Lawzec for major grants review committee

Governance
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law is politics. money is order.

i am a former US based public interest attorney, with the position being obviated by the people’s legalization of cannabis in the state of where i have a law license. prior to lawyering, i had a student’s participation in free market think tanks. during the time of my internment to the law, i became interested in financial cryptography and alternative governance. in my daily work, i have had a nagging continued thought about separating money from criminal procedure.

law enforcement is active entrenchment and compelled support for the ruling monetary order. should you be charged with a crime, wrongly or rightly, you will pay your lawyer in your sovereign’s currency. you will pay your fine in sovereign’s currency. in my work, the charges that my clients saw were political (a matter of a few votes at the ballot box) and he charges were used to extract currency under civil forfeiture laws. even if we then sued the police for civil rights violations, my client only stood to be recompensed in USD. the judges, the bailiffs, the court reporters, and the police will continue to be paid in the currency supporting their policy positions. nothing i said, wrote, or did as a lawyer even upon successful appellate decisions impacted the quality of life for my clients and people like them.

as i wrote objections, briefs, and appeals, i realized that the order of sovereign control of the monetary system even reduced my occupation, despite working against the status quo, to never being able to upset any apple cart of the criminal justice system. the freedom gained was piecemeal and only one starfish would be returned to the ocean costing my hundreds of hours of my life. accordingly, after the 2017-18 bubble, i exited law.

i’m writing this community as a long time lurker and a passive investor seeking to considered for the MGRC, or in the alternative to plant the seed in the minds of those prevailing to the MGRC to focus on trying to intersect law, politics, and money. I would spend my time seeking or creating an organizations that would promote the use of zcash in the legal industry, particularly criminal defense. no wrongfully charged individual should have to pay to support a system that wrongly punishes him. such individual should have the chance to at very support his own community when facing the law enforcement machine. i believe such a strategy is for the common good, is uniquely marketable from the zcash community.

thank you for your consideration.

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Welcome to the forums @lawzec! :slightly_smiling_face:

I have added a link to your post in the top of the Megathread, Good Luck!

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Wow! Interesting perspective! I would definitely prefer an attorney who accepted Zcash.

I wonder if there’s some sort of clearing house for exactly that? Like a subsection of:

https://paywithz.cash/

?

There’s been a recent shift in the economics of the Rust programming language that much of the Zcash technology is built with.

Here’s a link describing how the Rust language community plans to reorganize:

Do you see a role for the MGRC in this transition?

Should we just send “The Rust Core Team” the Zecwallet link and tell them to publish a zaddr?

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@lawzec i like the cut of your jib. you could help MGRC advance across borders strategically. would you be willing to reveal your true identity?

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admittedly, i have been thinking every day since that perhaps the MGRC is not for me, because it does make sense that the community would want to know who is voting. and, even if i fail to be voted to the MGRC, i do feel that exposing my identity would be a meaningful life decision for me. while my identity is nothing notable, i cherish the little privacy i have.

when i made the determination to even submit my intent to be considered i assumed that my work for MGRC would be largely quiet review alone of the projects and then voting with the MGRC. it does seem that other candidates are taking a more active and expressive view of the role of the MGRC, which isn’t precisely my style. i opted out of politics not to sign up for a different version of it. additionally, there are some truly stellar candidates with far more technical expertise and community experience (i cannot write code, and can only parse some familiar directives. however proper legal writing is a very old fashioned code)

I did tell @Souptacular that I would participate in his MGRC showcase, but i really have nothing more to say than i am much more of a bitcoiner than a blockchainer. i think anyone who is writing and reading these forums understands the distinctions, so I will spare you a recitation for its all been said before. perhaps that makes me a fuddy duddy, but its from those principles in how i will be reviewing and voting on projects, and i’m not sure what else anyone would really need to know after that.

i am here for the privacy that bitcoin does not offer. and the super active gardening club, which makes me so incredibly bullish.

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There are a few lawyers who are known to accept Zcash. And if you know of one not listed here, please let me know and I’ll include them!
https://paywithz.cash/legal

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You’re not the only applicant to express concerns about this. As a ZCAP voter, I think it is fine for applicants to stay pseudonymous, only revealing their identity as needed with the people they are working with directly.

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hey @lawzec,

I was wondering, seeing as contract law is really complicated, and we would like to try to put some novelish stuff in grants, like obliging recipients to undertake certain software security testing as a part of their grant. would you be able to give input on this?

I wouldn’t expect you to actually write anything legal, just know about the legal aspects of the types of profit clauses that can be included, probably some 501 stuff too (i really am not a lawyer, not even a wikipedia lawyer) -

quite a few candidates are bringing tech skills to the table, so they can apply passive tech knowledge. do you think passive lawyering knowledge would be of benefit to the MGRC? if so how, and could you give an example of something similar in your history? (where passive lawyering came in handy)

A follow up question is does the structure of the grants for projects not expected to ROI significantly change any of the “requirements” that can be included.

I really know nothing about law, so sorry if this is a really stupid question. I assume that the different areas of law share a similar yet maybe slightly different language (like tech) - If you needed to look something up that wasnt in your area, would you know where to go and how to interpret the text.

What’s your cryptocurrency law like? (again just wondering if you keep up with stuff.)

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Blockquote would you be able to give input on [terms of grants]?

Blockquote wouldn’t expect you to actually write anything legal.

Blockquote passive lawyering

Blockquote What’s your cryptocurrency law like? (again just wondering if you keep up with stuff).

Once you have the lawyer disease, it takes time to recover – can’t make it just go away. That said, I will utilize all of my experience in making determinations, however i read that our role on MGRC is to vote, and many of these details will likely be handled by the Foundation. However, I would hope that it not outside the scope of the role of the MGRC to review the proposals and provide feedback to grant seekers asking for certain amendments or concessions be made in order to award a grant. I should note that unless we have personal guarantees from proposal seekers, as when an UTXO is spent, the credit and collection side of law is barely much better at getting your funds back. Can’t get blood from a stone, as they say.

As you may have read, I have experience in law surrounding all aspects of cannabis. When cannabis trade was in its early stages of grey market recognition, contracts were generally unlawful. (I actually prevailed for the benefit of a defendant in the first published opinion regarding the enforceability of marijuana contracts in my jurisdiction). While I would like to compare that similarity to “cryptocurrencies” with nascent legal recognition, the plain fact is they are miles apart. Firstly, legal attention is being placed on regulatory matters, not relationships between parties, and scrivener miners don’t make many errors.

I do keep up, and have kept up seriously since Coinbase gave my SSN to the IRS in early 2018. Here’s a recent contract case with the aforementioned that I’m sure plenty of us would find of interest: https://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/documents/A157690.PDF

But, to say more than you asked, for purpose of giving any reader more flavor to where I’m calling from, and where my experience was really focused in the public interest side of marijuana lawyering, I’m going to say a little more. Law is politics. In my jurisdiction, citizens have the supposed right to initiative and referendum, meaning that people can collect signatures and place on voting ballots a proposal to change law circumventing the legislature. However, the courts did not respect the People’s Will. Period. The plain language of what my entire state voted overwhelming to pass was ignored by the state government, police, courts, local officials, regulators, everyone in political power. Thousands of people still went to jail. Thus, the import of my advocacy on behalf cannabis community was to argue to courts that the political action of the people’s initiative and referendum is direct democracy, which is more than Lockean tacit consent of the governed that strips back the authority of rulemaking back from the state. Accordingly, my state was in violation of federal guarantees. But, because law is just politics, the direct legal democracy had no force. Federal judges didn’t care. State judges didn’t care. It was not until civil forfeiture was repealed, which took money out the governments pocket, did raids stop occurring, because there was no incentive… Money is Order. To me, the efforts in this space are analogous to the direct act of the people stripping back Order from the state.

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Candidacy may not be for everyone, but your perspective can certainly help. It is illuminating to think of law and code and its intersection with money and politics. I hope you will continue to contribute your professional insights whether or not you are on the 5-member committee.

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i’ll be here regardless.

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I watched the Q&A sessions, and I am radically different than those running.

I appreciate the appeal of a can-do, always iterating, active dealflow attitude, but this should neither be the nature of the review committee nor a currency with a hard cap! Should the power of this entity be spending the communities coins, then there should just be a repeal of the zip and in its place a community treasury model with direct democratic on chain voting, removing what would be busy-bodies or vectors for centralization and gatekeeping. I agree with @tm3k’s recent post about the importance of thrift in times of excess. I am also dismayed that many candidates are reinventing the wheel creating a constitution, founding documents, bi-laws, while ignoring the language of the ZIP and the obvious supremacy of the ZF. It is really important that candidates read the ZIP. Additionally, I am wary that should we lose focus on the role of the MGRC, this will just turn into a waste of resources administrating and bureaucratizing to nowhere, which has quite obviously plagued the ethereum community. My answers to the questions posed during the Q&A should be natural conclusions of my prior statements, but should we permit iterators and managers to take over GOVERNANCE, all is lost to whims of a very few.

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I agree with this sentiment, but disagree that it requires repealing the ZIP. Quoting from ZIP-1014:

It is highly desirable to develop robust means of decentralized community voting and governance –either by expanding the Community Panel or a successor mechanism– and to integrate them into this process by the end of 2021. ECC and ZF SHOULD place high priority on such development and its deployment, in their activities and grant selection.

So yes, we have a clear mandate to further decentralize the governance process, but we also have the time to do it carefully and intentionally, learning from those that have gone before us and made mistakes. It’s not going to go well if done hastily. To do it right is also going to require that people lean into the work of creating the next iteration of the governance architecture.

DC

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i am feeling like a curmudgeon here, and I don’t know what good it does my candidacy to advocate to adhering to the strict language of the zip should even ECC team members encourage liberalized interpretations of the zip. yes, it is quite an undertaking to be responsible for 8% of the communities coins, however, i understood this was a review committee, not the direct spender of the coins. We are merely a democratic check on the full control over the use of these coins that were once designated for the ZF and miners anyway. I disagree that MGRC has any directive to ossify or any authority to reconstitute or self-fund.

to speak plainly, i am relatively appreciable holder of ZEC. the value add by being a committee review member from this is preservation of my interest in ZEC. simply put, i am looking after my investment. in this respect, and given the sudden appearance of classic and vitalik bureaucracy club people and their recent spaghetti code de-bacles, I am not interested in creating an additional treasury mine available to contractors despite being five extremely competent and well intentioned community members in their central planning efforts.

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Hello @lawzec For my vote, please answer my questions frankly:

  1. Are you pro BTC? If yes, Why? If not, Why?
  2. What is the largest account size you’ve handled in USD? How many end users did it impact?
  3. MGRC will control 8640 ZEC per month or 25920 per quarter, how will this be roughly spent? (provide napkin calculation).
  4. MGRC announcement attracts 100s of applicants from all over the world with all random ideas, all matching your goals, how would you evaluate them?
  5. KPIs aren’t entirely possible on a privacy preserving payments protocol project’s level, it’s all z2z, how will you evaluate funded team’s impact?
  6. DeFi fever made ETH run 2x compared to every cryptocurrency this year, thoughts?
  7. What locals, regions, languages, ethnicities, educational backgrounds of people have you worked with? What are your preferences of assembling teams that deliver?
  8. We live in a remote world now, how do you evaluate applicants for grants?
  9. Projects in Zcash are going to go through a huge change beyond the handful, driven teams funded via Zcash Foundation, thoughts?
  10. Zcash is a protocol at its core, ZEC price is volatile. How will you handle a single digit ZEC? ($9 x 8640/month = $77,760) How will you handle a 5 digit ZEC? ($21,000 x 8640/month = $181.44MM) Thoughts…
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  1. I am bullish on BTC on the long term and it represents my largest allocation of my wealth, but I am not excessively bullish because the distribution of holders will permit whales to slowly divest over the following decades. I learned about bitcoin in 2012 at a conference from a notable writer in the space, but it didn’t just click. Sad face. As I watched bitcoin peak at $1,000 in 2014 and it became the conversation of my more normal libertarian friends, I was looking to buy the dip based purely on technicals alone. However, not giving bitcoin a full study left me to make the some disastrous and unfortunate conventional purchases and meatspace investments to celebrating my conventional decent gains using that bitcoin in early 2016. Unfortunately, I did not give proper study to the space until after the 2017 peak. Fully recognizing what I had done, I spent this bear cycle securing a lifetime hold. I will not make the same mistake I made in 2016. I am still concerned about regulatory issues surrounding Brock Pierce and friends and their magic tether machine. I do not think that bitcoin is guaranteed a certain USD price simply based on stock to flow or whatever the bitcoin twitter charts suggest. The study of the space led me to zcash.

  2. I have been managing my own accounts since I was 18 (worked at a discount broker through college), and will not address the size.

  3. It depends on how the MGRC votes. I favor larger grants.

  4. I am a fan of the unconventional. I am looking for a viral hit. I think the value of the MGRC is a potential new vision of less technical members through studied deliberation. The ECC and ZF are responsible for infrastructure, while MGRC can be more adventurous, but not downright silly. As I was saying on the call, I am interested in alternatives to AirBnB and short term rentals. Perhaps digital nomads have fewer allegiances, but traveling privately is relatively nonexistent. let your mind go wild with the product name z2zdoors.

  5. I have mentioned earlier that grants should be issued to transparent addresses. like I’ve also said in earlier post, the idea of maintaining contact with recipients of grants leads to a conclusion of longer term projects with small milestones.

  6. I am decidedly bearish on Ethereum, and DeFi is a marketing misnomer. I think that we will see the most abusive ethereum promoters at least successfully sued civilly and DeFi “devs” potentially charged criminally this cycle. However, my past track record with ether isnt stellar, I bought Ether on Coinbase at $7-15, sold it too soon of course, and gave it solid study only after fomoing it near the top. Anyway, I think I’m more capable now, and believe that ethereum will be the poster child for the next extended bear. tragedy of the commons. zcash is in a powerful position to benefit long term from ethereum’s demise.

  7. I am an english only speaker. US based. In cannabis reform, I have met people from all walks of life. I’m a lawyer, so I am not responsible for team execution, but I’ve sat through plenty of corporate decision making events. It’s the red flags that guide me away from bad decisions.

  8. Study and investigation. That’s really it.

  9. Can you restate your question? I think this relates to my answer above about MGRC being able to move more boldly than ZF or ECC.

  10. I am short term bearish for macro reasons and ethereum defi and degeneracy that makes the space further unattractive. I do not think that a five digit zcash price is realistic within 2-3 years, but should it happen, I think then the MGRC has clearly succeeded in finding that viral hit, and it no longer is necessary, but can unfold into a more active community management style that many community members want. I also think a single digit price is also unrealistic, but I will begin establishing a sizeable lifetime zcash hold during this bear market just like my lifetime bitcoin hold in the last bear should that occur. I’ve already shared more thoughts here: Price Speculation - #7168 by lawzec

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