I meant that if we have the same number of transactions again, the same issues with wallets, etc. will happen. At this point, we have <1 shielded tx / block, therefore apps are cruising like they were pre-spam.
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Hmmm point taken, but adoption is a double edged sword, you will always get congestion and bloat issues with more people using the chain.
Unfortunately you can’t get the price to go up without users buying in, imo we should use the available blockspace to attract people to the ecosystem otherwise we will just alone on the island and broke, but with fast transactions
This is why we need fees. we need to unlock the use cases from the dev fund a liberate development and reduce risk for zec holders. Why? it’s very risky to invest in these ideas. some will work some will not. The fee split will enable people like you with these ideas to raise money and fund development, take on the development risk. You charge a customer a fee and the fee is split with some % going to the zcash blockchain and some % going to you. This is what decentralization looks like.
zcash should be focused on the core blockchain, and money and not the other use cases. those should be truly decentralized, created and funded by third parties.
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You seem to imply that apps cannot charge for their services. They absolutely can.
However, at the moment, there are no “killer-app” that would be in the position to charge more than a a tiny fee (0.0001 zec for example).
If you have an idea 
of such app, we are all ears.
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that’s the point! we should not be funding ideas that are not killer ideas/apps. we end up funding highly speculative ideas that don’t result in demand and/or higher transaction volume.
if apps can charge, why are so many people asking for money from the dev fund? the dev fund should be closed to funding so many highly risky, duplicative and non core development requests…it’s not at all clear to me from any of the education materials how developers can build on top of zcash and charge their own fees. if we can de risk development so third parties can fund and charge fees (and we collect a block chain fee as part of their fees) that’s progress.
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Because the apps that are funded are basically your infrastructure … Roads and bridges
Users expect to have them but aren’t going to pay for them.
There aren’t killerapps because of the lack of dev framework, programmability, etc…
For example, I had an idea for shielded swaps Bitcoin vs zcash. But the work required is a lot.
I will probably never break even in your fee model.
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doesn’t that also mean zec holders will never get their money back? i get the roads/bridges analogy. and agree we need to fund core infrastructure. but we need to make sure we are not building bridges to nowhere. if people really want a zec/bitcoin swap, it should break even over a 4-5 year timeframe. we need a framework to prioritize development. the faster the expected payback, the more important it is to fund
i pay crazy fees for ethereum ecosystem, they charge for everything .
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It means that an app store doesn’t work for zcash presently.
People tend to want things for free. The break-even depends on the cost. For zcash, dev is very costly. Look at ZSA for example, or even shielded wallets. This is the consequence of being cutting-edge in ZKP. There is no paved road here. We are cutting through the jungle with a machete.
If you take a similar use case on ETH, you can see that Uniswap has a much easier life. Devs can use a high-level programming language, there are many audit companies and finally and most importantly, their work immediately applies to hundreds of pairs because all these tokens use the same contract interface.
Now with Zcash, well… just read the ZSA ZIP and you’ll see.
At least with swaps you have a clear monetization strategy. With ZSA, I don’t think there is one at this point.
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understood. thats a problem.
it’s also why microsoft and these other platforms are so successful. they create the tools to make development easier to build on their ecosystem. then they decentralize development, reduce costs, and risk where developers build the apps using their tools.
i disagree people want things for free. they want value for their money. so targeting the people who want things for free is a very bad strategy; especially if you don’t want to work for free… high value and a good price is the best place. and it has to be done within the competitive environment. For example, transactions market pricing is around 3% (visa). that creates a lot of room to add value for private transactions using the blockchain tech at a much lower price and still be hugely economically viable.
I really liked/like ZECPages as an example of a fun app using Zcash memo field.
Now, envision a Disqus-like system built on this. Enter a URL, and instantly create a resilient comment thread. As you browse, each site is paired with a discussion (or not – you may need to seed it yourself), immune to downtime. It also archives page snapshots on IPFS (Filecoin), ensuring context remains, even if the site disappears.
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Great, it could be built. But each message would need 1.25 minutes to get posted and they will cost a bit.
But definitely a good idea, imo.
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Visa mostly makes money from the exorbitant interest rates they charge on credit cards.
And yet, they were losing money while they built their network.
Zcash pretty much failed to build that.
Currently, fees are 0.6 cent per transaction. You can send 1 million $ and pay 0.006 $.
And yet, the blocks are empty.
Therefore if a wallet dev was relying on the fees for revenue, he will definitely not make it.
In other words, I think that what people consider a fair price is often not related to the cost.
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Absolutely!!! 
visa has a profit margin of 50% or more. they make a lot of money on the network; but they also decentralize the edge which is why the machines are not visa. so they share the 3%
similar concept to why a good developer makes 500/hr and a average developer makes 50/hr (it’s the same cost to each person in time)… price is based on the value add…what people are willing to pay and how valuable the product is…
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investors will fund losses, but they need to see a viable business model. is charging 0.006 viable? it basically says privacey based transactions are not worth anything. in my opinion. the market is saying show us a model that works. show us a vision for privacy and how the blockchain is useful. my belief is zcash should be the blockchain of money and that goes far beyond zec to bring privacy to all regardless of what they choose as their preferred store of value. USD just happens to be the most obvious. but i really don’t care if it’s beads or corn husks…just put it on the blockchain
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You can try charging more but if you have no customers when they pay tiny fees, do you expect them to come when you raise them?
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2% fee is less than visa. and the target customers won’t even feel 25-50 cents or less. so yes i do expect them to come if privacy is a thing.
that also gives investors confidence this is is a viable ecosystem. and the fees is what pays for more value added development and gives people like you visibility on how to risk you time and effort to the extent you wanted to create something. i’ll say it until i sell zec and lose faith, but block rewards needs to end at some point so we might as well show people how and the sooner the better
Well, there are not coming. It is a fact. The blocks are empty. I really don’t know how to say it in other ways. Privacy is not the only thing needed. It is like a restaurant. You could have great food, but if you don’t have good service, good location, etc. you still are going to fail.
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agree. but if you give away the food for free, how do you buy more food and pay rent etc etc…block rewards are funded by investors. they need to see a viable model. if people are subsidizing it, don’t you think they get tired of paying for someone else’s food (or they too just run out of money)
Its very hard if not impossible for investors to buy into zec without a fee structure or clear path to get off block rewards. with a viable business plan, the price can go a lot higher.
then focused smart development needs to execute and build out a blockchain with assets people can use. the fees also help decentralize development.
we have a lot in the pipeline. it needs to be prioritized. and hopefully it’s works, is fast and scales. but again hard to own zec when it’s based on selling more zec and not funded directly by the ecosystem itself. like you said no one is using zec, so when do we recognize this fact, reduce costs, and build accordingly.
the boat has a leak (block rewards) and no plan on how to stop the leak.
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The fee is higher than it would be under natural market conditions. If you based it on offer vs demand, well, there is nearly no demand…
The issue is not with the fee but that there are not enough compelling reasons to transact.
I think you are mixing up two kinds of fees. There are protocol fees and there are application fees.
Protocol fees are based on transaction “complexity” (size + cpu cycles required to validate), never on the amount. At least that is the case for every single cryptocurrency out there. Changing that would be met with strong opposition. Even if you could, doing so would reveal information about the amount (since the fee is public data) and negatively impact privacy.
And then there are application fees. Apps can charge whatever they want. For example, ZecPages charges 0.0001 ZEC per message. Uniswap charges 0.3%., etc.
Now, if I understand correctly, you are saying apps should start charging more for their services and not rely on the devfund. That will show that they are self-sustainable and do not survive on some life support.
Ok, that is a fair point. But in practice, I cannot find a single case of an app that would cover its development costs under that model. Therefore, you wouldn’t have any wallet, any payment platform, no free2z, nothing, … just zcashd because it is exempted from needing to be profitable.
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i’m not mixing up anything . we need both fees that support the zcash ecosystem and the app. it’s why i’m pounding the table on private stablecoins and ZSA…we need products that generate the transaction fees. the blockchain requires a lot of scale to be sustainable and pay people like you. it’s clear to me zec won’t cut it on its own. and luckily we are building them! ideally it creates a privacy based ecosystem with a suite of monetary products.
There are so many that are transition with the right models. ethereim clearly doing it. albeit with a slightly different mechanism. but it works and the burn mechanism keeps the ecosystem stable at a market cap at 257b! filecoin, Ampera protocol, centrifuge, a long list of them.
ledger? they have the right model. we pay to get on their platform!
metamask? there a tons of VC backed ethereim walllets, apps, L2 chains, they arnt doing it for their health. it’s to create valuable products.
moving to PoS will help us too because we need to get costs down.
it’s just basic economics that the projects that can’t find a customer base will not make it. if we want to give things away for free we need to move to community volunteer based development. maybe that’s were we end up. but even then we have the mining costs and who is supposed to pay for those?