tl;dr:
- Increases the centralization of decision-making.
- No evidence of actual problem.
- Misuses ZEC ownership as a measure of “skin in the game.”
- Coin voting is not ready for prime time.
To begin, I’d like to point out something you already know based on what you wrote in another post. All the hard power over Zcash is in the hands of the miners.
The rest of the governance groups here are, for better or worse, just advisors to the miners. The miners can run whatever software they want, and the longest chain wins. For this reason, I suggest to anyone who would like to have some real and absolute control over Zcash, buy some mining rigs and vote with your hash power!
When you buy ZEC, unless and until Crosslink is implemented, you’re ultimately just along for the ride. The only hard power you do have is to sell your ZEC and then do whatever else it is that you want to do with your money. (As an aside, @thowar2, I find it odd that as a ZEC owner advocating for more power for ZEC owners, you’d not be in favor of Crosslink, but I suppose that’s for another discussion in another thread.) It’s true, you can participate in coin-weighted voting (a.k.a. THV), but as I say, really that’s just advice to the miners; they can still do as they please.
So given that the miners have all the real power, the question that we have is how do the rest of the interest groups (ZEC owners, ZCAP members, forum posters, Zashi users, software developers, ECC employees, etc.) advise them through governance? One thing that I like about Zcash governance is that it is, awkwardly, decentralized. Zodlers can distribute funds through coin-weighted voting. ZCAP members can elect ZCG members. Anyone can become a ZCAP member just by posting a lot on the forum with good feedback. ZCG members are accountable to the community. The software publishers in the community–ZF, ECC, Shielded Labs, etc.–also have a large amount of power just by publishing software that follows certain protocols or has certain features and not others. Senior software architects and engineers also have their own say through their knowledge and hard work. Is this all “governance”? I don’t know, but each is for sure an example of power. Community norms also have power. Zcash does a hard fork every 90 days. Every 90 days, those miners get to switch what software they run. Or not. Despite the trendy narrative, this is not Bitcoin.
When I rejoined the Zcash community over two years ago, I was amazed at all this, and it took me a while to appreciate how this web of dispersed power across a diverse group of interested parties functions. I see you joined the forum in October. Welcome! I spent the first year of my time back in the community doing a lot of listening and not that much talking. It takes a bit of time to see how things work. (I still don’t do much talking, but with our project’s next phase, that’s going to change.)
What you propose, given this diverse and admittedly awkward governance model, is to centralize power more by shifting power away from the other parties and into the hands of ZEC owners. Your argument for this is that ZEC owners are better aligned than these other groups to promote Zcash. Let’s look at this.
You say,
Here’s the thing though. Yes, what you imagine is possible, but is there any evidence that it has happened or is about to happen? No. None. You are proposing to fix something that is not yet broken, at the expense of decentralization.
Now let’s look at your “skin in the game” theory:
Let me give you two counter-examples, of groups who don’t own much ZEC but definitely have “skin in the game.” I just returned from DevConnect in Argentina, and while there, I spent most of my time meeting up with Zcashers. There were a number of Zcash users there who actually use ZEC in commerce, as a medium of exchange. They told me that they have not benefited from the recent 10x increase in the price because they do not zodl–they are too poor to be able to afford to do so. They are paid in ZEC, and they pay in ZEC, and they use Zashi, but like so many people all over the world, they have trouble saving. I’m not going to dox these people, but I’ll tell you that one uses it for safety, and another devotes their professional life to promoting private payment currencies. How can you argue that these people do not have proof of “skin in the game”?
As another example, let’s look at me. My company is building red·bridge, connecting Zcash in a decentralized and robust manner to the rest of crypto. We are funded by ZCG, Avalanche Foundation, and a substantial investment of my own. Not only have I invested my own funds, but I’ve been living a low-income life for the past two years in order to launch this startup. When I go to Zcash events, I stay in an Airbnb instead of at the fancy hotel. When I fly, I sit in the back of the plane. I spend most of my work time focused on launching red·bridge. As a VC, I know you understand that this is just how it goes when you launch a startup, and I am fine with the grind. However, it is highly extraordinarily extremely inaccurate to characterize me, with my small stash of ZEC, as not having that much “skin in the game.”
Finally, let’s look at your solution, coin-weighted voting (THV). You write above that
But let’s look at what you wrote a week ago:
So your proposal doesn’t just centralize power in the hands of ZEC owners but in the hands of the few ZEC owners who managed to figure out how to even use the software. Not good.
In summary, your proposal does not make sense to me for these reasons:
- Increases the centralization of decision-making.
- No evidence of actual problem.
- Misuses ZEC ownership as a measure of “skin in the game.”
- Coin voting is not ready for prime time.
So with this proposal making so little sense to me, it looks, at best, uninformed. I hope you take some time to learn more about and appreciate the hard work that’s been done over Zcash’s down-only years to prevent centralization of governance power into any one group’s hands.