Placeholder Considerations: Resources, Governance, and Legitimacy in NU4

[boxalex]

@sonya

@boxalex

The ZF doesn’t play a role here in my opinion as it has no direct influence at all on any Zcash decision. At best some day maybe they could be something decision-influencing but until that point their independence doesn’t affect anything at all.

@sonya

This is incorrect since one of the ZIP editors represents the Zcash Foundation. We have an effective veto on protocol changes,

This is incorrect since one of the ZIP editors represents the Zcash Foundation. We have an effective veto on protocol changes, and it would be pretty disastrous in terms of reputation for ECC to go around the ZIP process after committing to it publicly.

Granted, once a trademark agreement is in place, that will carry more legal weight.

@mlphresearch

As pointed out by @sonya, this is not an accurate description of the de facto rights and power the ZF already holds.

My argument was more towards the current situation and this statement

@cburniske

the ZF is stolidly independent.

• Right now the Foundation is financed & funded with “donations” from the Founders Reward by the founders for the next 1.5 years. That’s not what i call stolidly independent.
  @mlphresearch. Not sure if you are aware, but the foundation does NOT receive their funds directly from the protocol or founders reward, this was planned but abondoned 3 or 4 weeks ago if i remember right.
  Hence my comment, they currently don’t play much of a role while being fully dependent on Founders donations.

• As far as i’am aware at the moment the Foundation has NO trademark rights, neither shared rights no anything regarding trademark. Until this happens there is just no 2-of-2 multisig, no matter how good it sounds.

So the foundation’s current role is very much limited to a theoretical veto in zip questions, which of course could be bypassed by just creating a fork leaving the foundation with 0 funds & 0 trademarkt at current state. That’s not independent in my book.

Do i miss something?

Edit: Just another thought regarding the foundation and it’s independence or influence.

We know that the public stance of the foundation is: ONLY an opt-in funding will be supported, hence against mandatory funding which seems to be the preferred type by the ECC/founders.

IF somehow a mandatory funding proposal will make it to the ZIP process & beyond i’am more than curious how the first veto on a protocol change will look like.

@sonya

This is incorrect since one of the ZIP editors represents the Zcash Foundation. We have an effective veto on protocol changes,

The alternative option would be that the foundation steps back and withdraws/changes their announced stance towards a mandatory funding system. In that case there is a good chance that there wouldn’t be any need of a foundation at all…

Edit 2: Link to the post where the direct Foundation funding got canceled:

ECC will cancel the Split FR feature from NU2 Blossom

Hi Everyone! Electric Coin Company (ECC) has decided to cancel our plans to implement the feature of Splitting the Founder’s Reward (FR) in the NU2 Blossom upgrade. Ultimately we’ve decided the opportunity costs for shipping Split-FR outweigh the benefits. Also, we believe we can achieve some of the benefits through other means. To recap, some of the intended benefits of splitting the Founders Reward were: To improve transparency about the use of those funds by showing top-level structure. T…