Hence my ZIP proposal for a decentralized community-driven funding mechanism. Anything that “guarantees” funding using a block reward will be harmful for the community’s cohesion, in my opinion.
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Can we please move the copy of James Prestwich’s post, and the presumably forthcoming discussion of it, to a separate new topic?
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Thx for the suggestion but i think James Prestwich’s view and paper fits perfectly into the megathread / everything in one place even as a full text.
This thread allready has 287 posts and it shouldn’t really lack exactly James Prestwich’s view which i personally see as a very good written opinion around the new dev fund discussion.
Even it’s a long text i hope you see that the community might be interested in his/this opinion and that all opinions should be available on the forum, enough they are on-topic and at least in my opinion, this is absolutly on-topic. Of course the moderation can decide something different.
Link to the full text on the Zcash forum after the text was (re-)moved into a seperate thread:
@tromer The giant wall of text (entire article) has been moved to a new thread to discuss further.
The links Sonya posted prior will remain for users to read/download if they choose.
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Institutional trading tools provider TradeBlock estimate that commercial Zcash miners are experiencing decreased profitability. … Debates among the Zcash community regarding how the block reward will be split after the next network upgrade in October 2020 has been identified as a potential driver of the ZEC price underperformance.
It is looks like a sensorship. Yes, text is big, but the sense of the text is crucial!
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It is still right there to click on and download or you can read it in the other thread
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@Shawn, the link doesn’t work ?
I think the above text from James Prestwich is a must read for everybody in the community interested in the dev fund discussion.
I have said it bevor and will say it again, the whole dev fund discussion is a pretty unfair mess from beginning and not much has changed at all.
As the artice/thoughts above as well state, everything is dictated by the ECC and to some extend the ZF as well. Beginning from time lines, up to the selection progress and further to the conditions what is and what is not acceptable and interfering or favouring different proposals. Shouldn’t these all be all these proposals made by the community and decided as well by the community?
About the Time Line:
It’s a dictated one. Sure, there might be reasons behind that which i agree to, but than again, why did the ZF and ECC guidelines and thoughs came out just now? I think it’s obvious than just one more week until the 31st Aug. isn’t enough time for discussion and fine tuning proposals, even less in such a mess.
About the ZF:
The ZF came out with a guideline that they decided not the community at all. Sure, someone can argue that they have a mandate from the community, but i would have awaited at very least to use the governance community panel for polling the different directions, ideas. The last months there was plenty of time to re-organize the governance community panel IF the ZF’s interest was in representing the community in this matter. Actually this should have been the first stop for the whole dev fund discussion in my opinion.
About the ECC.
There is not much to add, the thoughts and paper of James Prestwich above pretty much fits it up perfectly. As stated in the article above, the author heared allready in Oct. 2018 of plans for a new dev fund. That’s absolutly ok, but no steps, no mechaism, no nothing since than have been worked on. It’s obvious that without mechanism the community can not come to a consensus.
Even going further, while the ECC and partly the ZF call the community to make proposals these later than get literally castrated due their guidelines, but wait, shouldn’t be the guidelines made by the community for a community fund?
I personally, and some others as well, have the impression that forum members that ask uncomfortable questions, favour different not ECC favouring proposals are object to some kind of discredition, FUD accusements, unhonest people, weed, etc., which is pretty close to repression.
About the community:
It’s pretty interesting to see how many people are comfortable with allocating funds we have no idea what they are used for, no idea how they are even calculated and no idea what the final result will be. I guess that’s because we don’t pay it out of our pocket. I personally think that we are that used to the FR that for many of us it seems normal that the very same FR continues somehow, but it shouldn’t be that way in my opinion.
The community should have all interest that as much as possible of the funds are used in the most possible efficient way for development that adds value and adoption to Zcash. Development shouldn’t be just 100% in the hands of the ECC, no matter they have the best team around. The current situation is a non-competive way of the development and only a handfull of not ECC developers had the luck to contribute to Zcash. Or in short, allocating funds often isn’t the most efficient way to reach a target, the art is how funds are used best to reach a target with minimal cost but highest efficiency and this is normaly the outcome of competition.
The community indeed should ask for way more accountabiity and transparency as the current state of both is more than questionable. Actually not only ask but persist on these.
About a 3rd entity:
While several people in the community have expressed that this might be an interesting and good approach, no mattere there is a discussion on how the 3rd entity should be occupied. But it seems as well that the 3rd entity isn’t something that the ECC/ZF desires or would like to see (my impression!).
This is another point the community governance panel should be vote on as soon as possible and it should be a community decision if they want a 3rd entity or not and not the ZF’s/ECC’s wish.
My Suggestions:
- For the ZF: Reorganize immediatly the Community Governance Panel including the voices of VC’s, miners, mining pools, 3rd parties that have interest in Zcash, community members and so on. The wider the better. Poll your own guidelines and check if the community back them up, even these that seem obvious to you. It’s always better and gives a stronger position if the ZF position is backed up by the community in a voting/polling process.
- For ECC and ZF: Mechanism for choosing a proposal. There is no mechanism for the community how a given proposal can be choosen. The only mechanisms so far i’am aware of are ECC and ZF internal mechanism that make a selection due their desires. For a community proposal that should decide about community funds this doesn’t sound as a good approach.
- For ECC: Disclose the ECC shareholders in detail. If this can or does not want to be done by the ECC the community & ZF should insist of a non-profit status for the ECC.
- Zcash Trademark:
Bevor any further decision about a new dev fund is made the Trademark mutlisig should have been finished.
Proposal Time Line:
The time-line should be post-poned until some requirements are fit. And these include:
- Zcash Trademark multisig finished.
- Zcash governance community panel voted/polled.
- A mechanism for the community is in place where they can vote about proposals.
- ECC answering questions like roadmap, shareholder disclose, stays for-profit or changes to non-profit and several other questions crucial for every proposal that wants to adress the funding of the ECC.
- Absolute neutrality towards all proposals.
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I think it is quite clear that the ECC/ZF sets the rules and is manipulating the “community’s” path to reaching a decision on a new dev fund, while pretending that they are neutral and “All In On ZEC” regardless of the decision.
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I just responded on another thread, but can you give me specifics on why you believe this? Perhaps we can address specific concerns / give you more information.
Maybe our proposal responses and transparency report this week will help.
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Who decided that ZIP proposals are due Aug 31, well over a year in advance of the first halving and conveniently only a month or two after the ECC’s/Zooko’s push for a renewed dev fund?
As “neutral parties”, Zooko/ECC/ZF should treat all legitimate dev fund proposals equally. This includes comments/discussion on the forums here as well as comments/retweets/likes on Twitter and other social media platforms.
I also would say it’s disingenuous to verbalize the part of being a “neutral party” when it is quite clear the ECC is pushing for the largest dev fund possible that is still tolerable by the community (e.g. 20%). Do you not disagree?
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For funding? I expect this conversation will extend well beyond the 31st. But the Aug 31 ZIP deadline for submission drafts is general and part of the standard schedule for NUs in order to safely design, test, audit and release major upgrades. See: GitHub - zcash/zips: Zcash Improvement Proposals
Let’s revisit after we release our responses to proposals.
We have a desire to see Zcash thrive and we want to participate. We aren’t “neutral” in that way. We think we’ve got a remarkably gifted team, our passions are fully aligned, and think we could do great things for the community. Far from disingenuous, its very real and honest.
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So then would you say that the best course of action for Zcash to thrive is for the ECC/ZF to receive a 20% dev fund?
Not necessarily. I think there are a lot of interesting proposals and maybe some that haven’t even been envisioned yet. Some include ECC, some don’t. Personally, I can’t imagine not working on this project. I give my heart and soul and I don’t want to stop. So I guess I have a personal bias in that way. But that’s all up to you. And the project is more important than my personal desire to work on it full-time.
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If this is true and the operating costs are now less than $700,000 than maybe we shouldn’t base our all proposals on an estiminated $1.1M (the amount given on Zcon1) but maybe on $600,000 or even $500,000?
From the last report:
The company’s operating cost in the second half of 2018 averaged $700k per month.
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I feel that the only active proposal ECC and ZFND would consider is the one made by @aristarchus which simply states 20% between ECC and ZFND.
aristarchus has registered only in june, hasn’t prooved any interest/involvement and I feel all other proposal have some type of opt-in feature.
I can easily say most of the community wouldn’t want such liberty of funding for the two entities involved.
DEV FUNDS WITH COMMUNITY CONTROL YES
ECC AND ZFND FREE RULERS NO THANK YOU
side note: I’d say miner possibility for op-out should be mandatory for TRANSPARENCY
*edit: removed the “take proposal out of the bucket” - @boxalex thanks for input and you are right about every proposal being valid ++
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The ECC has a clear conflict of interest on a renewed Dev Fund. Anyone in academics or familiar with disclosures knows this.
You can’t say “please hire me” and then “we are a neutral party” all in the same document with a straight face. To act like the ECC is perfectly content with whatever the community decides is disingenuous.
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I replied here. In a nutshell, it’s a generic timeline for all consensus rule updates, designed by ECC based on ecosystem demand based on lessons learned the hard way.
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The placeholder one was their favourite until they added the 3rd entity requirement.
While i agree to some extend with your reasoning and see where you are coming from i think it should be a NO-GO to take any proposal down, no matter how abstract it is, even if it would say 90% to ECC and 10% to miners. But that’s just my understanding of democracy.
The important part is actuallly not what kind of proposals are made, but how they are choosen and voted for later. That’s the important point.
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