Two questions for ECC @joshs @nathan-at-least @zooko
Is it possible for ECC to become non-profit in 2019/2020?
Is it possible to just hire ECC for 100% shielded address adoption without scaling effort? Can ECC deliver t-address deprecation, z2z only transactions in 2020 or 2021?
I plan to update my dev fund proposal based on answers to these questions 
Hi. That’s three questions. Thanks for asking them.
We are working on a response to the Foundation’s post. It will address the non-profit position.
If you would like to mandate specific work for ECC, the Zcash Foundation, or another 3rd party to accomplish post 2020 as a condition of the receipt of funding, please include those mandates for one or all recipients in your proposal. We’ll provide a response as part of the process outlined at the end of this post: Electric Coin Company Statement on Sustainability - Electric Coin Company
My bad 
…
This is an excellent question. Most discussion so far has focused on the funding mechanism, but it is very legitimate to also bring up the matter of what will be funded.
ECC has stated that they
advocate for a coarse-grained allocation . For example: “ We will focus on accomplishing x big goal for y ZEC over z years. ”
and made this concrete as follows:
at least four years is reasonable for attracting and retaining the talent needed and to accomplish horizontal scalability, work toward broad interoperability and drive this next phase of adoption to the early majority.
There was related discussion in the Zcash to 10 billion and ECC: All in on ZEC blog posts.
My personal opinion is that this list of goals deserves an open discussion, and it is reasonable for the social contract constructed around the Dev Fund to address what goals should be pursued by recipients of the Dev Fund.
Also, my personal opinion is that the top priority for the Zcash ecosystem, and by extension for use of the Dev Fund, should be usability and adoption of fully-shielded transactions. On the tech side, this includes:
It doesn’t mean ECC should do all of the above by itself, and it doesn’t mean these are the only things ECC should do. But we, as the community, need to wrap our head around how those things get to happen, and make sure the Dev Fund social contract supports that well.
Perhaps these goals should be achieved before October 2020.
Surely a multi-year plan should have much more than the above. Still, the above is the top-priority essential goal on which everything else hinges, and we’re still a long way off from completing it.
There have been several requests to provide some kind of road map for 2020-2024 the last weeks and months…
I absolutly agree. I just wonder what kind of discussion could be in the remaining just 10 days until deadline? Even if we had some kind of discussion for a view days, would this be enough in such short time frame to discuss Zcash tech future and direction? I seriously doubt this. This should have happened way bevor we even begin to make proposals. I just doesn’t make any sense to make proposals about x amount without knowing for what at all.
It’s said allready, but someone would await that this happens or is nearly finished within the next 14 months. Actually 14 + something months as the ECC has reserves as well, means these goals should be finished within the old funding in my opinion.
Totally agree, shouldn’t we focus while talking about funding exactly on what the ECC should do.
And maybe leave some room for tasks that they do not have to do themself necessary open to grants for example? Could some very same tasks maybe done cheaper otherwise and elsewhere? I guess we don’t know as we don’t now what’s on the road map and planned and what the whole funding is for other than wages …
Offtopic: Did i miss that Zcash Foundation sign bevor? I know you are one of the founders and somehow i think i didn’t see the foundation sign bevor to your name, but i could be wrong of course.
Offtopic: Did i miss that Zcash Foundation sign bevor? I know you are one of the founders and somehow i think i didn’t see the foundation sign bevor to your name, but i could be wrong of course.
Very attentive of you. 
I’m a Founding Scientist of ECC, but am not at its employ; and I have recently joined the Zcash Foundation as a technical advisor, so the latter tag seems more appropriate. It was updated recently.
Nevertheless, these points should be implemented within the first four years, especially since work on some has already begun and is ongoing. It’s not for me to judge, but for the first four years there was nothing interesting (updating the network was not something fantastic but was necessary for working with shielded addresses), this could change my mind.
This opinion is also based on the latest ECC statement on the new protocol, what is the point in the new protocol or the current one if no work has been completed, either end the current coin to a viable option and hire a company to completely upgrade the network or hire to make changes to improve the current one, but not an option to complete the current option. As I suppose, the new protocol will not be fully compatible with the current one, and all the same work needs to be done again again, which will take the next 4 years, as a result, there will be no benefit from this, because over the next 4 years there will already be an option with Internet money another coin and team. If the work does not go here and now, then this work does not go at all.
I know, it’s more like an employer at the ECC.
Just out of curiousity as i have yet no idea how advisors are handled the the foundation wage wise. So the logical question. Is there a wage involved with being an advisor?
I know, it’s more like an employer at the ECC.
No, I have no managerial authority at ECC either.
Just out of curiousity as i have yet no idea how advisors are handled the the foundation wage wise. So the logical question. Is there a wage involved with being an advisor?
Zcash Foundation’s major compensation is publicly disclosed in its Form 990 filings. If you deem additional information to be germane to the conversation, please contact the Foundation.
This is the last I’ll say on the matter; it is derailing the conversation in this forum topic.
Strange, i thought founders are share holders at the ECC which makes them automaticlly employers, no matter if they have managerial authority or funcitions or not. But maybe i’am wrong with my assumption.
P.S.: I’am still trying to find out how what is conntect to get some day a full picture how things are organized, hence the questions and get some transparency in such matters.
If indeed the top priority goal is shielded usability+adoption, then how about baking a corresponding incentive into the Dev Fund?
Proposal “10%+10% weighed by shielded adoption”:
Of each block reward,
X% to ECC + X% to the Zcash Foundation
where X = 10% × [fraction of total issued ZEC that’s shielded at the beginning of the block],
and the rest of the 20% get burned (or deferred for later),
for 4 years.
This incentives successful delivery of feature-complete and usable shielded transactions, and converges to 20% split between the ECC and the Foundation when t-addresses have been phased out.
There are some obvious issues:
A nice property is that it creates the focused incentives on increasing shielded adoption right away, even before the dev fund kicks in.
Interestingly, in this proposal, the community can defund ECC and the Foundation by unshielding ZEC holdings en masse. Basically saying, “we don’t like what you do and we don’t want your stinkin’ privacy”.
So this gives the community two ways to express discontent before the 4 years have elapsed: hardfork (weighted by the ecosystem at large, flexible, the cost is ecosystem disruption), and deshielding (weighted by ZEC holding, inflexible, nondisruptive but costs future privacy).
I like the algorithmic policy enforcement, a (maybe obvious?) benefit is that by removing human judgement uncertainty is reduced.
If The ECC were to have the option of focusing its capital on either:
(a) restructuring to conform to a definition of not-for-profit/nonprofit
OR
(b) increasing shielded usability+adoption
I think I would be happier if they chose “b”.
Great questions. Let’s see…
Yes. I feel it’s too early to fix goals for more than a couple of years ahead (and also I don’t have many more tricks for algorithmic incentivication that cannot be easily gamed).
Then the corresponding fraction of the Dev Fund is lost (or delayed) as well, until the time (if any) that t-addresses are completely removed from the protocol.
I’m not stressing this feature, because it affects only the Dev Fund recipients (which BTW one would hope are anyway avid adopters of shielded storage…).
There’s another issue:
One can claim that it’s fine if the bulk of ZEC are kept in t-address cold-wallets (for simplicity and stability), as long as the bulk of transactions between users are fully shielded, and the deposits/withdrawals to the cold wallets are done in a linkability-conscious way.
That’s incompatible with the above algorithmic incentive.
I don’t know if the claim is tenable privacy-wise, and haven’t seen it properly analyzed. It may be premature to rule it out.
Recall that the NU3 ZIP which ECC has committed to implementing is ZIP 213: Shielded Coinbase. This will mean that NU4 dev-fund ZIPs can be written to target Sapling addresses directly, assuming that they are compatible with the available degree of encumbrance (and by NU4, multisig Sapling addresses should ideally be available).
I think Monero is cool and I admire the project’s lively ecosystem. Monero’s ethos and preferred tradeoffs are different, but as long as people are honest about that, I don’t mind. Competition strengthens all of us.
The fact remains that z2z transactions are substantially more private due to the implementation of zk-SNARKs.
@joshs given enough funding, what are the top (dev) goals for ECC for next 4 years? Would like to know ECC perspective and vision for 2020-2024.