[ZIP 1002] FINAL: ZIP Proposal - Genuine Protocol opt-in/out donation feature updated 02/sept

[sonya]

Ahhh. Yeah, I stand by that, donations for FOSS funding don’t work… unless you have a full-on program around them, which is what the Zcash Foundation will have eventually. You need to be able to play the long game with big donors as well as having a robust pipeline for the larger group (ideally) of smaller ones. It takes years to build that into a reliable revenue stream, modulo extraordinary circumstances.

Personally I think that miners donating voluntarily is a total dead end for funding, but: 1) I could be wrong! 2) My personal opinion isn’t the litmus test We want to see what the community rallies around, and then filter the set of community-embraced ideas (later, once they’re ZIPs) by “will this inadvertently destroy or weaken Zcash.” That’s where the technocracy comes in.

[boxalex]

@sonya

Personally I think that miners donating voluntarily is a total dead end for funding,

I agree that only miner donations mostly won’t be enough, so why only rely on miner donations? There are others that are able to donate as well, VCs, hedge funds, bitmain, innosilicon, large holders, exchanges, private people. In the case of the foundation corporations can make charitable donations.

Just checked the GRIN Funding Transparency Report.

At the end of Mar 31 2019, Grin held the equivalent of $123,423.73 in the following assets

I think that’s not bad for a new born project in the first 3 months and shows that there are people willing to donate and finance.

I personally still do not understand why everything is focused only on miners at all when there are other additional options as well. Nobody is talking about a mix of funding sources, strange enough for an issue that should be more than important.

Why not for example donations + minimal dev fund from miners + Bitmain/Innosilicon donations + other possible sources like company share selling?
This could be result in a: donations + mininmal dev fund from miners (5%) + Bitmain/Innosilicon donations (5% from their sold Equihash miners) + other sources x% .

The next question should be if the $1.1M requested funding by the ECC should be funded like that or that with some economy, more efficiency and other measures this can’t be cut down to $600-700k for example? Just logical someone gets easier to 600-700k than some whopping $1.1M…

In my opinion there are some points that indeed make it hard especially for the ECC to rely on donations.

• Possibly loosing more and more trust in the community. The less trust an entity has the less they can count on donations in my opinion.
• Community may think that currently Zcash is underdeveloped for the amount they have available.
• Community might be less willing to donate to a pure for profit company compared to a foundation.
• Not enough transparency, not enough accountability in the past, makes it harder to convience someone to donate.
• Too centralized, not enough community envolved, miners not enough involved (past and now).
• Donors not agreeing with the direction would/could result in an donation “embargo”.
• and some more …

I’am pretty sure that due these and other points i didn’t mention the foundation would receive more funds than the ECC, hence the reason why in my proposal i made the foundation that main recepient which than could grant additionally funds to the ECC. The foundation just fits much better for a donation and opt-in solution.

Edit: When can we await the foundations long awaited statement today?

[sonya]

No later than August 6 includes August 6 Don’t worry, it’s coming! Let’s resume our discussion then.

[mistfpga]

I need to adjust this so that the ECC can get funding from it as a private company.

I cant see how to do that. Do I copy/paste it just to change one line? It seems like it might confuse people.

@mistfpga

The foundation MUST use this funding to fund zec development for the lifetime of their receipt of it.

This bit. The foundation wont take the money, even if they did, they wont give it to the ECC (points not up for discussion here plz) If the ECC stays a for profit then this zip shouldn’t preclude them from receiving donations (as set out in the spirit).

Otherwise this is an antifunding ECC proposal, which it was never intended to be. 2 almost identical proposals?

[sonya]

Reading through this again, a couple of things jump out at me.

Can you define “signaling” in the ZIP, and explain what you mean by it? I think you mean how users communicate the choice to donate or not, but I’m unsure, and you also use the term in other places where the context seems different.

I also think it would be helpful to add a short encapsulation of what the ZIP changes about Zcash. My attempt:

The purpose of this ZIP is 1) to allocate the entirety of block rewards to Zcash miners after the Founders’ Reward ends, and 2) to build voluntary donation by miners into the protocol.

[mistfpga]

@sonya

Can you define “signaling” in the ZIP, and explain what you mean by it?

how about

Signalling is defined as expressing a voice through whatever mechanism is implemented or sought for that decision. In the context of this zip it is primarily referred to in regards signalling what to do with funds. This could be done by miners, straw poll, coinbase, proof of value, some interent poll thing, etc.

In some select circumstances i.e. miner signalling via some software mechanism, they might not have that option available to them, so a pool could say mine on this port and we will signal this for you, or mine on this port and we will signal something different.

It is left deliberately vague because there will be some form of governance and decision making, but I dont want this zip to get rejected because a form of signalling is chosen and is not covered by this zip.

@sonya

I also think it would be helpful to add a short encapsulation of what the ZIP changes about Zcash. My attempt:

I tried to do that in section 4 will edit it a bit. make some mistakes with the custodian stuff rereading it. I need to change holder to owner. - I think. hurm.

The main question is tho, how do I get this through without removing the line about what the allocation of the funds should be used for and who it goes to. I guess I could remove all references to the foundation at all but that seems a bit crazy.

Im also thinking of writing a rolling burn proposal. after a recent chat in amillers thread. That would allow block distribution to be used and the opt out/burn becomes adding it on to the emission curve. so no coins ever get to become unspendable which I think might solve the above problem.

[sonya]

I would err on the side of making the ZIP easy to understand, so plain language is the best. Your definition of signaling looks good to me!

[str4d]

@daira and I made an initial review pass over this PreZIP. This is not a formal part of the proposal process (in particular, @daira is not acting in hir role as ZIP editor); this is just a joint comment between @daira and myself on the current state of the PreZIP.

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@mistfpga

• User is defined that anyone that uses ZEC or the zcash technology provided by the ECC

The second part of this sentence is redundant. If they use the Zcash technology without using ZEC / the Zcash production network, then a ZIP can’t directly apply. Suggested alteration:

• User is defined that anyone that uses ZEC or the Zcash network.

@mistfpga

• Burning coins is sending them to an address that has no private key, therefore taking them out of circulation forever.

It is not possible to know for certain that an address does not have a private key. A better solution would be to spend it to an explicit unspendable output, or have a protocol component that explicitly absorbs the burnt funds (e.g. change the transparent balance rule).

@mistfpga

• Greed is defined as complete honour of the initial contract by distributing all rewards to the miner.

This is not a value-neutral definition; the word “greed” may be misinterpreted.

@mistfpga

T2 fee is an optional signalling string that create a transaction to the coins base donations.

This is imprecise, and an overloading of the term “fee” (which has a specific meaning within the protocol).

@mistfpga

7 - Specification

• This feature MUST enforce the initial contract as defined by default.

There is no contract. It would be reasonable to say “implied social contract”, as this is then a matter of opinion. This is also a requirement, not a specification.

@mistfpga

• Custodial services cannot override the signal of the private key holder

This appears to be attempting to impose a requirement on custodial services that the protocol cannot enforce. Also note that for a custodial service, the custodial service provider is the private key holder.

@mistfpga

Users MUST NOT be forced to signal.

@mistfpga

Current and future usecases MUST NOT be prevented by this czip (see objections/issues)

@mistfpga

• Security MUST NOT be lessened

These are requirements, not specifications. The security requirement is also implied by ZIP 0.

@mistfpga

No signal SHOULD be counted as greed when solo mining. (the official client MUST default to be counted as greed)

The first sentence is redundant, and should be deleted. The sentence in parentheses is what we take to be the intended specification.

@mistfpga

• This feature MUST default to opt-out.
• This feature MUST contain donation addresses in the coinbase.

“This feature” is ambiguous.

@mistfpga

Hardcoded donation addresses are already baked into the protocol.

Unclear. Is this referring to the current FR addresses?

[mistfpga]

Again thanks, will rework this. It is really useful to see how and where I am missing things.

I really appreciate the time you have gone into giving me a detailed reply. - This is what I thought was going to happen on the 26th.

I will adjust this proposal too, to clear up and address your points.

thanks @str4d and @daira

[mistfpga]

bump.

Final. Any comments anyone?

Thanks.

Steve

[mistfpga]

Pull request done.

Hope this is okay.

Create Genuine Protocol opt-in donation feature.rst Thanks to: Sonya for her extensive help with this. Nathan, Daira and Str4d for thier extensive feedback. Everyone else on the forum and ECC/ZFND that helped me with this.

[mistfpga]

Was the second round feedback for this based off the forum post or the GitHub pull request. they are not the same. I couldn’t update the initial post, due to discourse.

[daira]

This proposal has been published as ZIP 1002. To answer @mistfpga’s question, the published ZIP is based on the GitHub PR.