Placeholder Considerations: Resources, Governance, and Legitimacy in NU4

[mlphresearch]

Thanks @mistfpga for the kind words! Indeed, what a moment for us to get involved. Hopefully we can bring something useful to the table. And we’re certainly here not only to express our opinion but also to listen and learn.

Please don’t feel pressured to reply to this post - I think you’ve summarized your point of view very nicely in previous comments, including in reaction to @cburniske

@mistfpga

I cannot stress enough how there is no mechanism for people to come to a consensus, zec simply isnt designed like that. Could we use the same consensus mechanism for changing emission? how about depreciating z-addresses? These things have to be fundamentals right?

I strongly empathize with the desire to maintain the hard cap and ensure that the key value proposition of privacy remains intact. But the lack of a mechanism to come to a consensus on issues like the developer subsidy (or whatever else may emerge in the future) feels problematic. To my knowledge, the best way to navigate and possibly reconcile differences in opinion is through more or less formalized rules aka institutions that everyone involved can accept as fair and reasonable. Before such rules exist for Zcash, I’d expect people to spend many hours of their lives on this forum

To be fair, governance is one of the most difficult problems that exists, and the question of whether there should be a limit to what is subject to change and what is “out of bounds” is one of those perennial moral/political questions that will always stir up discussion.

@mistfpga

As someone who lives in a country that is governed by such a mechanism. It doesn’t work. Look at Brexit and the elimination polls in the house of commons. (not rigged - no outcome)

With this mechanism, with a zip like “Dont change things” it will lose in the first round, it only benefits one kind of change, it doesn’t benefit changes that do not make changes.

I understand the criticism but, as far as I know, no one in the world has been able to figure out an ideal polling/voting system. Each system has its strengths and weaknesses and all of them can’t be implemented simultaneously. It seems to me that an elimination poll would at least identify the most widely supported proposal after the least supported ones are excluded. That said, I’m certainly open to other non-binding options, including more experimental ones like quadratic voting.

@mistfpga

do your plans for governance include what will be in NU4 - or are they for NU5 - because funding needs to be worked out for NU4 and that deadline is in 6 weeks.

Assuming that the various proposals result in a set of ZIPs that - as far as we can tell - accurately reflect the preferences across the community, I’m hopeful that developer and growth funding for 2020-24 could be settled with NU4. Of course, I am probably not the right person to assess whether that’s feasible. I suppose that depends on a number of things taking place (or not) over the next 6 weeks. As pointed out by @zooko at Zcon1 and in another thread on this forum, the world is not ending with NU4 and there are alternatives, including extending the time for finalizing ZIPs or settling on a basic rule structure but leaving some contentious parameters open for additional discussion. And further details around governance can certainly be ironed out over time beyond NU4.

@mistfpga

Hopefully you will see I am not anti funding ECC I am anti breaking core values. I think my stance is pretty much the same as the foundations. I believe both can be achieved without the need for voting.

Polling/voting does not have to be binding and can be experimented with iteratively. It’s merely one tool among others for measuring community sentiment.