Proposal for the Zcash 2020 Network Upgrade

So… in practice ZF has a veto :stuck_out_tongue:

But seriously thanks for clarifying the legal backend.

1 Like

2 years later and still “in negotiation” over trademark?

Something is wrong.

Maybe Foundation and ECC are fighting over money and weapons are trademark and non-profit requirement.

3 Likes

Now, when I look at what happened 2.3 years ago and now it seems to me that nothing is changing dramatically, and the plans were that everything should change and it seemed then for the better, so I ask you to clarify the plans, and in general the vision of the future what organizations are striving for The adoption is certainly good, but based on the fact that it’s not entirely in their power, what real things will be done and what they think it will lead to, it seems to me that everyone here will agree that the situation (even with the brand) is not healthy, many words and negative actions do much more bad than reaching in the right direction.
It doesn’t matter to me how the financing will be spent, the result in any business is important to me, but it turns out that everyone focused on financing and forget what should happen in a short time, say 1 year, or we will decide on finances and everything will go at the same pace, in 2021 there will be negotiations by brand and discussion Do I need a wallet for poppy and light wallets on all platforms with new features, or access to the Chinese market?
The ECC team, as noted by professionals, but now we are seeing an outflow of personnel, the community should pay attention to it, why this has not been done, how will it slow down the development?

1 Like

Speculation of bad faith without knowledge is a bad look, though sadly common these days.

For a long time, the foundation was not ready to take the responsibility. We spent considerable time and money to secure and protect the mark around the world since that time.

We started working through models last year, and then drafted a novel approach to a shared trademark agreement. We began working through it with the foundation earlier this year. It’s a complex agreement. Who has what responsibility for the mark? How can the other part use the mark - who has authority to do what? What if there is a disagreement? What if there is a chain split? How will users be notified on sites, etc? How can the mark be applied in that case? What happens if ECC ceases business? What happens if the foundation is forced to cease operations for some reason?

We put a lot of thought into it. Through the process of working through this and speaking with a lot of advisors, it appears that it might be a good time to introduce the idea of furthering the decentralization of control of the mark. The work done to date is still a good foundation for a 2-3 multisig.

I’m skeptical that increasing community-determined decentralization with all its benefits, would be controversial to anyone that honestly has the best interest of the project in mind.

2 Likes

Lack of understanding of the situation is not the best side for everyone who thinks about the interests of the project, the conversation about the brand has been going on for a long time, but there is no easy to read and understand text about the current situation, for example, Zooko explained the situation today, and the fund manager was surprised for For the community, this situation is abnormal, if it is, as ECC says, then why besides the organization it is not clear to anyone, even if someone from the fund knows, then why is the secret for the rest and so on. Do you agree with me?
It is from this point of view that distrust of the project as a whole is formed, I still don’t understand what is really happening, what prospects the ECC and the fund see, whether any benefits will be derived from the project (financial or practical), what is needed for this, that happens to the state, why there is no news on the main task in the adoption of the project and negotiations with the regulators, where is their vision (a lot of course concerns the closed information, but I think not all), why there is still no analysis of the effectiveness of the methods in the work done over the past period, there will be what t changed that would accelerate or improve the efficiency of the work, whether directed the company to benefit from the practical proeta which means chooses which considers timing. It should just be clear, you don’t need gigantic articles overloaded with technical information, people don’t need it mainly, do you consider it marketing (I think) and will you consider any of the proposals.
I say all this for the period until October 2020, it is this kind of work that I see as “all in”
If this is classified information, just say how many questions I do not ask. There are no answers.
Another confirmation of my words, your comment and my commentary makes it clear that even the first persons do not have a common understanding, if one can clarify his idea for the other and not clarify the general idea, if the fund clearly understands its authority, then why all this conversation , enough to start to fix the start agreement, without all these variations what will happen in the event of a collapse and the like, agree?
On this issue, I am on the side of the fund for the vision of the situation.
On the proposal to reduce the reward from 20 to 10 percent, after halving the reward, even if the cost of $ 50 remains, I see a lack of funding. When there will be discussions of each proposal, will this problem be predicted (enough for the fund but not enough for the company, or vice versa)?

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.

7 Likes

I agree that finding the right third party is critical for 2-of-3 governance. I think the community can do that!

To be honest I’m currently very encouraged by how the Dev Fund decision process has demonstrated the community’s vigor, diversity, and power. Critically, the Zcash community is working toward collective action built out of the diversity of their opinions and preferences, instead of (like most of what seems to happen in so many communities and societies nowadays) just focusing in on the differences and spiralling into endless debate over those.

I’m thinking the sort of collective decision process by which the community is currently hashing out Dev Fund ideas could also be used to select a third party to serve in a 2-of-3 governance mechanism over the trademark. It seems appropriate that the third should be selected by the community directly instead of being appointed by ECC and/or Zfnd.

In the long run, having a strong, decentralized, constructive community is super valuable because we’re going to have to make collective decisions in a few years about things that we can’t even conceive of now — new technologies and economic concepts that haven’t been invented yet, shifts in geopolitics that are unimaginable to us today, etc.

5 Likes

Why not the community as a whole in the form of a new community governance panel like the one that is part of my new proposal which would represent all different streams of the Zcash community.
It’s still an idea and at least i think it’s a good approach to have as many as possible different views under 1 form:

Here an example how it could look like:

A new enhanced Governance Panel should replace the current Foundation’s Governance Panel:
This is just an idea below to show how a better, more fair goverance panel could look like:

  • ECC, 10 member
  • ZF, 10 member
  • Zcash Founding Scientists, 7 members IF not employed/paid at/by ZF or ECC allready.
  • Mining pools, biggest 10 mining pools each 1 member, results in 10 members
  • Hardware producers, Innosilicon & Bitmain: Each 3 or 5 members, results in 6-10 members
  • Investors like placeholder, blocktown, grayscale and such, each 1 or 2 members, results in “unclear”.
  • Zcash community: Every forum member registered on the official Zcash forum for at least 3 months? Eventually a minimal post count or other restriction could be added to avoid people joining just for voting reasons, results in unlimited unclear members.

Other possibilities to include"

  • Zcash affilated or Zcash supporting projects like parity, wallet creators, such like, 1 member each.
  • pretty sure i forgot some groups, this of course can be included as well.

The reasoning behind such design would be that indeed every arm of the Zcash community would be represented, would have a voice and even a vote and can influence important decisions that have to be made.
So far everybody is talking about community decisions but nobody is even near a plan on how this could be done fair, promising and working and accessable to literally everybody interested. Here at least a solution that tries to include all the different streams of the Zcash network.

Edit: Just thought that the more “normal community members” join the less influence the ZF, ECC, investors and so on would have.

I think a possible solution would be the that fixed members for a given organization should be per 100 people that vote. Means if the new governance community panel gets for example 200 members the members or vote count of the fixed members should be double to garantee a fair voting power distribution.

In my example this would mean that the 10 ECC members would have get double the voting power resulting in 20 votes at the point the community panel reaches 200 members. Just as an example as there must be a mechanism that the bigger the community governance panel gets the influence of the must members like ZF, ECC doesn’t get inflationed.

Voting, Polling, Results:

  • Every member of the new governance panel gets invited to take take part in the discussion around a given proposals, changes, whatever and of course later a vote in the governance panel.
    A voting must result in a suggested 75% majority to be accepted, maybe 66% could be an alternative level as well. Up to community discussion what the best level in % would be to replace a wider community agreement.

Voting/Polling by the New community governance panel should be seen as binding even if not ultimatly and not like now just some polling. Eventually some pure highly technical aspects should not be taking into the new community governance panel, that’s up to further fine adjustment on what would qualify to be decided by the new community governance panel.

from: Dev Fund Proposal: Increasing Monetary base by 10%

1 Like

ECC and Foundation accused of spending more money to “justify budget renewal”?

Is there official response to Blocktown VC?

This is a good idea, looking though your post it echos some of the things that Josh mentioned in the Foundations blog post (ie: using a variety of members) about measuring community feedback.

Reviving the Community Advisory Panel

We will revive last year’s Community Advisory Panel and request old members to both:

  • invite one new member of their choosing
  • vote on the proposals (once they have been submitted as ZIPs).

The polls will open September 3 and be due September 17.

Once ZIPs have been formalized I think we could petition to make the governance panel more inclusive of the parties you mentioned.

1 Like

No, but i think it’s a valid concern many of us have discussed allready privatly and not on the forum.
Especially the increasing of the ECC operations, less the foundation ones as they seem to have a more healty financial planning.

But if you read " * We’re well-funded. The company has a solid runway." on the job offers someone has indeed to wonder if such spending without secured further funding is right where the most logical action in a price downfall should be economics.

3 Likes

I thought a long time about how and what best would fit into having a reall good governance community panel. The old one was an attempt but in my opinion it lacked several very important factors which i try to improve with my governance panel idea, especially the following:

  • everybody haveing an interest in Zcash should be represented somehow,
  • it should be easy accessable for everybody, hence the governance panel seems to be the best option without having people to figure out technical details, requirements and such.
  • It should represent all powers fair, hence some restrictions to members (which are of course to be discussed, mine are just an example how it could look like!). But i think it’s important that no fraction has more polling, voting or any other power than it should have. At the same time no fraction entity should have less voting power than they should have. I think it’s possible to make a good deal here on how each fraction is represented and involved a bigger part of the community as well and make their ideas and voice to be heared.
  • It should be easy to setup, to handle, to organize, to post results, to safe outcomes, whatever. I again think the governance panel fits best for all these so far. Every voter/member can even add his argumentation behind his voting which adds a lot of transparency, reasoning and even accounting in my opinion.

I made have choosen a different approach for this as just having new members invited by old members would eventually not lead to the desired outcome, hence i advocate here for some insitutions ECC, ZF, mining pools, hardware producers, investors & VCs fixed member places and for the rest of the community voluntary places in the new governance panel. I hope this should better distribute the power, make the whole process more appealing to all sides involved and give the best possible feedback/pollling/voting as an outcome. I strongly advicce not to keep the suggested old members invite 1 new member!

It is as well important in my opinion to make the average community member aware that he has a place there as well IF he wants, enough some minimal requirements are filled. I even would go as far as saying that bringing up such governance panel should be of higher priority and be done bevor all other decisions as it could bring more consensus to the funding discussion in generally.

1 Like

Frankly, with respect to the Foundation, it’s a nonsensical assertion. We barely existed in 2017. The increase of operations and expenses was the Foundation bringing on a full-time staff (including myself — third employee, joined May 2018) to do more things.

5 Likes

Let me explain again why I was harsh (which I stand by): Blocktown’s proposal reflected such ignorance of context that it was disrespectful to everyone involved so far. Blocktown’s desired arrangement contradicts the principles that we’ve been painstakingly, arduously implementing for more than a year.

Sonya, please be explicit - this will help a lot!

Why does “Blocktown’s proposal reflect such ignorance of context”?
Why is it “disrespectful to everyone involved so far”?
Why does “Blocktown’s desired arrangement contradicts the principles that we’ve been painstakingly, arduously implementing for more than a year”?

1 Like

Fair enough.

I pointed out the worst error immediately: As written, Blocktown’s proposal cannot make it through the ZIP process.

It beggars belief that such a crucial detail would escape Blocktown, had the people drafting the proposal done their research. In fact, “research” is an overstatement — it’s not hard to read a list of links that have already been collected in one spot. This oversight is the main thing that upsets me.

This bothers me less, since anything is on the table for discussion, but it doesn’t make sense to say that you want a single, for-profit company to receive a perpetual development fund, and then “implore” “for the sake of decentralization” about anything.

The whole reason why the Zcash Foundation exists, why recipients of the Founders’ Reward chose to personally pledge large amounts of ZEC, why Josh has written several detailed blog posts about the dynamics of Zcash governance, and the reason why we’re all debating about this, is that Zcash shouldn’t be controlled by any single entity.

To change that, Blocktown will have to convince ECC to go back on very public commitments. Again, how were they not aware of that?

Anyway. I have made other specific criticisms upthread, and I’m not going to rewrite all of those, but here are a couple more, quote by quote:

As @NealJayu said on Twitter:

Please don’t refer to this as the ‘Founders’ Reward’. There’s no such proposal on the table to continue payouts to initial investors. The only proposals have been for a #ZcashDevFund (or lack thereof).

People are already confused by the Founders’ Reward. Let’s try not to make it worse.

Perhaps it would be fiscally irresponsible, in a notoriously volatile market, to allocate ZEC based on assuming that it’ll 10x by a certain year. Even if we grant a value-based investment thesis, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

Maybe that’s an acceptable risk — it’s not for me to decide — but it’s nonetheless a huge risk. Zcash inherits a lot from bitcoin, no argument there. But ZEC is not BTC. The ecosystems are vastly different. Why doesn’t Blocktown address this obvious concern?

Addressed here and here.

There are also aspects of Blocktown’s proposal that I think are well-informed and reasonable (which, please note, is different from agreeing that we should do these things).

  • Wanting to reduce to 10%

However… wouldn’t it make more sense to have a dev fund that narrows down and then ends, rather than a perpetual 10%? Especially when you’re assuming that ZEC is going to drastically go up in price in the near future.

  • “The prohibition of privacy-centric cryptocurrencies will only continue to tighten with adoption. To withstand this pressure, Zcash’s greatest strengths are its decentralization and network security.

That’s certainly a valid argument, IMO.

  • “As we explain in the subsequent sections, the Founder’s Reward weakens both decentralization and network security.”

I think there’s an argument here too. But like… if something weakened by the Founders’ Reward weakens decentralization and network security, and those are Zcash’s greatest strengths, aren’t you decreasing Zcash’s comparative advantage by creating a new dev fund at all?

3 Likes

It is already 10% (of total distribution). it goes to zero. then how much % over what time do you think they should get. and should it be block distribution or block reward that this comes from?

To be fair I cant see why this has caused so much upset. well I can, but still not for me to judge. Would you like some help in making it more compatible with the zip process, and getting up to speed on what has already been discussed.

Sonya has done an excellent job of collating all the latest info. but it is still changing on a daily basis.

I know I cant keep up with all the proposals, but it does state at the very top of sonyas megathread (High signal, Low noise) that I will help people and have written guidelines.

Let me know if you would like some help. (I am just a community member im not affiliated with the ECC or foundation.)

3 Likes

Just adding 2 sources where this proposal was mentioned:

and

2 Likes

We are not advocating a perpetual 10% for the dev fund as you indicate in this thread. We propose setting a precedent/establishing a social contract of halving the dev fund % of the miner’s reward every 4 years. For example, 2016-2020: 20%, 2020-2024: 10%, 2024-2028: 5%, etc. This would be in place of just keeping it at 20% by the next halving, which would set the precedent that the dev fund will be perpetually 20% (what’s to stop the ZF/ECC from asking for a collective 20% in 2024?).

This perpetual FR/dev fund/tax on the network is what scared many investors away in 2016 who were looking for a private currency that adhered closer to the principles and network/mining incentives of bitcoin. I know because I was there. Our proposal sets a precedent for the Zcash network to rapidly approach the decentralization and security of bitcoin, while simultaneously providing funds for further development during Zcash’s infancy.

Regarding the projected value of ZEC over the next 5 years. Choosing a price of $50 to value ZEC at for your dev fund projections is extremely speculative. I don’t know if you’ve been investing in this space as far back as 2013, but cryptocurrency prices don’t just hold steady for years. In crypto, projects either grow in value or they become illiquid (die) over a course of 5 years (by next halving in 2024). We aren’t investing in railroad tracks here. Zcash will be worth a lot or will be worth nothing in 5 years. Which camp are you in?

1 Like

If the Zcash community shows support for our proposal of decreasing the dev fund from 20% down to 10% for this next halving, then we would be happy to create a proposal that meets the guidelines of the ZIP process. Thanks for the offer and if the demand is there, would be great to have your assistance!

-James Todaro

2 Likes

I think your proposal, as all others is a valid option one and deserves to have it made ZIP ready.

I personally still have no idea how the final proposal will be choosen by the community with still no mechanism in place, but i would make it ZIP-ready for what it’s worth later has to be seen.

Just out of curiousity. Did you go through all the other proposals as well? Me personally is more than curious to have opinions from non-forum regulars and especially VC’s as these are seen rarely in the forum.

1 Like