ECC's position on implementing the selected community governance proposal

Hi all (especially proposal authors),

I wanted to clarify ECC’s intentions around implementing community governance proposals and update everyone’s expectations accordingly. I hope this can help move the discussion forward for the community.

ECC maintains our position that it is in the best interest of Zcash for the community to establish a new governance structure and development funding system without any discretionary influence from ECC. This will make the result more robust and resilient and legitimately independent from undue ECC influence.

So far this position has lead to ECC refraining from presenting our own proposals, advocating for any particular proposals, or taking positions on existing proposals beyond a limited scope assessment of their impact on ECC itself (and not on Zcash).

What the community may not realize is that our position will continue moving forward after a particular proposal is selected up until all of the discretionary decisions that materially impact the form of governance or use of funds have been established. At that point, ECC will then likely engage with the new governance structure as one organization among peers in the Zcash ecosystem.

Meanwhile, we believe it’s fairly likely for any selected proposal to have substantive unresolved details even after selection. I believe that’s totally ok and to be expected and I’m confident we can sort out such issues down the road as a community.

Some examples:

  • proposals may present roles, such as board seats or developer orgs, without specifying who will fill those roles.
  • proposals may specify using specific proportions of funds for specific purposes without specifying the process of deploying those funds for those purposes and evaluating if the deployment of funds meets the required purpose of the proposal.

In any case, if the community selects a proposal, and there is ambiguity about any substantive issues of governance ECC will escalate those issues back to the community. ECC will itself refrain from making discretionary decisions about how to implement the proposal.

Let me know if this clarification makes sense or you have any questions or concerns about this. And thanks again to everyone across the community who has shown up and contributed their time and expertise to make Zcash even better!

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Oh, I forgot to mention that I felt concerned if Zfnd or other community members had an expectation that ECC would carry forward implementing with any given proposal including making discretionary decisions, and so I reached out the @acityinohio in email earlier today to let him know I would make this post, and I believe he understood ECC’s position and it wasn’t surprising to him.

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