Moving the Dev Fund discussion forward

@Dodger, will you respond to my question?

A “non-direct / grants based” dev fund is outside the scope of this exploratory poll.

This poll is intended to explore community sentiment regarding what they would like to see happen in November. It’s not intended to solicit input on what should happen beyond that.

So, your answers should reflect what you want to see happen in November.

Assuming that the proposal you’ve put forward (Draft ZIP to modify ZIP 1014: Extending the Dev Fund by one year) is what you want to see happen, you should select the answers that most closely match that proposal, e.g.: Q1: Yes; Q2: No; Q3: 1 year; Q4: BP, ZCG, ZF.

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It feels like we need a “Polling Best Practices & Discussions” thread.
In the meantime, I’ll ask here.

For any pollsters, would you consider asking a question of this nature:

Do you support a post-halving mandate for building the DAO funding mechanism, if that work will have a negative impact on current Zcash project deliverables?; such as Proof of Stake/ Hybrid PoWS, ZSAs, zcashd deprecation, Zashi enhancement, shielded hardware wallet availability, DEX integrations, et al

“Should the DAO mandate be a funded initiative?” would also be nice to gauge sentiment about.

The current trend in ecosystem discussions seems to be slowly consolidating around: Y/N to direct vs indirect funding of existing orgs, Y/N as to having any % not allocated to miners, Y/N to mandating an ecosystem DAO for future funds allocations vs hoping & praying that it happens naturally, 1-4 as preference of years for a hypothetical extension of the existing Dev Fund implementation


On this topic, I don’t see the friction. Building and deploying an Ecosystem wide DAO, with technologies that don’t exist yet nor are they on any current roadmaps, is out of scope for November.

It doesn’t seem at all maligned, or misleading, that the ZF polls aren’t focused on that concept.

The consensus seems strong, most of the engaged folks in the ecosystem are in generic support of a DAO like funding institution. But the reasonable question for now is about what needs to happen to the protocol in November. Whether a DAO gets mandated to happen in the future or not… it doesn’t have anything to do with the Zcash protocol (instead, it has to do with the words that fill out a presumable ZIP-1014 like artifact for the future).

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I interpret that as your inability to respond to criticism with a reasonable explanation of your actions. Again, I’ve already read your post. My post was a response to that post. I know how to read and retain information. Copying parts of it here again doesn’t add anything new to the discussion.

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This is another word salad dressed to look like a legitimate response. Here’s what Dodger is actually saying:

“A non-direct / grants-based dev fund is outside the scope of what I want the community to express their opinions on.

This poll is intended to explore community sentiment regarding what I would like to see happen in November. Since I am ZCAP’s gatekeeper, I decide what it should explore, not any of you.

So, if the Dev Fund proposal you support doesn’t fit my agenda, good luck figuring out a workaround and choosing the answers that reflect what you want to see happen in November.”

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With an axe to grind we could pick apart any of the other polls similarly. It’s not a perfect poll but none of them are.

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Please do. It’s called feedback. Although, when the quality of work is this low, it could feel like “an axe to grind.”
I implemented about 90% of the feedback I received into my survey. It’s called “collaboration.”

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Perhaps this whole edit to your comment should’ve been a new comment, especially since it quotes me out of context seemingly before I even make the full comment.

In any case, choosing the non-direct funding route before, in, or after November does not require any new technologies, and there’s more than one way to roll out a non-direct funding model. We have talented engineers that build amazing things. Maybe we could just figure out, with their guidance, what is possible and what we want built, and then let them build it.

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I only edited in the other topic with your quote, which is actually a Dodger quote, for the sake of keeping this thread less fast paced. I didn’t mean to apply any sneaky contexts to your back and forth with the rest of the thread.

When I’m suggesting technologies that don’t exist yet, I’m in a generic sense, taking Josh’s diagram at face value to mean what we’re all now calling a DAO or a non-direct/ grants based model. (copy pasted from here)

image

Quadratic Coinholder Voting doesn’t exist afaik, although we do know that @hanh has demoed some concepts.

And unless I’m mistaken, neither does the bigger framework that we can call “multi-signature controlled pool/ wallet/ fund of ZEC” because that is assuming something like the ZSF to exist, where these DAO ZEC of the future would be allocated from.


Now that I’ve looked at that diagram again, I wonder if we ought to also include a Miner controlled signature input to the Dev Fund/ DAO. It seems to me that miners deserve a voice in the process too.

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this discussion shows that the dev fund needs to get cancelled and we have to go to a direct funding model.

give a small portion of the mining rewards to ZCG or a DAO and lets move on. the community doesn’t want to fund the ORG’s for more years in the future. ECC doesn’t want it either. the only entity holding this back seems to be the foundation?

ECC and the Foundation hold enough assets to keep moving for a year or even more.
Let’s try something new and show a strong signal to the community that we are all in on Zcash!

the protocol belongs to the community and we need a voting mechanism with coins.
all these polls will never reflect the community as a whole.

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I agree with you, 100 percent we have to break the old chains of the past like really. ECC need to write up a clear SLA on how Dev fund will be use. Zcash need to really write an SLA plan because this not Productive it’s too many polls with the same questions. When an SLA agreement is needed the only thing, we need right now. 1.We need to name the parties who will receive the funds. 2. Define the time periods in which funds will be distributed.
3. how the new team/dev fund if added a clear break down on the structure of funds how and will how services will be provided, plus anything the community can add that will help the setup of dev funds a clear SLA will help.

SLA is needed.

My option for November is simple technically: start socking away a portion of the block reward for a future decentralized disbursement mechanism.

The non-technical, social part is perhaps more difficult but possible: between now and November, the community must come up with basic principles, a straightforward constitution, defining what a minimum viable disbursement implementation must conform to before funds can be moved.

Accumulating ZEC which is dedicated to the future of the Zcash protocol and ecosystem will be extremely good for Zcash’s long-term prospects.

So, to reiterate, this preference is very far from either option presented in the ZCAP polls - neither 100% for miners nor any continuation of the current direct funding streams.

Perhaps the disconnect is that some folks can’t understand committing to such uncertainty. Maybe it’s a difference in personality types. I’m extremely comfortable with the idea of socking away unallocated funds for the future on a TBD basis - starting in November. I think it’s downright exciting and will drive efficiency, incentives, innovation, marketing, and optimism for years to come.

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I believe the frustration from the community isn’t about the poll’s perfection, but rather about feeling that their feedback isn’t being acknowledged. Statistically, it seems unlikely that, despite @dodger’s request for feedback, the only valuable suggestions were:

  1. Changing Q1 to a Yes/No format.
  2. Adding “18 months” as an option.
  3. Including the “Legal Defense Fund” option, which lacked detailed explanation.

@conradoplg, while we could debate the nuances of polling methods indefinitely, the core issue seems to be the perception that valuable and constructive feedback was overlooked. It’s reasonable to assume that there were other insightful suggestions that were not incorporated into the poll. This raises concerns about why the poll wasn’t meaningfully amended. If I were to hypothesize (or ask ChatGPT to hypothesize) reasons for this, most of the potential explanations aren’t positive.

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Two other pieces of feedback that I found very valuable (and which directly influenced the poll and its accompanying blog post ) were:

  • your own feedback about how whether or not there’s a declining schedule would influence your vote on what percentage of issuance should be allocated to a new Dev Fund (which led to us pushing the question about what percentage of issuance should be allocated to a new Dev Fund to the second poll), and

  • @earthrise’s suggestion to make it v.clear that this poll is exploratory and not intended for governance (which heavily influenced how we drafted the accompanying blog post).

I like the diagram but if you think further in future giving ECC and ZF +51% is a problem still to centralized in a critical moment. Is easier to coordinate two big org than lot of people around the world in a super relevant ZIP case.

The main point is not who can still control the money the main point is to decentralize it each coin, 1 vote, you need to buy more if you want to control more.

And they are saying in some post above they dont have time, what a lie, study arbitrum dao model they make things quick and easy its called eficiency there are the tools, you just to be more action oriented in advance to be prepare for acomplish the outcomes of the polls.

Englis is not my main lng

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Candidly, I felt that the poll was a bit too simple and didn’t really cover much.

Just can’t believe this is the level of detail we’re going into right now. A decision needs to be made quickly.

what scope? literally

  • should we get a dev fund
  • who should get it
  • how long
  • an additional question to make it seem thoughtful

:man_facepalming:

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These are the main options in my view.

  1. Dev Fund - No Change
  2. Dev Fund - Grants Based - coins a funneled into a grants based model.
  3. Dev Fund - Coin Weighted - coins accrue and are not spent until and after coin weighted voting is implemented. Works same as grants; but coin holders vote to allocate
  4. Dev Fund Hybrid - This is a model where the core blockchain gets a direct funding based on transaction volume at the L1 layer and then excess funds are allocated to projects based on grants and/or coin weighted voting.
  5. No Dev Fund

There appears to be a very bad conflict between the orgs currently because it sounds like the core blockchain can not be improved until ZcashD is deprecated. So, in effect, one part of the ecosystem is blocked by another part of the ecosystem where one org is focused on the edge use cases and the other on core blockhain improvements. Should this be allowed?

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We should ask ourselves a question, before discussing further:

Which of the surveys sent out is DETERMINANT?

My understanding so far is that the surveys are to gauge the general sentiment of the community. With more or less words, which could well be misinterpreted, what is certain is that these surveys are not determinant or will define what will be decided in November.

If we are going to have a DETERMINANT poll, then I suggest that that poll be put to the community and put to a vote. And then be the “official poll”.

There are still months left before november and we can use the time.

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Very long discussion. My apologies if the sentiment I share below is a repeat. I have lots of thoughts, but I’ll limit it to the most poignant and possibly unique viewpoint:

Can we continue the DevFund in some form, including the ECC as a recipient, but limit how it spends the money more directly?
I see value in Zcash funding its own R&D, but that R&D should be in avenues that are beneficial to everyone and not already handled by the community. For example, ZK research is great to fund. But Zashi? We have so many Zcash wallets already, why are we funding ECC to develop that, when librustzcash needs more attention to help all the other wallets?
My impression is that ECC engineers (the few that there are) are prioritizing the ECC wallet over work that would help the broader community. I don’t see why we should fund that.

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