The minutes of the meeting will not include my full response, as this document is intended to be concise. Therefore, here is my full response.
I would like to explain in more detail why I voted to reject this proposal.
When this proposal first came in, my initial reaction was that it was too technically complex for me to independently judge how important it really was. That is why the idea came up to have the applicant present on an Arborist Call.
That happened, and I want to thank @isurvivable for giving an excellent presentation. It gave me a much clearer understanding of why this work is needed and why it is genuinely important. We want our code to do exactly the things described in the cryptographic specification, and nothing more.
But I also think there is another side to this.
Beyond the formal verification work itself, it matters to me as a Zcash investor that, at the end of this process, we have a document of this kind from a recognized leader in the field. I do not want to offend anyone, but to make clear what I mean, I will give an example.
In 2020, RAND published a report concluding that Zcash did not have a significant presence on dark web marketplaces, while Perkins Coie, a respected law firm, published a legal analysis arguing that privacy coins can fit within existing AML frameworks.
Those documents mattered not only because of what they said, but because of who stood behind them.
There would be nothing especially difficult about assigning that kind of work to me personally. I could spend a week browsing darknet markets, collecting screenshots, reviewing posts, maybe even trying to chat with sellers directly, and then publish a report saying that vendors refused to accept ZEC.
But that would obviously not carry the same weight for serious institutions, regulators, or market participants. What matters is not only that the work was done, but whose seal stands on the result.
And I think we are now in a similar situation here, especially after the vulnerability discovered in Orchard. It is not enough for us to be convinced ourselves; it is even more important to convince others.
That means it is no longer enough for us to simply say that formal verification was done. For serious investors, it will matter whose name stands behind that report.
That would matter to Ray Dalio. It would matter to the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund. It would matter to the Swiss National Bank. And frankly, it matters to me as well.
I do not think approving this proposal will help us with that task.
That is why I voted to reject.
Furthermore, I do not believe we have another eighteen months to delay this task.
I also want to thank @isurvivable for bringing this proposal forward.
FYI @zooko
