I actually want to avoid this trap ( i even labeled a related thing as off topic at the start of the tread). Yes, some think the existence of taddrs reduces shielded usage. Zooko thinks it’s “the best of both worlds.”
We don’t need to settle that argument to make it clear on the principle: we want them to go away.
@tromp I think has given one of the clearer reasons we can’t just have “increase shielded usage” as a principle.
Because its not really a principle, it’s a metric. And a gameable one. Lets say we change the protocol to include cover traffic and increase the number of shielded TXs being used by 1000%. Cearly this isn’t useful. But why? what principle tells us its not. Well the entire principle of Zcash is financial transactions shouldn’t be public to everyone. We actually want there to be less of that.
Now that its turned into a giant twitter argument with Zardigrade who trolls zcash but also who copy pasted the zcash protocol to make his pirate coin. Reviving this topic to ask the community who have been here for years what is the status of the debate over removing Transparent zcash transactions and addresses? from what i’ve been reading it seems like anyone suggesting that it happens has been shown their way to the exit
Zingo encourages Users to move funds to the Orchard pool in a few ways.
By default all change transactions are sent to the Orchard pool (which is not without issues).
Secondly, any time a User has more transparent funds than a tx-fee, they are offered a “Shield” button which sends all transparent funds to the Orchard pool.
Finally, it’s not possible to send funds from the transparent pool by another mechanism.
This means that Zingo users mustShield To Spend transparent funds. While it’s a somewhat aggressive policy we believe it’s critical to migrate away from the transparent pool as efficiently as possible.
That having been said, Zingo offers a transparent address, so you can always send to Zingo FROM the transparent pool. This means that Zingo is effectively a transparent-to-Orchard “Slippery Slope”.
Crypto Twitter, and the Zcash forums, have no shortage of trolls and anonymous accounts spreading their own narratives. The free markets get to price each token for its viability and roadmap for increased usability.
In addressing the concern regarding transparent transactions and discouraging usage through increased fees compared to shielded transactions, it would be beneficial to initiate a discussion around updating ZIP-317. This will allow us to thoroughly consider the implications on active T-address use cases before implementing the updated fee structure as a mandatory protocol-level change.
I suspect that t-addresses are good to leverage for regulatory discussions. For example, if there were no t-addrs, would Zcash have been relisted on Binance in a few EU countries? Genuinely curious.
A possible mitigation strategy in the interim:
I really appreciate this approach from @zancas. I believe that user facing applications can do a great deal, with minimal-ish effort, to protect users. Kudos to the Zingo team.
My opinion about the transparent vs private coin pools is straight-forward. Zcash should remove the transparent pool in order to become true to its mission - providing users a Bitcoin like cryptocurrency experience with superior privacy features
Keeping the majority of the coins transparent is counter-productive in the context of the Zcash mission, and the longer that they (transparent coins) are allowed to entrench into the user, broker, and investor ecosystem, the harder of a challenge they become to remove (therefore, the harder it will remain for Zcash to realize its mission).
If you have the time, please be sure and view Nathan’s presentation from Zcon3
if everything is private, how does a user maintain a record of transactions for purposes such as proving a payment was made? I like the privacy by default externally. but seems like internally the user needs some form transparency for record keeping. plus for whatever reason some people like to make their transactions public. see venmo, paypal and many other apps. can or should privacy by default along with maintaining internal and external transparency options be the goal? Finally, with the price so low, maybe it’s time (one time only) to force everyone thru the turnstile. Then it can be proven the 21m cap is valid.
Users of shielded transactions have viewing keys for their shielded transaction(s). Those viewing keys can be shared at their discretion or could be posted publicly in some shared resource like Google Docs.
If a user wants to make their transactions public, there are already many solutions for that feature: Bitcoin, CashApp, Venmo, Facebook Pay, Ethereum, et al. After 7 years and near-zero transparent tx adoption, it is unreasonable for Zcash to be trying to (continue to) cater to that feature because most of the people on the planet are already entrenched as users in the aforementioned public payments solutions networks which already have the luxury of realizing Metcalf’s Law for value/ growth
The Zcash mission afaik is not to provide users with an alternative Venmo/ Bitcoin style public payments network.
I strongly agree that turnstiling all old shielded coins out from the old shielded pools (and then destroying the old pools) would be a very welcomed solution to the lingering FUD/ technical debts about Zcash having potentially been hit by a fraudulent coin printing attack in one or more of the old shielded pools.
My opinion about pools in an ideal world, is that only two pools exist at any point X time. Current, and Expiring. Both pools would be shielded, and neither pool would be branded like they currently are… Sapling Orchard etc. On a long timeline, its not sustainable to brand every shielded pool instantiation with an arbitrary plant themed name.
There is not an organic market desire for the ZEC transparent pool or the transparent ZEC features (see ZEC-USD all time, and ZEC tx statistics relative to other crypto peers, as the proofs of a lack of desire for transparent ZEC as the predominant use case for the network)
