I’am well aware that being critical, adressing things directly and questioning different opinions or directions might been seen as negative towards ZEC, but with my 49 years i have learned that being honest and direct in every partnership, friendship is the best way to help improve it, no matter it might temporary hurt feelings… Just as a sidenote.
About solutions:
Sure adressing them is one thing, the more easier part, no doubt here. Improving them is a whole other story.
Let’s again first analyze things bevor we get to possible next steps. I personally would even request that the foundation/zcash co a professional research exactly in this matter as i’am just a forum user, unknown and just writting long posts backuped only by here and there some numbers, some personal logic and common sense and nothing more. It’s different if an institution comes to the same conclusion, or partly and would be taken more serious.
Let’s analyze the Inflation situation first. Just thought the whole night about it and actually i think it’s worse than i thought first.
Right now, we are in the beginning of a devils cycle after we got all back to reality and the 2017 hype is over and prices adjust and mature more reality based.
My concern about the impact of the current inflation the next years is the following:
=> daily high inflation
=> leads to daily lower prices (in average of course)
=> leads to less and less funds for foundation/zcash co/development
=> less development leads again to losing ground to competition, less marketing, less everything
=> this leads again to a drop in price as we can’t keep up all the projects with less funding.
=> again less price and again cutting off grants, proposals, development, eventually even staff…
=> and so on and so on, that’s why i call it devils circle…
=> Not enough the above, we constantly lose versus BTC, there is no incentive to hold ZEC if BTC just is more safe, more stable, more … . This again causes sell pressure on ZEC, again resulting in a price lose versus BTC…
The only “natural medicine” to get out of this devils circle would be a price increase, a new boom and bullish run. But than again, should a whole project count on a bullish run and next hype in the short time? I doubt it should and should be seen more as a bonus in case it happens. Better being prepared for bad times, sounds like a better option to me.
The biggest problem here is actually the founders reward from which all development is paid, sure, there might be some reserves, but for how long. We allready heared that they economize in some parts, this can’t be optimal.
Lower ZEC prices, less funds. While we as holders could say, no problem for us we just come back in 3 years with our small/big bag of ZEC it’s again a different story for the foundation and Zcash co. company which have to cover expenses, developement, whatever.
The bad thing is that the founders reward falls absolutly into the period of highest inflation of currently 47%. From todays point of view, it’s obvious that this is far from ideal, but someone can’t have everything in mind years ago and i’am not going to blame anybody for this poor choosen approach.
Possible solutions to decrease inflation rate:
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indeed time locking rewards, immediatly for the current asic algo A. It won’t be a popular approach but at the end with less inflation all would profit from it in the mid-long run. Some kind of emergency research should be done to see what the options are for this and what time locking periods solve it best. I could imagine that the weeks for the last time locked part should/could be calculated to the halving date in 2020.
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another step could be modifying the founders reward as well. Having in mind that 20% is just a lot right now.
Just as an example halving the founders reward but doubling the time period should have a positive effect as well on inflation. IF indeed reduced inflation helps price stability and/or would increase price the impact would be less as a higher price for ZEC would compensate the reduced founders reward. To which level this is true must be researched by true experts in the field. But these 20% just have a huge impact on current inflation as well and whatever measures are taken in my opinion the founders reward needs some adjustment as well without hurting investors, the foundation, zcash co, whoever relies on the founders reward. Pretty sure there are ways, enough there is a will.
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Modifying the block reward. Similar upgrade like the ETH constantinople which lowers blockreward from 3 ETH to 2 ETH per block. ETH has a way lower inflation than ours, even multiple times lower. After they take such steps to lower their inflation why shouldn’t be take some similars as it’s more urgent on our side. For example lowering block rewards from 12.5 to 8 could be as well a solution. Again, won’t be popular by miners for sure, but as many times said, the ZEC community isn’t only about miners. This step mostly would need a whole reorganization of protocol/conensus as it’s very similar to halving on our end. However, such a reorganization might be a good way after we know by now that we didn’t choose the most ideal way how ZEC is going to be released. Again, a research should be done to show the whole impact and outcome of such step.
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Actually this leads me to the next step, implenting POS or a hybrid POW/POS. Thinking about this, it would anyway need absolute reorganization of the block rewards and whole distribution until max supply is reached in such case. Just fictive: If block rewards are split 50/50 btw. POW/POS it would result in 6.25/6.25 for each as a starting point. Than further modifying/reducing the block reward for POS or even both.
Another option or additionally option could be applying even here timelocking and weekly reward releases to further reduce inflation. For POS a really low reward could be an option as well. Very complex situation here that should be examined by real experts.
POS with the current inflation anyway wouldn’t make much sense at all, but with lowered inflation it could take away eventually some sell pressure stabilizing the ZEC price further. But without any of the previous steps it wouldn’t make sense at all.
These are the only direct possible actions towards lowering inflation i can think about. Maybe there are more and someone else has other ideas, maybe a proper good research could show what’s possible, what impact each would have and if these are indeed possible solutions.
I’am going again to quote some things from this report:
Currently, Zcash is losing to competitors in both private and non-private sectors of the crypto market.
That’s my fear too. I’am adressing this for months now. Competition isn’t sleeping. In my opinion we act to
slow on many issues.
Furthermore, the competition will increase even further when we see new private Mimblewimble coins enter the market in Q1 2019. They will be much more scalable than current privacy coins and promise to provide complete confidentiality. This might reduce the market share of the current privacy coins even further.
Yep, these might take some market shares as well, leave alone the fact that many previous gpu miners support these now after they were forced out of ZEC…
At the same time, Bitcoin is growing the lightning network, which will increase its fungibility. This could one day make Zcash simply unnecessary if similar privacy features are present.
Just makes sense. Even more due our inflation and lose in the BTC/ZEC price ratio.
For Zcash centralization has also led to a [drop] Charts - Coin Metrics) in the number of active accounts from around ~80,000 to ~20,000. Such a steep drop off in the user base is discouraging, as it negatively affects adoption and hinders future development.
While i compared yesterday the active adresses we are still doing pretty good compared to others, but we could do way better. There are 2 main options in my opinion to raise these again. Either indeed the algo-B for gpu’s or hybrid POW/POS, while i personally think gpu-POW/POS would have a more positive impact until full switch to POS some day.
The Zcash company emphasizes the importance of this funding mechanism for securing the continuous development of the project during the initial stages of its life when there is a need for massive infrastructural investments. However, it may lead to funding problems in the future.
Another thing that must be solved one or the other way better soon than late.
In the absence of a new funding mechanism, the insolvency of such a structure is a matter of time and price of ZEC. If the company is not going to find a sustainable funding solution, it may lead to a budget deficit and development setbacks.
Exactly my concern as well, hence i advocate a full research and reorganizing to lower inflation and try to solve the price problem as well as the whole funding matter as inflation even now hurts funding most.
The foundation is moving too slowly. The risk of deploying money too fast from the foundation is that it runs out of money and can’t fund more promising stuff, and it seems to be this risk that the foundation board is most concerned with.”
Slow moving development creates the risk that Zcash can fall behind, giving the fact that there is increasing competition in the market.
I absolutly agree with this. This begins even with the whole grants time line, just having 4 grants a year is wasted valuable time in my opinion. If someone, as we have seen allready misses a grants deathline he must wait another 3 months, just wasted time. This and other similar problems should be organized more efficient so the most promising grants get immediate funding which helps ZEC development. More or less goes for the slow moving development for Zcash. Until now i was unsure if it’s just me that had the feeling that development is too slow compared to competition, but now i’am more confident after reading it that it’s not just me.
Government regulations are likely to remain one of the most crucial factors for private cryptocurrencies, and US exchanges are not willing to take on risk when there is uncertainty about their future. At present time, this devalues privacy features of ZEC, which, at the same time, negatively affects their adoption.
Another concern i shared some weeks ago. Without going into details i still think this is a valid concern.
In terms of community involvement, Zcash is losing the competition to its closest competitor, Monero.
During the past month, Zcash had 190 unique nodes. … Comparing to its closest competitor – Monero (1600 full nodes), Zcash has a significantly lower number of active nodes.
Again, totally agree, hence i yesterday made several suggestions how to favourize the qt wallet over all other ZEC 3rd party wallets, to give it more attention and to get users more adopted to it. Just easy steps that could help a lot.
However, going forward, such factors as mining centralization, …could negatively impact ecosystem development.
Another thing i adressed, especially with lower ZEC prices mining centralization gets a huge issue in my opinion.
Zcash has the lowest current supply and highest inflation rate among its competitors. The inflation will remain high and will decrease only after the first Halving in late 2020. This factor increases down pressure on the token price, and can only be mitigated by increased adoption.
Even after the halving it still will be too high in my opinion. As increased adoption is a slow movement and lagging in my opinion the only other possible solution is a complex reorganization of the issuance of ZEC…
About Bolt: …However, years may pass before the solution will be developed and users will start using it. It is only planned for the next update in October 2019 and giving the fact the overall network effect of the currency is quite low, time may pass before we see a reasonable number of nodes and payment channels implemented on it.
While it’s an improvement, i as well think it will have limited effect on scalability and price having in mind competition is working or having allready way better solutions.
Giving its past performance, Zcash will be able to complete its technological upgrades in the upcoming year. However, one of the most important questions that the company should focus on is increasing adoption. The roadmap is not clear on this side. The complementary effect of improving technology may not be sufficient in order to push for further adoption of the cryptocurrency.
Again, totally agree. I think adapotion and development in exactly this part is a weakness of ZEC which needs urgent improvement. Even more as adoption is one possible solution to mitigate the inflation issue. One of the reasons i mentioned that the NU2 goals are not sufficient and the weakest so far in my opinion. Talking about adoption, we even don’t have yet a paper wallet, just as an simple example that we still lack on many adoption factors.
ZEC trading is dominated by ZEC/ETH, ZEC/BTC, and ZEC/USDT markets. The fact that ETH and BTC are taking up over 80% of the volume is discouraging given the fact that the company is trying to become a global payment solution. Increasing adoption should amplify fiat volumes and move the coin away from pure speculation.
Just logical. Even more in our case where we lose constantly versus BTC. This effect would be less if we had more FIAT to ZEC volume… Someone has to work on this in my opinion.
However, it is dominated by the exchanges that are not well known to the industry which is a concern, because some of that volume may not be real.
Another issue i adress continously the last weeks. Thx god the author didn’t dig deeper into this issue or there would have been a devastating comment on the volume issue.
Yeah, i know, another long post mostly only a few will read. These are just my opinions and i’am writing these critical statements not to bad mouth ZEC but to hope things get finally adressed and improved. In case i’am wrong with everything, time will show this, perfect. But as said allready yesterday, using common sense and logic i have my doubts we will stay competive …
The report posted/linked above is really worth a read in my opinion, no matter it’s a dry and long read.
