
Heavily weighted protocol R&D staffer voting
ZEC user voting (measured by on-chain transaction count, rather than ZEC amt held)
Zcash fork voting (how can we attract Zcash boomerangers)
extra-Zcash ecosystem/ but crypto native voting (i.e. could we poll 25 Crypto Twitter personalities with +250k followers to ask, what would get you into Zcash/ back into Zcash?)

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Other thoughts, I love the idea of more grants/ less direct funding - but I think there needs to be a distinct line that separates Protocol R&D/ infrastructure/ maintenance from everything else (media, 3rd party wallets, interop projects, lobbying, marketing, et et). This distinct line would separate the recipients of direct funding from those working via grants/ retroactive compensation requests.

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@Luppa

If we are having this discussion today, it is because the Zcash project as a whole is in a complicated position. Years of sustained downside for ZEC with no respite in sight, means lowering interest from the crypto community as a whole, which puts us at risk of being forgotten. And most importantly, it’s an existential threat to the ECC, ZF, and the whole ecosystem.

100%

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@Luppa

This would be a formidable signal that the ecosystem actors actually believe in Zcash, and are ready to fight for this project with no “safety cushion

I like this in concept, but in reality, the software engineers/ researchers are all individuals with subjective experiences in life. If their salary begins to feel precarious, it is quite easy to pivot into a similar zkp/ crypto sector role with adequate job security. We can’t & shouldn’t put an even greater burden on the shoulders of the ~dozens of ZF/ ECC/ indie engineers/ researchers who have built/ continue to build for Zcash.