Zcash Labs is in no way a “VC”, those are funds that raise outside capital and invest for returns. Zcash Labs is much closer to a consulting business. I have zero affiliation with Winklevoss or Cypherpunk or any miners or VCs.
The money Zcash Labs spend is not “billed to coinholders”, they have no duty to pay for our proposals. We have to show our work and prove it’s value to coinholders. In contrast, ZCG must show it’s work but is not accountable for the value of the work, which is the problem.
I don’t think critical infrastructure can or will be funded by “VCs” - am very much in favor of coinholder directed grants for critical infrastructure, 100% in ZEC.
A consulting firm that provides funding (“upfront”), adds markup, and expects returns from a speculative source?
Let’s see, a16z and Paradigm both hire researchers and conduct research, provide upfront funding, expect returns from a speculative source… EUREKA, THEY MUST BE CONSULTING FIRMS!
Hmm, so what you’re proposing is that the ZCG simply never take chances of any work that may be speculative? Then it’s not a grants program, it is a set funding track where the ZCG pays in exchange for guaranteed returns. The point of a grants program is to take chances. For context for readers:
But sure, let’s roast ZCG for 3-4 failures in HUNDREDS of proposals funded.
I’m curious, why do you think you felt the need for upfronting money so you could take it from coinholders later? Might it be… that you don’t expect coinholders to take every shot? ITS THE REASON ZCG EXISTS!
Atleast, this would eliminate the ‘whale oligarchs’ from sending out a swarm of representatives to do their bidding
In a world where they would need to publicly disclose their Zcash holdings to run for ZCG, they’re now forced to either
a) Choose not to run, nor would they be allowed to get sockpuppets run on their behalf
b) Prove their holdings, vote and fund/defund proposals publicly and thus face a reputation risk far higher than current ZCG members since they’d have a lot to lose on both ends
A true meritocracy, where one would need to risk something far more fragile than money. Reputation.
The largest ZEC holders are exchange wallets, who publicly need to disclose holdings anyways. If they ever got permission to keep shielded inventory, they can just take over with no reputational risk, as multiple US Federal/Chancery Court rulings say it is permissible for a corporation to take actions to further profits for the shareholders as its fiduciary duty, regardless of the cause.
It’d turn from a whale oligarchy to a corporate oligarchy.
You… support that model? Even though they are billing coinholders a 20% markup for the privilege? Then I would have to reexamine my views on this. Maybe there is some element I missed.
Very true. Zcash should expand to the real world. Sorry for the prudes but sex workers are the oldest profession in the world.
Yes. But the problem is that in 6 months it might be worth 10M or 600M, who knows, thanks to fiat going completely haywire.
I don’t agree with that at all. That’s another misconception (among many) inherited from the bitcoiners. You don’t want your money supply inflationary for sure, but random deflation is no better. Just keep it stable as close to 21 millions as possible.
Nothing shocking. If you take risks upfront you should get a premium. Some grants might not get reimbursed through the coinvoting.
Because, at its core, it offers the right incentives. It can create more self-sustaining, effective businesses using Zcash. But I wouldn’t contrast ZCG with this, since there are plenty of areas where we simply can’t expect profitability. For example, all these investments in community building. Well, can that really be considered a business project? But in any case, they make a significant contribution to adoption Zcash. Not everyone believes this, but I do. Or your swap project – how can you monetize it? I’m referring to the research itself, not the apps that could be built on top of it. But the core of your proposal isn’t an app.So I can only be glad that people with a commercial instinct, like Tom, are creating such projects, but in my view, they don’t compete with ZCG. If you look at our transcripts, you’ll see that we’ve never fonded commercial projects – we state it plainly: “It’s a cool thing, but it’s a commercial project.”
That is honestly a very refreshing perspective, and yeah, now I see your point. In that respect, yes, I can support Zcash Labs too, but only as a complementary project to ZCG, not its replacement. One is called good faith, the other is called eliminating the competition.
So, VCs invest other people’s money, for a purchase of equity, in the hopes that the equity returns 1000x the invested money, then they take a 20% cut of the 1000x profits they generate.
Zcash Labs takes its own money, uses it on projects that might benefit Zcash, gets no equity or upside in return, waits for them to succeed (not all of them succeed), then seeks reimbursement of costs + 20% from coinholders. We only submit things that we believe have exceed expected value.
Its basically the inverse of VC, we speculate on how much money we might lose, rather than how much upside we gain.
Oh and also anyone else can do this now that we’ve proven coinholders are willing to vote for something like this.
Yes, I understand the model now. As long as it’s not competing with ZCG, I see its merits, and if such firms do proliferate, maybe we will try them too.
Maxime, I respect your stance, but killing ZCG at NU8 is a short-sighted move that will strangle independent ecosystem growth. While my own proposal relies on taking the risk of a retroactive coinholder grant, forcing every smaller builder to gamble personal funds upfront creates a massive barrier to entry that our media and dev scenes can’t afford. We need to reform the committee’s voting alignment instead of completely shutting off the engine right when we need maximum visibility for the NU7 launch.
Whats wrong with competing with ZCG? If this model proves to be better shouldn’t it win out?
Keep in mind that ZCG is not without costs either, each of the committee members earns a full time salary (as they should) and the administrative staff costs are paid (as they should).
This cost plus retroactive model is an experiment in closer incentive alignment to Zcash, if it works better I would think everyone who has done great work at ZCG would be able to operate under a similar model.
Ideological gating is the issue. It’s not like you indiscriminately fund projects, while ZCG has the freedom to. Just take the Exxotica incident and ZECsy. It was only possible because ZCG has the authority and mandate to authorise projects that would otherwise come across as unpalatable or unfeasible for private investors.
So yeah, it’s mostly on the matter of principle. Other than that I’m pretty sleep deprived to do a real analysis, but I will look your model up more thoroughly. Do you publish your internal statistics such as treasury?
With my own money I have the freedom to spend indiscriminately
When I ask for reimbursement from other people, I need to prove value to convince them it is worthy of reimbursement
ZCG having been entrusted with someone else’s money, can never be indiscriminate, they must exercise the utmost care as they have taken on a large responsibility
No, I do not publish private company financials, only parts relating to reimbursement requests. As we’ve only been around for 1 grant cycle, most of the interesting data will come from the next cycle.
It is their own money, though. Sure, they have a fiduciary duty, but that duty negates reckless spending, it does not prohibit or cap spending. It’s the purpose of its creation.
And yeah, I agree it will probably come from the next cycle.
After reading through all of the replies, what’s crazy is I haven’t seen a single person defending ZCAP/ZCG record.
They realize it’s a self serving parasitical entity. They just attack Tom/Maxime and think whales are the issue somehow.
Sorry for the prudes but sex workers are the oldest profession in the world.
No one has any problem with sex work. People have a problem with ZCAP/ZCG funding sex work out of block rewards. 90%+ of coinholders would agree with me.
It is the moral hazard of self serving entities using block subsidies making Zcash much harder to sell as a fair money. ZCAP/ZCG has given legs to every Monero/Bitcoin maxi I’ve ever publicly fought over block subsidies.
Whether or not have funds, Monero/Bitcoin maxis will remain so, because that’s not how people decide whether or not to switch to Zcash.
Two years ago, any one of them would have said, “Your Zcash is a shitcoin — the market has already decided that; can’t you see it?” Then they’ll tell you it’s ZCG; then that no one uses Zcash on the dark web; then that you have Israeli roots, and so on. It doesn’t matter to them what they tell you.
Actually having a looting, self serving org getting block rewards is deeply offensive to people looking for fair money. I realize as a self serving ZCG member you may not understand this.
