Hello!
The question is very complicated and I don’t have a clear concept, realizing that any of them will have flaws and it will be probably a compromise solution. And it will be a solution with certain technical barriers. But let’s try to think in that direction.
Preface. My first premise is that any system, as it grows, can have different best governance options. And the initial best option may be fundamentally different from subsequent, also best options.
Just even based on fundamental factors - different distribution of coins, different range of participants involved, different positions of the project in the regulatory environment, market outlook, competition and so on. The project in a certain initial stage needed coordinated decisions, in the current stage it has grown and needs more decentralized management. Especially when there are more and more people in the community with experience, not only in cryptocurrencies, but also in project management.
By the way, I would like to point out that Zcash today is one of the few projects whose management is practically devoid of the people who started the network. Our respected Andrew Miller is the only person who was there from the very beginning and today is on the board of ZF, but he modestly participates in the management just like any other member of the community. I haven’t even seen any of his public posts with his views on how decisions should be made in Zcash. It’s just a fact, I don’t want to color it in any way, but it highlights the power and decentralization of Zcash. And this is one of the main criteria for me of the importance of Zcash as an independent phenomenon.
What I like in ZCAP is the technical expertise of a fairly wide range of participants, because somehow people in ZCAP are much more involved in the technical side of Zcash than investors.
I’m an investor myself and I have a lot of respect for all investors. I totally disagree with the engineers and developers position that investors should be less involved in the management process. Because often, or even as a rule, without proper experience, management skills and market sense, people do not become investors. In addition, investors in Zcash, in my opinion, have exceptional foresight and strategic thinking. Therefore, what I don’t like about ZCAP is that ZCAP in its current form does not take into account the opinions of investors unless they have direct contact with ZCAP participants.
I also get angry when someone expresses the opinion that: “Zcash is a purely social product for the benefit of society. Why should we even care about speculation?” No way! Zcash is a symbiosis of both. This is crowdfunding for a Social product. In the end, it will not be able to exist if the price does not rise along with the value. This is not a contradiction! These are inextricably linked things - a single entity. It is so unified that it is impossible to determine what is primary here, since the technology itself is money.
However, without taking into account the views of the technical community, the governance processes will also reach an inevitable dead end. This is not some kind of assumption. It has been proven by decades of corporate governance practice. The best governance model for technical products is a bicameral system in which the technical community, guided by the interests of investors, offers the best solutions.
This is why I fundamentally dislike the zBlock model, because it is not such a bicameral system.
In this text I have outlined the concept in a very general way, but as I wrote at the beginning, we still have technical limitations related directly to the process of honest and importantly anonymous voting. And it remains to be seen how we can arrive at a fair model of governance.
Right now the market and current priorities did not allow us to approve Areta’s proposal, but I thought it was a very good idea to outsource the development of the Zcash governance model.
Thanks for this question!
