You seem to be misunderstanding my point. I wasn’t disagreeing with the statement that funding is currently centralized between two entities (its obvious that this is true).
However I completely disagree with the conclusion that having centralization somehow
There are plenty of ways for researchers to get involved. They can volunteer and contribute to the codebase directly through GitHub on the ECC or Foundation side, or if they want to be paid for their work they can post a project for community funding on the zfgrants platform and get crowdfunding (similar to Monero’s FFS). Or they can also apply for a Grant directly to the Zcash Foundation as many academic researchers already have.
I’am not a native English speaker/reader/writer but even me gets out of his text that the issue is that the majority of funds is going elsewhere but not to possible researchers that are not in the ECC and this is clearly the main point he made in his post, which is just accurate and hits the current problem on the nail.
Just read it again and you will not the little difference. Actually thinking about it there has been even a period this amount of funds have not been enough even for the ECC itself, so what’s left for researchers outside the ECC.
I’am far away from saying the foundation isn’t doing their best to give independent researchers and devs some funding, but we all know these are more than limited cases & funds.
You are free to draw your own conclusions, but there is no evidence that having a couple centralized entities distributing funds somehow “shuts the door” and discourages participation.
This approach has been working fine for groups like the Ethereum Foundation and has been successful so far for many projects funded by the Zcash Foundation.
Yes, but Ethereum Foundation had a premine and are no longer receiving block rewards.
Zcash has backing from major exchanges (Coinbase, Gemini) and Grayscale. There’s interest in the project and it’s not necessary to tax miners.
And not to mention, there will be a loss of trust across the wider crypto community should there be protocol level changes that go against the original plan.
Actually there is. The ECC itself is the best example for this when it run at a deficit and might be right now near a deficit again at current exchange rates . Having this in mind while there are principally and in theory enough funds the ECC struggled themself some months ago, what’s left for the independent researcher & developer that wants to build for the Zcash blockchain.
Another (possible) evidience is the current ZF grants platform itself. It’s far from what it could offer, far from what developers could offer there, far from a lot of things IF more funds are funneled there instead elsewhere. To be fair, my personal opinion is that it’s a mix of reasons why the ZF grants platform is far from reaching it’s potential including it’s a new one, but as well including discourage, missing competition (who is competiting against a top funded ECC?, and so on. So if you think about there is indeed some reasoning in his claim.
I fully would agree with your argumentation IF all funds are allocated to researchers/developers through the ZF foundation grants platform for example, but that’s not the case as we all know, hence i agree that the current funding distribution is, to say it diplomaticly, not developer friendly at all and the majority of funds is not available for independed researchers/developers.
However, i don’t want to de-rail this thread either and will stop here and not comment further.
@Shawn while my personal view is currently to follow the original protocol specification unless there is substantial and well-understood consensus to the contrary, that is not the point of my thread (I only stated it for transparency). I believe that it’s not possible to form a fully-informed opinion about this without better information. I’m open to changing my view in the presence of better information.