Let’s Give ZEC Holders a Voice - feedback requested

Community Collaborations
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FWIW I appreciate the privacy concerns you and others have raised with this system. However, I know this will be non-binding and I adopt an @amiller mentality from the thread you linked back to:

The parts that resonate with me are:

their voices do matter and I want to help boost them.

&

What I do know is you made a deliberate speech act.

While the current coin-weighted voting system is not perfect and some individuals will abstain due to privacy concerns I do appreciate ECC’s desire to leverage a permission-less system to enable the voices of ZODLERS who cannot have their voice heard via ZCAP. There are some here who are passionate about the project, have good intent, and are not on the ZCAP like myself.

Personally, I have had periods of lurking, reserved engagement, or forum inactivity just like you, just like @steven-ecc, just like so many others who have come and left for a while due to toxicity present here. This and other life events in the past have led me to miss opportunities to join the ZCAP. I feel that a lot of us could be better listeners, better communicators, and perhaps be a little more mindful about other views.

Additionally, I personally have not engaged much in the past in prior governance conversations due to the fact that I knew that I was not on ZCAP and thus my voice would not be considered in the final tally. There are likely others like me out there. I have chosen to speak up and participate more this year regardless.

:clap: :clap:

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We all applaud the “voices heard” narrative, but it’s been two years and I’m still waiting for ECC to explain why voices can’t be heard via safe, privacy-preserving zecpages posts.

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I don’t see how zecpages could work. The purpose of using T-addresses is to try to minimize (as much as possible) the possibility that a large holder could be inflating the vote in their favor, is it not? I know it’s not perfect based on previous discussions you’ve highlighted, but if a large holder could make 1,000 posts @ .001 ZEC each spending only 1 ZEC to inflate the vote, that is much less useful than a system where you know that a sender sent only one message indicating their stance, is it not?

Am I missing something?

Could we design a system so that shielded funds could somehow be marked in the pool to delineate that they have been accounted for in the voting process? And if someone tries to rotate out and back into the pool before the capture window is up their original vote is no longer verifiable and nullified to prevent gaming the system? Maybe there’s previous discussion buried in here somewhere.

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@wobbzz, do we want voices heard, or weighed?

If you want voices heard then zecpages is perfect.

Conversely, if you want voices weighed, and you think that holding more coins means the holder’s opinion matters more…
Then first, this is suddenly less of a feel-good democracy-vibes happy-talk, right? I note that ECC did not title this post “Let’s Give Rich ZEC Whales A Voice”.
And second, what does “holding” even mean? Should the coins be locked? For how long? What happens if you need to move them between your own wallets? By the linked discussion, people don’t agree, and many versions are easy to manipulate!

So let’s not pretend that having good intents and saying nice words means that the first voting scheme we think of is any good. Getting voting right is hard, even before we add the extra complexity of doing it on a privacy-preserving blockchain using real money.

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I think the ECC made it very clear that they want voices weighed, specifically voices of investors, aka Zodlers, which is why I do not suggest Zecpages as a consensus gathering mechanism. Note: I edited the statement you quoted to say Zodlers so you do not interpret my support for this effort as a viable means to obtain democratic consensus. It was not my intent to frame this discussion this way.

You are right, the topic of this discussion is Let’s Give ZEC Holders a Voice. But you come across as though the voices of investors do not matter. Do you think the voices of investors matter?

FWIW I think both investors voices matter AND I believe in assessing the voice of the many through a democratic system. For now the best that this community has come up with for assessing many unique voices in a democratic fashion is the ZCAP. I’m not here to say whose opinion matters more or which group is larger at this point. But I do think it’s important to hear both perspectives and when we use results from these assessments their context is appropriately considered.

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The magnitude of their voice should not matter

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This argument is spot on.

Providing an opportunity for people to put forward, anonymously if they wish, arguments that may not otherwise have been considered, is a significantly less manipulable option than a coin-weighted vote. If two people make essentially the same argument, that needn’t and shouldn’t be viewed as twice as important as one person making the argument.

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Since we know that both zecpages and coin-weighted polling can be manipulated do you think it would be better if the ECC or ZF hosted a thread on Zecpages that people can respond to in addition to the coin weighted option? I certainly think it would be appropriate especially given the privacy concerns some have raised here (and I very much appreciate these concerns!).

But I also think coin-weighted voting is important for investors that want to express their voice as well. Investors play an important part of this ecosystem and amongst the group of investors, I think it’s important to establish what their priorities are as well.

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I think the magnitude of their voice should not outweigh the needs and desire of the democracy. 100% agree with that. I still think their voice is relevant and should be considered though. Coin-weighted voting gives them a voice and specifically helps identify the priorities the group of investors align with.

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Plutocracy replaces democracy, one takes money and the other takes effort. You’re using your voice right now to advocate for excusing what I might venture to define as some of the least philosophically aligned people in the world from having to do a fraction of what you are and they don’t deserve it.

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I’m advocating for the investors that have bought Zcash because they believe in the philosophical reasons behind why Zcash was created in the first place and want Zcash to succeed. I’m advocating for the people that have invested their time and money into mining, securing the network, and perhaps didn’t want to sell out of the vision completely. Plain and simple.

Yeah there are bad people out there that want to be manipulative and greedy. But there are also good people too and we shouldn’t look at all investors as bad apples that are here to turn this into a plutocracy.

Do you ever invest in things you believe in?

The overall cryptocurrency market cap appreciation that is occurring is bestowing wealth upon people who have come from humble beginnings, believe in decentralization, freedom of speech, financial freedom, privacy, and so much more simply because they mined or bought into a vision in the beginning and held on for 10 years or less.

Do you really want to alienate those people when they are here to support Zcash? Their Zodling helps create a floor for the price of ZEC that keeps grants, this forum, ZF/ECC development, etc funded.

I advise caution when broadly referring to investors as philosophically misaligned and looking to establish a plutocracy. You run the risk of alienating well intentioned people and making them not want to support the project.

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33

Right ! I think the ECC has invested heavily in R&D all these years and has made such groundwork and important milestones that now they can rightfully direct their focus towards “what the market want”, eg listening to Zcash investors in order to reap the fruits of hard work.

If I may – and I don’t want to be mean to seed investors / founding team, because I respect their help to the core of what is Zcash – here’s what I perceive : it’s a bit rich that inactive people feel they are entitled to criticize the only team that actually maintain the only working node zcashd, the ECC. Moreover, the ECC isn’t even getting the biggest slice of the dev fund reward, can you imagine how frustratring that should be ? Yet, the ECC members are so sweet & helping, they are imho incredibly strong mentally to take all the flak.
Some people walk the talk, and others just talk the talk… and I’m sorry but it doesn’t look sustainable and healthy in the long run.

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We’re here to win. :wink:

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35

Well if your advocacy is ever reciprocated here then I’ll stand corrected but I think that will have (by demonstration) negated the need for all this.

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Right now, in terms of making protocol upgrades, Zcash is a 2-of-2 multisig governance model between ECC and ZF. ZCAP exists, but only as an “advisor” to ZF. ZF can vote against ZCAP’s recommendation. ZOMG does not have a vote as it is not an independent entity.

As Zcash becomes more decentralized, I would love to see coinholder voting play a role. Currently, it’s controversial because it favors founder’s reward recipients who hold large amounts of ZEC. But at some point in the future, large amounts of money from institutions and ultra high net worth individuals will flow into ZEC, and these investors will want their coin-weighted voices heard. I think that will be a good thing. Their participation in coinholder voting will help level the playing field, albeit among whales.

I agree pure on-chain governance would result in a plutocratic system controlled by the rich. I don’t want that. But what if, for argument’s sake, a future iteration of Zcash governance looked something like this (% = % of vote):

  • ECC: 20%
  • Zcash Foundation: 20%
  • ZOMG: 20%
  • ZCAP (or similar community representation): 20%
  • Coinholders: 20%

Does coinholder voting seem so bad in this scenario? It’s really just another input in a more decentralized governance process. Note: I gave all entities 20% to make it simple.

I agree with @steven-ecc. I’m happy to see ECC facilitate a non-binding poll, and I look forward to future discussions on this topic.

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This post mixes a legitimate point with thinly veiled insinuations that ECC and/or I personally am being dishonest.

I believe that such accusations are harmful, both to ECC’s employees (including me) but more generally to the Zcash community and to the success of their mission. I urge the Zcash community to notice and pay attention to this pattern.

I will not be replying to (or reading) any such posts going forward. ECC’s stated reasons for listening to the voices of Coin Holders (ZECers) are our actual reasons.

Not every employee of ECC agrees with every reason (of course), but every employee of ECC is a person of honor and integrity who works very hard every day to bring economic freedom to every citizen of the Earth. None of us deserve to be smeared with accusations of ill intent, and going forward I won’t dishonor my colleagues or myself by acknowledging this sort of maneuver.

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I second this, the Zcash community needs to find patterns of incompatible behavior. In any other blockchain project, members would raise eyebrows when contributors are not getting along and moving the mission in forward direction.

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40

Hi Zooko,
My point, precisely, was these concerns will be raised and we will not have good answers.
The entire point of cryptography is reasoning about security. And one of the things you have to do there is model adversarial behavior. Whats the worst case? And in this case, the worst case is the person designing, proposing, or advancing a cryptographic system (i.e., the coin holder vote) is out to get you.

I’m genuinely sorry if that made you feel hurt, but the details of the adversarial model are necessary in this case. Especially to make the point that others will ask these questions. It’s not just a hypothetical, it’s a legitimacy concern. And, given the way cryptocurrency reacts to things, the people who ask will not feel bad if they smear you, me, or anyone else in the process.

This thread has gotten really long and we’ve lost site of the question: how is this secure? how do we convince people it’s secure. And I’d like to thank @tromer and @daira for pointing out that all of these questions have been asked before, for nearly two years, every time this kind of vote is proposed and we don’t have answers on how to show this proposed vote is legitimate. And in fact, we have even more security questions that I thought about privacy, security of funds, etc.

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41

Hi @elenita, my feedback is that well before the poll occurs the ECC needs to predefine and commit to specific goalposts about minimum participation levels and how certain vote percentages will be interpreted. Otherwise, there is no way for an outside observer to tell whether the poll results are being relied upon (or ignored) in a biased way. Specifically:

  1. What minimum level of participation (in terms of number of coins) is required for the vote to be considered a legitimate expression of coinholder sentiment? Obviously, if only 100 coins vote, the result should be thrown out. But what minimum number of coins is required? Once that number is defined well in advance, the ECC should commit to rejecting the results of the poll if the minimum number is not met and also commit to recognizing the results as legitimate if the minimum number is indeed met.

  2. Assuming the minimum participation threshold is met, what voting percentage is required to conclude that support for a given proposal is strong? For example, let’s say the poll question is:

    Do you support Zcash transitioning to full or partial Proof of Stake?

    Let’s say the results are 55% YES and 45% NO. In advance of the poll, the ECC should commit to the rules for how this particular outcome will be interpreted. For example, a potential predefined rule might be:

    • 60% or more YES shall be interpreted as STRONG support.

    • Between 40% and 60% YES shall be interpreted as an AMBIVALENT result.

    • 40% or less YES shall be interpreted as WEAK support.

    The ECC can choose whatever percentage thresholds it likes, but those thresholds should be published well in advance of the poll.

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42

I’m speaking for myself here, and not in any way should my position be seen to reflect the opinion of the ECC.

I think that you could publish whatever goal posts you wish, and the resulting system would still be manipulable by adversaries who are willing to launch sybil attacks or borrow coins to attempt to influence the outcome of the poll. Given that, I see this polling as more of a curiosity or experiment than something that can produce real actionable information. I felt the same way about the recent ZCAP poll, for different reasons.

That being said, I think that it’s not an entirely useless experiment: it can tell us what number of coins an engaged subset of the community are willing to take the effort to reveal in order to make their voices heard. That’s an interesting baseline statistic to gather. Unfortunately I don’t think that this poll can reliably determine much more than that, but the idea of coin-weighted governance is one that is being broadly explored in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, and I think it’s worthwhile to keep doing periodic experiments on this front within the Zcash community.

Along those lines, I do think that in the slightly-more-distant future, coin-weighted polling could be improved to the point of usefulness. In particular, if Zcash switches over to a proof-of-stake consensus model, something that’s very interesting to me is having the weight factor be a function of both amount and the duration for which that amount has been staked, as this could address some threat models (for example, that could make borrowing coins to vote a relatively difficult/expensive attack strategy).

Finally, I’d like to point to a form of coin-weighted voting that the Zcash community could choose to invest in more heavily, which is the Gitcoin quadratic funding model. Those folks are doing serious work on sybil resistance, and have already done a fair amount of work to integrate Zcash into their funding stack. I really hope that ZOMG in particular chooses in the future to disburse some of their funding via grants. For the purpose of helping inform the direction chosen by ECC and the ZF, perhaps an approach we could try is to use a Gitcoin grant round to raise funds for a charitable cause - say a donation to Coin Center or something of the sort - where the different options that people could “vote” on with their donations are the different options that would otherwise be presented in a poll like the one we’re discussing here.

Coin-weighted voting using Zcash is interesting and something we should continue to explore, but that doesn’t mean we have to implement it all ourselves, and we should be very circumspect in the authority we ascribe to the result of one of these polls until many of the issues are able to be addressed. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do them, of course - just that we should interpret the results in full recognition of the obvious limitations of the current method. And as the tools we have improve, maybe we can make it good enough so that we can, as a community, take whatever results we get more seriously.

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