It’s no coincidence that these ZSAs and NSM are complementary: it was during the era when ECC was encouraging more economic analysis of ZSAs when I first had the idea for (what’s now called) NSM, and so ZSAs have always been on my mind as a likely major contributor to the “NSM flywheel”.
IMO, ZSA + NSM has a fee model that clearly benefits ZEC holders and network sustainability to some degree, and the main question is how much. For potential ZSA users (issuers and “consumers”) I think this is a compelling story: “not only does the network have the features you need, but the economic incentive system is directly tied to your use case, so you can be more confident in long term support.”
By contrast, IMO (again quite biased), without ZSA without NSM is a less clear story: “here’s a network that has the features you want; there’s not a clear economic linkage between your use and the network’s operation, but there’s a new fee model that might come out in the next update.” More cautious, judicious, or financially constrained ventures may want to wait for a “settled” fee model before committing.
So this is an argument that the bundle increases likelihood of new use case adoption and provides a compelling narrative for Zcash’s future potential in the multi-asset shielded space.
Now to jump into @nuttycom 's specifics:
IIUC this means modifying ZIP-227 Issuance of Zcash Shielded Assets to burn a portion of fees, correct?
I personally think this is big. If ZSAs are to be a major adoption driver, then this quoted change also makes that adoption directly drive Zcash’s sustainability. To be clear there are two different adoption drivers in this combination: 1. direct economic incentives, and 2. a compelling story about how those direct economic incentives mean Zcash continues to improve its long term fitness.
I also want to compare the potential of burning ZSA issuance fees with the claim in Zip Editors' NU7 ZIP Viability Assessment that low fees today mean that ZIP-235 Burn 60% of Transaction Fees is less compelling: that ZIP is more compelling precisely because the community is making a bet on ZSAs. If ZSAs increase usage, then ZIP-235 is more compelling. Is this something that should be spelled out more clearly in the ZIP rationale?
So in my biased opinion ZSA + NSM with both ZIP-227 modified to burn and ZIP-235 are a complementary reinforcing combination and the more we believe ZSAs bring a compelling rationale, the stronger the rationale for these two.
IMO, this is a “tactical but important” rationale for combining ZSAs + NSM. For me, the strategic reasons above are the more compelling, but reducing disruption to the ecosystem to “one wave” also seems quite compelling.
(Thought experiment: how many of the multi-asset privacy systems are directly integrated into the economic flywheel of their underlying platform? IMO, this is a big picture / long term challenge with those systems. For example, some of the Ethereum smart contract or L2 privacy systems do not necessarily benefit ETH holders, and therefore we shouldn’t expect the L1 to protect, improve, or extend those use cases for purely direct economic-incentive reasons, although secondary incentive impacts such as general usage/adoption still come into play, and importantly non-incentive reasons such as community values matter. Still, I believe direct economic sustainability of multi-asset privacy is a killer feature.)