ECC Zeboot Decisions and Timelines + Opening Presentation

General Education
41

thank you @Shawn, i haven’t look at it from this perspective.

hard to market something under this condition, compared to other crypto projects that’s a large disadvantage… next to a lot of other disadvantages…

i just compare the socials from other projects (mainly privacy focused) with the Zcash orgs, and the difference is huge! …our social accounts look like the ZEC chart, doesn’t get anyone excited to get into it…

and if the strategy is relying on 100 users that recommend it to others it has failed before it even started! because there might not even be 100 users if we don’t count miners and devs.

i got a lot of new people into ZEC, but they all hate me for that… i won’t make the same mistake again!

42

The biggest advantage of zcash is that the transaction fees are extremely low in a trusted environment.

43

There is so much irony in this its painful. We should have been building, developing, and integrating the things that make the coins we hedge into so great. Instead we built things that require us to continue selling ZEC. While we buy BTC, ETH, USD as hedges, BTC, ETH are building out and creating the future DeFi. What are these things we should be doing to make ZEC as strong as these coins we support above all else?

  1. BTC - we should be embracing and codifying the 21m cap. Instead we get vague and ambiguous answers that its up to the community. And we get proposals that might cause issuance to increase more than it otherwise would under the scheduled halving. If we codify of the 21m cap and halving schedule, it just might help remove some risk and help increase the price of ZEC.

ZEC price matters. ZEC is what powers this community. Non profit doest mean anything to me other than likely higher than normal costs because they just spend more money that otherwise would have been a profit.

  1. ETH - we should be doing everything possible to create a fee based ecosystem like ETH. Its what powers the network and decentralizes development. Its a powerhouse. I dont see how its possible to compete or develop and ecosystem without fees/gas. Without them whether its charged to ZSA, stablecoins, staking, or whatever ZEC implodes in the long run. We need a vision for how the ecosystem will work because never ending inflation kills.

  2. USD - we should be creating collateral backed stablecoins and applying privacy tech to our own as opposed to selling ZEC for USD, sell it for USDz. Keep it inside the ecosystem.

Rather than hedge, we should be creating and building on the things that make these other projects so great. Its in our control. Its feasible. The Dev Fund was a good idea that misallocated capital. We didn’t build the things we know are good because if they were not good we would hedge into something else. Hedge our development by building the things we are investing in. Then maybe. Just maybe the orgs will believe they are developing something worth hedging into instead of out of.

Spending millions upon millions telling people ZEC is a fiat alternative is not manipulative? Tell people to buy ZEC to buy coffee is not manipulative? People lost a lot of money believing in the videos, education etc. ZEC needs to focus on creating an ecosystem that offers real value.

100% (I hope you are not referring to more wallets or ZEC as a fiat). But without fees, I dont see how an ecosystem can evolve. We need an vision for how gas/fees will play into the future of Zcash.

[quote=“zhangduang66, post:40, topic:46845”]
more cost-effective than zcash[/quote]

ZEC is not cost effective. It is very ineffective when it comes to costs. You are not looking at the entire picture. ZEC has around $25-$30m per year in costs that it funds using inflation. It’s a hidden tax that is being charged to ZEC holders used to subsidize the costs. The cost of processing blocks every 75 seconds is not free, developers are not free…These are real costs…The inflation drives down the ZEC price all else equal. So even though it appears to be cost effective from a transaction perspective, those costs are being pushed onto the ZEC holders. So its more of a shell game than real cost effectiveness.

Exactly! ZEC price matters. It matters more than anything else.

A false statement that people really need to understand. I know you believe it. But it’s not true. The real all in costs are very high. By not understanding it, it causes development resources to be misallocated. We need to figure out how to get costs down and then charge fees to get the ecoystem working.

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44

There’s a big difference between promoting real world use cases for Zcash, like buying coffee privately (without giving up your complete account history like would happen if you used BTC) and the market manipulation tactics you see from scam coins to build hype in social channels.

Bitconnect anyone?

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45

The competition in hard technology is to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

46

All we have proven is ZEC as a privacy based transaction network works. Although not very well (its too slow and might not scale)…And importantly ZEC as a store of value is still up in the air. So people that buy ZEC believing its a fiat alternative have been very disappointed if they did not sell it immediately. On other hand, BTC has proven, at least so far, that it is a store of value even if its not private. Store of value wins over privacy all day long. I would like to see ZEC have both and a working ecosystem. SOV and privacy is a great combination. privacy without SOV is a loser. As you have seen from many posts, people think the transaction costs are low. Im pretty sure you understand they are not low. They are high being hidden by inflation.

  1. There is nothing better than 100% collateralized (by govt bonds) fiat for short term day to day transactions. USDz.
  2. ZEC as collateral, staking, 21m hard cap for long term appreciation.
  3. “Tear down that wall” - 0 gas/fee is an invisable wall that impairs growth and development.

These are real world use cases not dependent on hope. I think its a winning combination. I think it puts Monero out of business. BTC has the trust of the market. But if we can just take a small piece of the BTC market, that would a win. Swap between savings (ZEC w/yield) and checking (stablecoins) accounts all on the same ecosystem. Of course the presumption is the network will scale and be instant. We need 50k TPS for USDz (100k-250k TP per day probably doesn’t work for any token to scale globally for day to day transactions).

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47

It is a bit of hyperbole to suggest “market manipulation tactics” - when all that I’ve been talking about is a temporary furlough of ZEC liquidations by the ZF and ECC. As Jgx has mentioned, part of Zcash adoption is the value of ZEC. With constantly diminishing value of ZEC, we have a zero percent chance of achieving adoption.

As the value of ZEC increases, so do the odds of increasing Zcash adoption. It is a virtuous growth cycle, that we should all be working together to create.

The current cycle is ZEC holders suffering dilution/ loss of value, adoption stagnating, and the development orgs, increasingly feeling financial distress.

We’re still waiting to hear about any financial strategy changes that may have come out of Zeboot, so no reason to jump to conclusions yet.

As they say
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Perhaps 5 years of liquidating ZEC holdings, while watching Zcash adoption flounder has been a layman’s definition of insanity.

Perhaps it is time for a change of behavior, to give the chance at creating different results.

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48

At least they can build hype and have brought users. What exactly has Zcash done in the area?

49

The cryptocurrency market is a manipulated market, and it is normal for bad coins to drive out good coins. I think the market needs a new technology that can subvert Bitcoin. I think there is a high probability that it will be zero-knowledge proof. This technology can really be realized. Privacy protection means that I manage my own assets and authorize transactions of my own assets. This needs to be based on cryptography. Privacy and convenience are contradictory, so it will take a long time to popularize this technology. Reducing costs and improving efficiency is one way.

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50

Perhaps that quote doesn’t make sense because you took it completely out of context to steer the conversation towards your other topics.

I was responding to a @silentZcollector about the nature of 501c institutions. And I was replying to @Jgx7 about the difference between showcasing Zcash use cases vs building hype trains.

In neither reply was I referring to how ZF or ECC choose to balance their bank accounts.

51

I would like to believe its not a hype train. Its probably 1/2 hype (ZEC as fiat) and 1/2 real legitimate use case (eg the privacy aspects of the network). But just looking at the facts, we spent many millions on videos, and marketing ZEC as fiat when there was a material amount of improvements required to get ZEC to where it needs to be. Critical improvements like stablecoins (a legitimate use case for day to day transactions), ZSAs, POS, programmability, sync times were all de-prioritized to hype a ZEC as fiat (for day to day transactions) vision that I dont believe was or will be a viable use case in our lifetime. There is a reason its down 95%-99% from its peak and lower than its ever been on an inflation adjusted basis. ZEC as fiat is not a viable use case. Sure ZEC can work as a means of payment at a POS terminal. But ZEC as fiat is not viable. So far the view that ZEC is not a fiat for short term day to day transactions has proven correct. ZEC by its very structure with a 21m cap is simply too volatile for short term day to day transactions, not to mention its too slow, and probably doesn’t have the throughput (IE TPS). Just because you believe its a fiat alternative, doesn’t mean it was not hype or that its true. We all have the personal experience of knowing its not viable. Viable fiats (or currencies) are not volatile in the short run. And hold up pretty well over the medium term as well. The orgs would not need to hedge out of ZEC if it was viable. And its vol wont change. So we need to change how we perceive ZEC. Its digital gold meant for holding.

52

this won’t work for a long time, if ever! the infrastructure is simply not here to build something like this, and i am not talking about shielded assets.

everyone that has followed MakerDAO for some time knows how careful they have been on adding assets. a black swan event with a flash crash with 100m worth of ZEC as collateral would kill the system, because there is simply not enough liquidity to buy out the liquidating assets for a reasonable price. (not sure if ZEC could even handle a 10-20M dump in a matter of minutes)

one more thing to note here is that all the assets that are allowed as collateral to mint DAI have way more liquidity and Dex presence than Zcash.

in the end this will again fail if we don’t work against the selling pressure. whatever we want to build or do, we need to fix the dumping of miners and orgs first.

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53

  1. 100% - Collateral at scale needs to be ST government bonds. I agree ZEC as collateral at scale wont work; but it could work in a very narrow use case such as the way Ethereum is used as collateral for Liquidity 0% interest loans. Borrowing is not 1:1, and for ZEC it would probably need to be 0.3:1 or less, meaning you start getting liquidated when ZEC falls by 50% and are fully liquidated by the time it falls 70%. And ZEC needs to have some utility for it to really work. Currently with ZEC having no real fundamentals likely makes it impossible or just too risky for the average user. So ZEC utility or an way to objectively measure value would need to be added first.

  2. As you rightly point out, ZEC cant handle the sell pressure which is another reason ZEC wont work as a fiat alternative. If ZEC ever became anything, large players are just going to short it, and sit on it because ZEC has no intrinsic value, no gas/fees etc etc. So for the same reasons ZEC wont work as colleral for stablecoins at scale, its not going to work as a fiat alternative. It cant handle shorts in size.
    So, when the ZEC price gets too high, it will be a short and there wont be a fundamental buyer. Again it all comes back to needed some way to objectively determine its value, which is impossible without a fee structure.

  3. Centrifuge.io could work as a collateral pool for stablecoins using government bonds as collateral. I believe Frax is starting to use them. But have not studied it in depth. It looks promising to me as it relates to collateral pools using RWA.

  4. Agree fixing the dumping problem from POS (and the dev fund) seems to be an easy first step. But longer term, I believe, we need stablecoins one way or the other. Otherwise, we likely wont be able to get the scale needed to be competitive, which is why I think is why we are hearing more and more the idea of moving to another L1. To be an L1, I believe we need scale. Do you really think ZEC will get the scale needed to compete globally without stablcoins?

54

Bitcoin’s primary use case is as the dominant crypto asset/ store of value (and value expander), with significant market liquidity.

There isn’t a technology that will subvert Bitcoin in this regard. Because Bitcoin’s dominance is beyond technology. I don’t understand how we’re in the year 2024, Bitcoin has demonstrated its market dominance across multiple cycles, yet people still insist on trying to build the Next Bitcoin.

There are near zero odds of a Next Bitcoin, just like there are near zero odds for the Next Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, or Google.

Will there be competitors? Yes.
Can Zcash make its pitch as an upcoming Bitcoin competitor? Yes!
Is Zcash or the next exciting ZKP project going to dethrone Bitcoin? I can’t imagine it.

There is a comprehension gap somewhere here in the Zcash ecosystem; some people seem to believe that the project can exist (and possibly even become relevant), in a vacuum outside of the context of the price of ZEC. That is a foolish belief.

What good is long term private, secure storage for ZEC, if after 5 years their purchasing power has been diminished by 98%

It would be as pointless as locking away a bundle of bananas in a gun safe for the next 5 years. There is no point, if the value is gone.

Native crypto network asset prices are a core piece of the equation in this industry, anybody trying to segregate the price topic from the adoption/ usability topic is making a serious mistake.

(I’m not saying this is your belief Shawn, speak up for yourself if you want. I’m suggesting that you have shown up recently and been regularly echoing that sort of sentiment. Retorting the comments from other forum members who are keeping Price/ Value & Adoption/ Usability discussions together)

This says it all! Nobody should be surprised that Tatyana’s sampling from Zcashers of today “revealed” a truth like this. Read into the verbiage, ZEC “users” means ZEC sellers.

ZEC users (sellers) understand that they need to recommend new people to Zcash because the new people are the necessary ZEC receivers (~buyers/ holders).

(If our mission continues to be the onboarding of new ZEC sellers, then we are in for a lot more adoption struggles.)

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55

Bitcoin is a kind of digital gold. This is a lie of centralized exchanges. When we trade digital currencies on centralized exchanges, we actually trust centralized exchanges instead of Bitcoin. It’s just that large exchanges own a large amount of Bitcoin. To achieve the purpose of manipulating the market.

The problem with Bitcoin is that the transaction fees are high and the transaction speed is slow, so it is exploited by centralized exchanges. So I think what will subvert Bitcoin will be a new technology that can reduce costs and improve efficiency. Privacy is the essence of web3, and privacy requires a lot of optimization to achieve. The underlying technology of cryptocurrency is cryptography!

56

@zhangduang66 You have said so much, but you only represent the interests of miners. The move to POS was inevitable, and ETH did just that. If you don’t agree you can hard fork to ycash. You can also make a zcashw like ethw

Your language is no longer discussion, but bickering and grumbling. :sweat:

57

There is no artificial true randomness in this world. POS will only make power more and more concentrated。

My English is not good, but I’m not bickering and grumbling

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58

how ?
its much easier to create a staking service or stake yourself, than creating a mining pool or getting an ASIC. so the competition will be much bigger…

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59

It’s good for decentralization to have separate operations between those who make the rules of the game and those who enforce them, I’m just suggesting that no offense is intended.

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60

I think this is a very valid take. BTC is not going away. It has the brand recognition, the narrative, and the actual hodlers (not the contrived zodler culture).

The biggest issue Zcash has and needs to solve is its identity crisis.

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