I agree with most the points that you make. But (sorry for being grumpy, nothing personal) I’m a bit tired of platitudes and little actionable ideas. I think a lot of people agree with most points that you make and have been agreeing for years, but they are still not happening. So maybe it’s more important to think on how to actually accomplish them, instead of rephrasing the same wishes over and over again.
How does putting the entire dev fund under a single body helps with decentralization?
This seems a very weird suggestion. You say that they are good but want them to step down because of drama? Will the people that replace them be magically free of drama? Will the process to choose who to replace them be magically free of drama? Should we stop listening to you, since you’re probably causing even more drama by suggesting this?
What’s the point of decentralization if there is no drama involved? If everyone agrees, is it decentralized?
What does this mean in practice? Should a single wallet be funded? Which one?
How?
Which organization will do that? Do they have the funding/bandwidth?
At first I didn’t want to comment on this because it can look silly to defend you employer, but I think that people who work under him are better equipped to give an opinion on this (and my coworkers are smarter than me and won’t wast time on forum drama, so I’m all that’s left). And this is almost comically out of touch. I see Jack wanting to have as little control as possible. I’ve never seen him treating someone poorly, just pushing back on things people said about ZF that were inaccurate or wrong, which is his responsibility as the executive director. What exactly do you think he wants control over?
I have a few quicker responses and then need to head to some other things today and can come back to more detail later. They are just my thoughts though, much of them reflect others, and I’m sure there are others with better ideas.
If we agree on the ‘what,’ then let’s start on the how.
A grant-only model is an accountability measure and allows the funding based on needs and outcomes. Orgs are welcome to find other funding through other sources. It’s not a protocol governance body per se. That would happen through the ZIP process.
Reasonable question. In this case, I don’t believe the drama is healthy. It’s personal between the two people involved. For example, what happened at Zcon4 was not healthy.
Yes, I believe the MCG should prioritize. Others might be funded by minor grants (see quadratic model) or other sources (Edge via the Fil grant).
In reference to moving away from taddrs. This requires some consideration. One option is to simply EOS support over some time. Another might be to tax them, more and more heavily over time.
Don’t know. Maybe ZF, shielded labs, Nighthawk or someone else. Could be grant funded.
Sync: Paul suggested detection keys. I’d listen to him and work with him on something workable.
P2P exchange options: would like to see a major grant focused on this. It’s possible.
Network level privacy: Why not Nym?
Fair enough. I love that it hasn’t been your experience. That gives me hope.
For me, the most recent thing was the decentralization of Zcash digital assets. Long story short, he denied ECC the opportunity to speak about it to the community at Zcon because he didn’t agree with it / didn’t apparently trust ECC to take a professional approach. He then asked ECC to be able to read its blog posts about our intentions before publishing. This is just an example of something that has fueled that concern.
A nice step to relieve that concern would be to abolish the trademark agreement and limit trademark enforcement to scams (if it desires to continue to hold the marks).
My decision wasn’t an act of self-preservation, but it should be a red flag. I’ve been honest about my belief that ECC hasn’t been delivering well enough. I own my part and made errors as well. We can wallow in that, or we can choose to make the changes we need and move forward. What is your take on the proposal otherwise?
I absolutely agree that we can’t calculate the consequences of key team leaders leaving and it will be seen as a red flag especially now. They can do it at the peak of the market, or at the end of an important stage but definitely not at the bottom and it will look like an admission of defeat rather than a refreshing.
Zooko doesn’t have to be the coolest manager in the world to maintain the needed balance of Zcash’s perception. He appears to be visibly tired of his role, but we have to consider that thousands of people respect his opinion and take his words as the right direction for Zcash. It is enough to pay attention to the number of views of different videos on ZCON. No one else could convince me that switching to PoS is a good idea. All because Zooko has a great reputation in the crypto world.
Also, I trust people who write that Jack doesn’t want to have extra control. I also watched all his speeches at all of ZCON and I don’t find anything in his words that would make me think he is out of place.
If hedging is the retort, then I can make this simpler. Hedge into USD. A couple million dollars of BTC and ETH sitting on the treasury at Zcash Foundation is yet another of many poor broadcasting and behavior decisions.
Zooko owes himself (obviously, at his own discretion) something like the path that Jack Dorsey took away from Twitter. Remain prominent and respected, but fully disconnect from the specific platform of old.
I also strongly agree with this. To tell people you believe ZEC is money, and then diversify out of it, just looks bad. At its worst, it’s hypocracy. The Foundation/ECC and many others know ZEC is not a store of value as we sit here today. It’s a real head scratcher because when ideology is driving development; but the desire for a store of value and lower volatility is driving how they actually behave (as expected on the later)…The problem is they advertise and tell people it is money while at the same time (apparently) selling it for ETH and BTC. These are not hedges. A hedge goes up when ZEC goes down. And to really hedge, you are supposed to be hedging your costs. So if your costs are in USD, you hedge by owning USD (or whatever currency you costs a denominated). Buying ETH/BTC is the furthest thing from a hedge. It has a very bad look. I think this saying should be followed → Put your money where your mouth is. Now, I wish they understood why people who earn money and retailers who accept money can not hold ZEC…Its for the same reasons the Foundation/ECC wont hold it and they are very well capitalized compared to the average person…So, anyone promoting ZEC as money in the way many here have, and who are not all-in on it should at a minimum acknowledge its short comings and get on the Zstablecoin (which also happens to complement ZEC) bandwagon.
I would like to see tensions continue to reduce between leadership of both orgs and am working to be useful on that. Discussions about the time given to ECC were a debate, but I think a professional one. Personally I’d have probably given ECC a little more time, but ECC did get quite a bit, and I think decisions about allocating time were made in good faith by an organizing team that put a lot of work in and had to balance many competing factors.
On the trademark and the website, I don’t have strong views on the trademark either way. A fair question was asked about making sure that as we decentralize the website, we make sure nothing goes up that would hurt zcash, and drafts were shared toward that end which seemed reasonable to me.
I see a project that delivered wonderful technology to many other blockchain/crypto projects for the public good, but without protecting the value of ZEC.
For whatever reasons, current leadership has been unable to make decisions that protect ZEC.
ZEC will (likely) soon to be under $20 so anyone arguing for the status quo should check themselves.
However, look at ZEC and ETH as of 3/2020. As I recall, ETH was at $121 and ZEC at $20. Where is ETH today? Where is ZEC today?
Look, I believe in ECC/Zcash Foundation’s talents and abilities WRT development. Unfortunately, increasing the market value of ZEC has not flourished under their guidance and leadership. I’m not recommending we “throw everything away”, but I think anyone arguing for the status quo should check themselves.
And yes, we are in a bear market.
And I am long ZEC even through these difficult times.
I’m not criticizing, just objectively looking at our progress since launch November 2016. It’s been a long spiral downward and so maybe we try something different?
And we were once in the Top 30 or 40 and our market cap even exceeded Monero so I disagree we should compare to other projects in the #145 range.
Perhaps we should compare ourselves to other high profile projects launched in 2015/2016/2017 and with the support of some of the biggest names in crypto as investors and exchanges presently listing ZEC. Imagine if Kraken, Gemeni and Coinbase all delisted ZEC? I mean, things can always get worse so I agree with you we need to carefully think any significant changes.
For the record, I believe ECC must be involved in development for ZEC to thrive. That’s not up for debate IMHO.
Alan Fairless, Bootstrap’s board chair, and I spoke today. In that conversation he provided me information related to the following statement:
In fact, after Jack expressed concern over ECC’s intent to decentralize the Zcash digital assets, it was Alan that then offered to provide Jack with ECC’s related blog post for review before publication in a spirit of cooperation. While my general concern remains, it’s important that what is reported by me and others is accurate, and in this case, I was not accurate. My apologies to @Dodger.
I think the following is necessary for a Fresh Zcash:
After reading about Nick’s resignation I would like to strongly encourage Bootstrap/ECC to run an internal retrospective on why (at least in my view) all of the promising product-minded people have ended up leaving after trying and failing to create change, and share the lessons-learned with the community. It may be worthwhile to allow former employees to participate in that discussion, too. From my perspective, recollection, and experience, this has been a long-standing problem within ECC.
I don’t want to speculate on any causes or potential resolutions without first allowing everyone to go through a process of blameless retrospective, since I think uncovering the truth here is far more important than assigning blame to anyone. I myself am emotionally biased on this subject which is why I’m avoiding posting any of my own conclusions, but I’d be happy to participate in any future retrospective.
I also consider myself emotionally biased and that’s why I’m abstaining to post anything about my views. I’d rather be focused on delivering the milestones I’ve committed to with ZCG and the Zcash community and help teams and their users.
I hope all those who’ve been developing Zcash these last years can participate in this much needed retrospective.
Knowing what went wrong, what we did well and what could have been done differently is the first step to improve. That’s not my belief. It’s rigorous software engineering practices that say so.
