Possible. As it stands, it expires in 3 years.
Would you potentially like that option too? If so, would your reasoning be similar to mine, or what would be yours?
Iām undecided. I think itās been powerful for bootstrapping the ecosystem, but at some point superfluous.
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Now, the only way for me (and any other ZEC stakeholders) to be able to pledge to donate 10-20% of my ZEC earnings to help develop the ecosystem, would be toā¦ earn ZEC. For that, weād need PoS.
The discussion around remaining PoW only or PoW +PoS is interesting, and the above is one point for PoW+PoS in my opinion. Miners donāt have an incentive to see the ecosystem blossom, stakeholders do.
They care about the coin price.
Do you see them donating to ZEC projects? Iām seriously asking because if so I need to revise my understanding here.
Using the Crosslink Economics Simulator, using mostly default values, the ticket to enter the 21k ZEC guild would be 496.4442 ZEC* per year as that would represent a 20% donation of their staking rewards. Iād be fine with that.
We can never prove how much one has, but we can set the ticket price to whatever amount they should be earning. If one only has 10,000 ZEC and wants to donate the ticket amount, they should be just as welcome.
Itād be nice to be between fellow stakeholders focused on figuring out how to best allocate the funds weād all donate. I donāt know, I guess that infamous ācommunityā thing can decide what they want, but if they donāt want us stakeholders in control of our funds, maybe we donāt want them in the conversation either.
*Iām using this as a base: āā118.201 ZEC per yearā, which is for 1000 ZEC staked, which I then multiply by 21, so 2,482.221 per year earnings if 21,000 is staked.
Iām OK with the current mixed ZCG + coin holder, but Iād prefer no coin holder voting
Iād prefer PoW+PoS, only as a path to full PoS, though mainly because PoW is terrible and not so much because of other properties of PoS
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You reject my question but you answer both? Okay, thanks I appreciate!! 
Without the dev fund essentially taxing all stakeholders proportionally to their stake, there would be less ZEC available to fund projects. But maybe this increases the attractiveness of the project and increases the price, so the fewer ZEC donated by generous individuals may end up with a similar financial power as we have now. Hypothetical, obviously.
As for PoW vs PoW+PoS or PoS alone, I tend to agree with you but Iām glad weāre going to have the luxury of options in the near future. We should discuss this more!
Itās really an interesting thread for me. @aquietinvestor not sure if you are looking here but maybe you find it interesting too.
Iām against just pure coinholder voting for governance.
Iāll try to outline, with some specificity and detail, why the proposed alternative - simple proposal - should be considered. I want to retain the benefits of an independent ZCG while the dev fund is active.
Governance of the Zcash dev fund will work best when it draws legitimacy from multiple sources - not just one. Vitalik highlights six: continuity, fairness, process, performance, participation, and brute force.
Pure coinholder voting maximises participation, but risks brute force dominance, where large holders can sway outcomes, and in doing so weaken continuity, fairness, process, and performance.
Even I having read some of your posts about forking, etc. thought āwow, upsetting you could be bad for the project,ā because of your coinholding power. But as I believe you have the best of intentions, I interpret your forcefulness to be because you didnāt have a voice before, you donāt want to lose that now, and you particularly donāt want things to go back to how they were before ZIP 1016 passed (you are not alone there).
A hybrid governance model on grants from the dev fund - which we have already after ZIP 1016, combines committee oversight (experts), with coinholder voting and advisory polling. In doing so it draws on several forms of legitimacy - which should mean more harmony not less once we all get used to the new ways, and participation in the coinholder voting increases. I also think a simple proposal can tweak the final dial of legitimacy, resulting in:
Continuity (expert legacy): ZCG = majority of committee members - but not all - selected by ZCAP.
Fairness (shared power): authority split between ZCAP-appointed and coinholder-elected members.
Process (transparent mechanisms): also guided by ad-hoc advisory polls from ECCās ZAC and ZCAP until a futarchy mechanism can be used instead.
Performance (informed decisions): ensured by committee expertise evaluating technical merit and ecosystem impact.
Participation (voter voice): provided via pure coinholder voting on the Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Fund.
This all has more legitimacy than just coinholder voting on its own. I truly believe legitimacy is the key factor in successful governance, and it doesnāt just come from one thing.
Even prominent leadership, and a core team of wise devs with a high degree of influence, canāt get over a lack of legitimacy felt by different stakeholders.
For the record, Iāve always been a fan of zBloc (draft ZIP) but advisory polls and community sentiment indicated the Community and Coinholder Funding Model (ZIP 1016) which is what we have now.
Zcash governance has moved a long way in the last year; away from the era of funding orgs (ECC, ZF) directly from the protocol, to coinholders now voting directly on large Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Grants.
A lot of work, a lot of change. But constant improvement, always in the direction of decentralisation.
Vitalik is a genius; Iām not. Iām therefore on very high alert when I find myself disagreeing with him, such as here with the governance of the dev fund. Also, Ethereum is not Zcash. Many shared principles & values, also some different.
Youāre onto something, but itās not the fundamental reason. The fundamental reason is ethics. I consider stealing any transfer from the dev fund not authorized by stakeholders. Yep, that thing that has been happening for years.
Listen, as far as I am concerned, you all do whatever you want, Iām not picky. But thatās for as long as we can ~all agree that if stakeholders vote to shut the whole thing down, we shut the whole thing down. Every year, weād now have a stakeholders vote on whether we carry on for another year.
Not me. Any reputable developer will say that the Zcash code is work of art. That should be the aim for anything we do. If our governance is complicated / complex, thatās not what I personally want. Zcash has not been designed with governance in mind, itās not a good fit for a complex governance.
Thatās perfect really. 3 years for Shielded Labs, @hanh and all stakeholders to convince the ācommunityā that our control of the whole dev fund would be a positive change. And the alternative is perfectly fine too. Whatever is being developed during this time could be used by a private guild of generous stakeholders.
How people view Zcash is critical to our future. When Naval speaks, people listen and many of their views are inspired by his. We should be very careful about this (PR) aspect if we want to achieve our long term vision.
Shape all that any way way you want, but no more usage of the dev fund without stakeholders approval. Iāll go down with the ship if need be, but Iāll fight that one till the end. Thatās literally the reason why I came on this forum in the first place.
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Listen to the genius!
Hope this helps.
Ongoing discussion about that over in this thread. Let it stay over there for now.
That last paragraph is important. (Not coming from one of Vitalikās writings this time.)
Itās one of the conclusions in the Collective DAO Archives, work done by Justine Humenansky who mined and analysed a lot of governance posts from a bunch of different DAO projects.
Instead of solely looking at the Zcash token price, a better metric is the amount of money flowing into the shielded pool(s).
The governance changes made by insiders, and their continuous hard work to fix UX, focus on the user, and learn from previous mistakes, is what has turned things around.
Yes, adding coinholder voting has been part of that. Coinholders finally having a say does have a reflexive psychological effect that motivates everyone. More legitimacy should make everyone involved happier.
But you will notice all the heavy work done by ECC happened before the first coinholder vote happened. Josh/ECC in particular pushed for removal of automatic funding of the orgs from the protocol.
That was the key change for the better.
What difference does it make at this point, a bit more or a bit less into the shielded pool? A transaction today canāt be traced either way. The price is much higher impact. Size of shielded pool today? Marketing.
Changes made by insiders, funded by stakeholders, have made a great positive impact. Fundamentally though, what has change and had a bigger impact in my opinion, is the creation of Shielded Labs and their hard work on fixing the governance mess that some donāt have a great interest in seeing fixed. Literally the biggest voices that recently spoke publicly, largest stakeholders, are directly aligned behind the vision of Shielded Labs.
ECC have been doing quality work overall, and in a good direction.
That was the tip of the iceberg.
i do think experimenting with coin holder voting for many things could be useful to see the participation rate. main problem atm is the UX is kinda bad with many option votes. last coin voting took me way over 30 min for all the options - which is ridiculous if you expect many people to use it. (each question 3-5min)
if anyone would volunteer to setup the vote server for ZCG election it could be interesting to see any results. but if its just to experiment not sure how many would actually participate if its non binding. good thing is hanh got a new grant to improve and implement fixes to the coin voting app. (many good ideas suggested by community here on forum)
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