These polls aren’t votes. They are simply a means for us developers to seek to understand the sentiment of various constituent groups rather than attempting to use more subjective measures.
As developers, ECC, Shielded Labs and ZF are using them to make their own independent assessments, but are working together on behalf of the community.
If they disagree, they or others, could chose to fork.
This basically, completely inaccurate. From a person in a position of power, trust and unfortunately, central to our governance, I take very great offense as a stakeholder for the misleading statements your express here.
Just like you wrongly believe “Bitcoin development ossified years ago”, your comparison of the governance of Bitcoin and Zcash is also completely inadequate.
Put simply,
Bitcoin has no development fund, so if you remove the development fund from the equation, then yes, Zcash could pretend having “basically the same […] governance structure”. Actually, as far as protocol decisions (excluding the dev fund) are concerned, you could say that it works the same, for as long as we are under the PoW rules.
However, evidently, Zcash now has a development fund, that was basically forced onto ZEC stakeholders by ZF and ECC; that was the first illegitimate move of those two entities. You had 0.1% participation, that’s absolutely ridiculous.
With a development fund, there are now financial interests at play that completely modify the incentives and power dynamic and make the comparison between Bitcoin and Zcash governance also, ridiculous.
I’m speaking of protocol governance: how changes are implemented into the protocol.
You are speaking of funding: if there is dev funding available, how is allocation, if any, decided. The implementation of any such change to the funding model is determined by the aforementioned governance model. That’s what’s happening here.
Note: ECC and ZF do not currently receive any development funds and not guaranteed any funding under any of the submitted proposals. We believe the community has already spoken on the direct dev fund model.
Sorry but no, I am talking about protocol governance as well.
Aren’t you going to update the mechanism and percentages of distribution of the dev fund in the protocol?
Aren’t you organizing a poll where some people can double-vote? And where the outcome of the vote is essentially decided by you?
Note: We have already clarified that if the vote is very clear in one direction, then it’s not an issue. But we cannot ever plan governance that way. We have to plan for the worse case governance scenario: conflict. What’s your plan in case the poll results displays a conflict. There’s no plan, at least no public, transparent plan, which is the same.
Finally, what ever prevented you to follow your own advice to create a ZIP to make this poll legitimate?
Is that what Shielded Labs has done? No, I think there are smarter approaches.
Generally speaking, poll and vote are often used interchangeably in everyday conversation, though there are some subtle nuances between the two. For our purposes, whether we use the word poll or vote, we’ve made it clear that these are non-binding and are simply tools for gauging community consensus.
In my view, the confusion some people have about the governance process isn’t because of the word choice, it’s because historically there’s been a perception that polling/voting determines outcomes because consensus has typically been clear and upgrades have been relatively non-contentious. That might not always be the case going forward.
As Josh correctly points out, governance doesn’t happen through non-binding polls alone. The link he provided about Bitcoin is a good example. Bitcoin’s governance process is informal and based on rough consensus among developers, miners, node operators, exchanges, and users, rather than formal voting. If disagreements can’t be resolved through consensus, participants have the ability to fork the network and follow different rules.
We don’t spend enough time talking about this broader dynamic because we haven’t really needed to. The focus has mostly been on using polls to determine whether there’s clear consensus.
Thanks for your comments Josh, which (from my point of view) now present a different picture to how I previously perceived it.
We are now starting to tread on rather thin and slippery ice, to put it metaphorically. We are softening the term governance and turning it into sentiment polling. The interpretation of sentiment and what consequences are drawn from it doesn’t seem to be as clear as I thought. The comparison between Zcash and Bitcoin is not valid here, as Bitcoin never had a dev fund. I therefore agree with outgoing.doze and think that we have different governance models here.
The difference between actual binding votes and sentiment polling is huge and should have been made clear from the start. Are you just gathering community sentiment or are you actually voting - please make up your mind:
To date, Zcash has never used voting for governance. It has used polls in the past to gather sentiment, but they were used to inform decisions, not make them. Nothing has changed.
I believe we’ve all been consistent in using the word “poll” in wording and have been clear that these are sentiment-gathering tools, not formal voting.
I can’t imagine a scenario where the core devs at ECC do something incongruent with community sentiment. I believe that’s true of any of the core devs across the community.
They might, say, if the community signaled it wanted a back door. But that would be extreme. If we made a change to zcashd that someone disagrees with, they can fork. It’s what the team behind Ycash did.
To be honest, I don’t see the point in spending any more time and effort on discussions about semantics. Although, to add one last thing: the exact usage of the phrases “binding vs. non-binding” as well as “voting vs. polling” is confusing for me as a non-native English speaker (atleast how they are used in this forum by certain people).
The most important thing for me is the outcome of the Coin Holder Voting and if it will be implemented. I suspect that we will not have any problems in this round anyway. My guess is that the C&C model is ahead and that is in line with my vote. So I have little reason to distrust ECC that it will be implemented.
It will be more interesting if there are different results between the Coin Holder voting (and I choose the word voting on purpose here because it represents actual participation by ZEC stakeholders) and the ZCAP/ZAC polls. Let’s see how such a scenario is managed by ECC, ZF and the broader community.
To put it another way → the result of the Coin Holder Voting has far more weight for me than any ZCAP/ZAC polls. If the will of the coin holders is disregarded or distorted, that is reason for me to distrust ECC/ZF and sell my holdings.
In the same sentence you say that he’s right, but immediately proceed to correct him by adding the word “alone”. Clearly, with and without that word, imply very different realities.
Anyway, indeed. A little AI to help us out:
The statement “Governance does not happen through non-binding polls” is partially accurate but oversimplified.
While non-binding polls lack direct enforcement mechanisms, they often play significant roles in governance:
Non-binding polls frequently influence policy decisions despite their advisory nature, as elected officials may face political consequences for ignoring clear public sentiment
Many referendums are technically non-binding but carry strong political weight that effectively shapes governance outcomes. The UK’s 2016 Brexit referendum is a prime example—legally non-binding but treated as politically binding
Consultative processes form a legitimate part of democratic governance in many systems, where public input through non-binding mechanisms informs official decision-making
Modern governance often operates through “soft law” mechanisms that lack formal enforcement but still effectively guide behavior through political pressure and social norms
More accurately, governance operates through a spectrum of mechanisms with varying degrees of enforceability, with non-binding polls and consultations playing a complementary role alongside formal binding decisions.
Referendums are indeed an absolutely excellent example to completely shatters your argument @joshs. People in charge can technically ignore the outcome of a referendum, but at great cost to their reputation and the trust of electors.
That’s exactly what should be happening here, and that’s exactly what I have recommended.
Yet you’ll never define “community sentiment”. How was that community sentiment that led to the creation of Ycash? I suppose they didn’t “sentiment” too much in the same direction as you did they. But it’s ok you had 0.1% stakeholder participation to gauge that sentiment, so it must have felt legitimate I guess.
Oh I’m so tired of the non-sense, but I can feel the wind of change and that’s all I need to keep me going.
