Speaking for myself, I actually think “partial privacy” can be worse for users and society than no privacy.
I know some people think in terms of “increasing privacy”—your information being seen by few is better than it being seen by many—but I think in terms of “power”. Powerful organizations always attempt to increase their own power, and the way they do that is by exploiting information asymmetry.
So I actually think that a Bitcoin/Ethereum-type system in which everyone can surveil everyone is better than a “ZSAs with surveillance features”-type system in which only a few powerful orgs can surveil everyone.
P.S. Credit to an anonymous leader of our movement who told me in conversation two days ago that powerful orgs always try to increase their own power and that the way they do that is by exploiting information asymmetry.
I think the surveillance feature isn’t a step in the right direction towards decentrally collateralized and fully shielded, it’s a step towards bigger players. That’s the point of it. It’s meant to (eventually in the far future) coax some behemoth into the ecosystem. We could go straight towards fully shielded and collateralized onchain. But, that coin might be Crazy Uncle Jim’s Fully Collateralized Private Almost Stablecoin. It could still work but it would take time to build trust and confidence.
If we can get someone as huge and trustworthy as Facebook, Google, JMPC, ICBC, Federal Reserve Banks, etc … by giving these very trustworthy players the ability to hand over data to the good guys (every agency of every government I think we can all agree are the good guys), then maybe we can get all of these trustworthy and wholesome players to use the Zcash chain and, before you know it, we’ll be able to “privately” whizz fiat to our favorite content creators on YouTube.
Yes. This is where I’m thinking. Does Zcash want more adoption, or do we want to die on the hill having defended the highest ideals, at the expense of going mainstream? (with features that users perceive as good enough for me) [rhetorical]
I’m not in charge, I don’t have strong opinions either way… but I tend to believe that this project has suffered for years because it has never been driven by business tactics, instead it has remained steadfast to cryptographer’s ideals …sort of… as I cough and point at the transparent pool which continues to control 85% of all Zcash activity.
Keeping Transparent ZEC was a business decision, and now discontinuing one possible avenue toward ZSA-stablecoins has been halted due to ideals. Can we have it both ways?
Are there historical precedents that demonstrate this problem, or is it more of that person’s hunch?
It seems true to me, from what I’ve seen of history in my lifetime and from my understanding of economics and organizational behavior.
For example, Circle (the issuer of USDC) and Tether have been influenced/coerced over the last few years so that they now serve as a tentacle branching off of certain tentacles with the U.S. federal government.
Mind you, tentacles are very uncoordinated beasts! They only partially and only occasionally serve the interests of their master-tentacles faithfully. And they are clumsy, much better at swiping at huge enemy beasts than at manipulating individual humans.
My primary concern is that tentacles often semi-accidentally raze whole towns of innocent humans. That’s my read of history during my lifetime.
Here was the trickier part, also kind of indisputable… for certain, info asymmetry is one tactic among many. I was just curious if there was any specific reference material that looked into detail about how valuable information asymmetry could be, as compared to things like legislative efforts, political lobbying, violence/ imperialism, or what have you.
That’s a good question. No particular reference materials come to my mind. Maybe if I talk to the anonymous leader who told me that again, I’ll ask them.
Alright, based on the below discussion I agree that “surveillance” isn’t properly applied to the grant. Thanks for helping me understand this distinction.
I don’t think it’s important. If you want private transactions… don’t use the transparent pool. I almost never use it. On a slightly related note I heard that the Orchard pool passed the Sapling pool in size… by some metric that I didn’t explore.
I am interested in evidence for this. I have heard anecdotes of users mistakenly believing that they had privacy that they did not. That’s sufficiently unhealthy to be taken very seriously. Do we also know of cases of user’s being harmed by this mistaken belief?
(It is steadily increasing but there was a very large deposit and subsequent withdrawl from Orchard, presumably for the coin vote. So its not quite as high (~30%) as it was a few days ago.)
A few days ago I talked with someone who is a leader and spokesperson for the larger movement to preserve privacy and individual rights in the Age of the Internet. They mentioned that to me — almost verbatim: “Powerful orgs always act to increase their own power, and the way they do that is by exploiting information asymmetries.”.
Then when I used that idea in conversation on this forum, I wanted to give credit to them, or at least not to take credit for myself, for that idea, but I didn’t want to disclose their name without their permission since they are prominent.
So I ended up giving credit to an anonymous leader.
Which turns out to have totally been a distraction and in retrospect maybe I should have just focused on the idea and not mentioned that I recently learned it from someone else …
