Proposal for the Zcash 2020 Network Upgrade

[acityinohio]

@zooko

Zfnd and us have previously talked about how we agree that 2-of-3 is a better “multisig” than 2-of-2 is. That’s because 2-of-2 is a “double veto”. Double-veto increases the risk of inaction. This is why, when you set up a new company or a new non-profit, the Board of Directors is three people or five, but never two.

We at ECC have been thinking that we should go straight to a 2-of-3 multisig governance protocol governing the trademark, where the three parties could be Zfnd, ECC, and a third party chosen by the community.

This deserves some context Zooko, I don’t think this characterizes the Foundation’s position completely accurately — we agreed 2-of-3 multisig was better if we find the right third party. That in and of itself requires an additional process/mutual agreement between the three parties (which is much more difficult than a bilateral agreement), and as I’ve mentioned before in presentations in the past, 2-of-2 with known entities dedicated to Zcash is better than jumping straight to 2-of-3 with a third party hastily decided or staying with 1-of-1 entity trademarks and software development processes.

As for why 2-of-2 is still strictly better than 1-of-1: in the case of cryptocurrency governance, I believe that inaction in the case of disagreement is a better outcome than one party unilaterally exercising power.