@zooko
- First, we do reading, research, and informal interviews with a wide range of community members, advisors, scientists, members of the Zcash Foundation, users, potential users, investors, etc.
I have my doubts any real research has been done so far, neither the legal one, nor one that researches possible outcomes and impact such time lock and blossom harmony in general & network security will have. In case i’am wrong, take this as my 3rd attempt to get some info/link/document about allready done researches on that field.
… and the people against having a variety of different concerns or issues, most of which seemed answerable.
If they are answerable, why didn’t i get a single answer to a whole couple of questions? I will make a list of concerns and questions at the end of the post again, maybe on my 3rd attempt i have a chance to get them answered.
A substantial fraction of the people I’ve talked to about it have just been uninterested in mining. I think mining is important! But it is also interesting to note that a large fraction of people actively involved in Zcash don’t care about mining and instead want to talk about other aspects of Zcash.
Actually this seems to be the only part i personally absolutly agree with and that makes absolutly sense. But as you have choosen to continue with POW mining, even introducing a dual POW mining design you should contact people that have knowledge with it, not people that even don’t know how it’s done.
- We discuss (in public) technical details, including how these things interact with each other and with other parts of the system. That’s what’s going on right now on github.
I personally have no doubt that on pure technical details Zcash has a very good team able to solve them. But i get lately the feeling that this very good technical team doesn’t see/forsee how given changes impact other fields outside the technical level.
I would go even further and say that there is an absolutly lack of proper research about possible impacts of given decisions. From a project like ZEC with such extreme good funding someone should await that some of these funds are spent on proper upfront research done by unbiased experts. Not only such researches would show eventually upcoming problems, flaws, impacts but it would as well give more confidence into ZEC that it has a good management and approach.
- The final decision … He approved the time-locking of mining-rewards before he left for a long winter vacation. In his absence, I’m the one responsible for making the final call on this, which I’m going to do this coming Monday—the 7th—so that we can move on with the specification-writing step and get the Blossom train back on schedule.
Ok, seems it’s approved and will happen, without any proper research and in my opinion rushing it so it can fit the blossom harmony upgrade in time.
- The result of that decision determines what software the Zerocoin Electric Coin Company will write and support. The schedule for the Company to write and ship new software versions with accompanying testing and vetting is shown here: The Zcash Network Upgrade Pipeline - Electric Coin Company
Wouldn’t it make more sense first to make a proper research including determining possible software and based on the results go ahead? I might be wrong, but in my opinion this would have saved a lot of headaches and working hours.
For Miners
and the difficulty adjustment algorithm changes the difficulty to reflect this, then the time-locking of rewards means that if you are more willing and able to commit to mining for an extended period than the most common type of miner, then you’ll probably make more revenue than if we didn’t have the time-locking of rewards.
I can’t see the logic behind this and i doubt i miss something. I will write a bit more why this doesn’t make any sense for the real loyal continous miner at all.
a.) What prevents at low difficulty again to have switching miners tempoary on the network? Or having nicehash mining at low difficulty on algo-B and as soon as difficulty raises they hop/switch away to a more profitable coin leaving again the loyal continous ZEC time lock miner alone on high difficulty. Nicehash for example mostly would have even the financial background to pay out this switching hashpower immediatly.
Did someone think about this scenario yet?
b.) The time locking actually doesn’t do anything against difficulty/coin switching mining. All it does is delaying the payout which is again a minor effect for the hoppers that will mine ZEC only on low difficulty anyway, hence the impact for them would be less as well. Just logical if, let’s say they mine ZEC only 3 hours a day the impact for them would be only about 1/8 of their income being delayed while for the real loyal ZEC algo-B miner it would be a 100% effect, leae alone he has to deal with the high difficulty spikes generated by the hoppers.
c.) In theory the solution preventing this to happen would be a penalty for these that aren’t continously connected to the network or something in that direction. Time locking rewards doesn’t preventing generating mining rewards only on low difficutly times. Actually it could make it even easier as there mostly (speculation) less loyal miners anyway due the time lock reward. This said, my conclusion is that the loyal miner will suffer a bigger penalty with his time locked rewards than the switcher that mines ONLY at low difficulty times.
Some people may also be failing to appreciate the additive effect of continuing to mine week after week. If you mine Zcash continuously, then after you’ve “ramped up” over the course of a year, your reward during any given week would end up being just as high (actually higher as described above) than if there were no time-locking of rewards, with the additional benefit that you are guaranteed a “trailing reward” no matter what happens after that point.
Seriously? Without interest and having inflation i doubt this can hold true. How about Zcash pays all it’s employess that way if it’s that good. In ZEC of course.
Seriously, this argument is pure speculation and based on just nothing. IF we take the last 12 month ZEC to BTC conversation we see that ZEC is less than 1/3 what it was exactly 12 months ago.
Evidience:
January 7th 2018, 0.0545 BTC (1 year ago)
January 6th 2019, 0.0150 BTC (today)
Now the counter argument here is of course you hold the same ZEC after 12 months. True, in 12 months i have the same ZEC BUT at the cost of inflation, price volatility, lost freedom of using ZEC as i would like to use. I lose even the possibility to use it as an instrument for payment for 12 months. I see way more cons than pros here, all at the price and freedom of the miner/worker.
For example, imagine in the future, if you’ve been mining Zcash for a while, and the price of the coin is going up — yay! But then the difficulty factor skyrockets so that your mining reward drops. Well, with the time-locked-rewards, even if the difficulty skyrockets and makes your hashpower almost useless you’ll continue to reap the benefits of the trailing coin rewards for up to a year, which could be great for you if the coin price is going up over that time.
First of all this is pure speculation and an ultra huge IF against all current trends. Now why did you spend us the scenario IF the coin price is going down? Would be really worse, not? You shouldn’t have written this one, seriously, it sounds bitconnect like. IF someone is confident that the ZEC price is going up, he will hold without your “forced samaritan timelock help”.
This would reward early adopters who earned their mining rewards during the first year and got paid out during the second year at the expense of late-comers who started earning their mining rewards during the second year.
Again pure speculation IF the price went up and there is 0 evidience this will happen. Again, what about the other scenario with price falling? Would there even be miners carrying the network? Why relay on pure speculaton and artificial enforcement while a good stable ZEC price anyway will benefit and attract ZEC gpu miners?
My prediction leaves only room for 2 possible scenarios what that timelock will cause:
- either a very weak algo-B network (my bet goes here!).
- or a secured but very centralized network
For people who are willing and able to commit to mining Zcash, it will actually make mining more profitable and more predictable.
Wow, more predictable? Seriously? How is a reward i get in 12 months more predictable than a reward i get the same day? Leave alone i even don’t might get the reward due a vanishing mining pool, changed/lost/stollen wallet adress. While the more profitable part is at least speculation the more predictable part is just nonsens, i’am sorry to use such word in my replay, but you leave me no choice here.
But the way it does this is by pushing out those miners who are not willing or not able to commit to long-term mining. And I think this is good for the users and holders.
That’s what you think will happen. I allready explained that you won’t get rid that way of the short time low difficulty miners. You mostly will push out a lot of miners, but not these that come anyway only at lowest difficulty, let’s call them the parasite miners. These will still come as they come and go on the Asic ZEC algo as well. It would be good if you achieve this, but you don’t achieve it with the blossom harmony specifications so far.
IF this is the real intention, implent it as well for the asics, than the users and holders should be (following your argumentation) even more happy, not? What impact does it anyway have on a mostly very weak algo-B if the main algo stays unchanged and continous the same way?
If somebody can’t afford the costs to commit to mining Zcash steadily over time, then it’s not that great for the Zcash users and holders to have that person as a miner, compared to if we can instead give that reward to a longer-term, more dedicated, more reliable miner.
I agree to this principe, however, the only current way to achieve this and get closer to this principe is a POS design, easy and simple as that. As you have choosen to stay with POW, even going dual POW you try to fix something by now flawed that can’t be fixed in POW.
And again, even i understand where you are coming from and i absolutly sympathize with the prince, it doesn’t sound honest as long as the asics continue to get the rewards immediatly.
(And as for whether it is a good idea for the miner, well… on the github thread someone mentioned “how could someone pay their rent during the first year”. Well, it’s not my business to tell other people how to live their life, but people really shouldn’t be depending on cryptocurrency mining of any kind to pay their rent
But it’s your business to convince people that with time locking they will get a more predictiable, more profitable, more fair, more best everything mining approach?
And actually it should be your business to take at very least into account if miners, even real big miners, can pay meanwhile for electricity or you might find yourself with a very weak algo-B network left at the end.
I have allready mentioned many times bevor that this blossom harmony ugprade is flawed from start and such comments that it’s not your business how the miners will pay meanwhile for electricity (leave alone all my other concerns about mining than), is just evidience that this upgrade is done without any basic research on any field concerning network, legal, security, whatever.
—with or without time-locking—because of price volatility. Time-locking can make it safer for someone to depend on cryptocurrency mining to pay their rent by smoothing out the volatility in difficulty factor, but it can’t smooth out the volatility in price, therefore you shouldn’t do it unless you will continue to be able to pay your rent even if your mining project completely fails you.)
I have to repeat myself, i can’t see how this approach will smooth out the volatility in difficulty. There is even a big chance, due a weaker network, that the difficutly volatility will be even bigger. The problem with your “vision” is that you don’t take into account all the facets of miners, which a proper research paper would mostly have shown you allready. For now with what we know, it’s fiction that time locking will prevent profit switching and decrease difficulty volatility.
Suppose there are two potential miners, and one has to—or chooses to—immediately sell all of the Zcash coins they make from mining, but the other is willing and able to retain some of the Zcash coins. Then the latter is a holder in addition to being a miner! They are a more dedicated and incentive-aligned member of the Zcash community. The one who is both a holder/user and a miner has the right incentives to protect the entire network and all other users from attacks, disruption, or bad service. The first kind of miner—the one who can’t or doesn’t care to hold on to any of his Zcash coins—would switch to mining a different coin if that became more profitable, or might even rent out their mining power to https://www.nicehash.com/, which is more or less making their mining power available to random people to rent for [https://www.crypto51.app/](http://rollback attacks). The second kind of miner won’t do any of those things, because they are—in addition to being miners—also long-term believers and supporters of the Zcash mission and the Zcash community. For the good of the community, I want to shift more of the reward in the direction of those kinds of miners.
The problem here is that you split them up just into 2 groups, maybe this is the point where the whole wrong later assumptions arise. There are more groups of miners than just these 2. You totally leave out of context for example low difficulty/parasite miners, low electricity miners, mining facilities, profit switching mining pools and some whole other groups.
First, in my opinion you underestimate the impact of profit switching pools and/or services, especially on lower hashrate networks. Than you make no difference within the miners by operating costs.
Just to make you an easy to understand example:
Potential loyal german miner with about 35 cents per kw/h and potential unloyal profit searching chinese miner with 2 cents per kw/h. The german miner, even if loyal, will get out literally nothing in supporting the network no matter his mining investment is much higher than the investment and operating cost of the 2 cents miner. As there is nearly no operating cost for the 2 cent miner he can more easyly afford switching whenever he likes as he has to cover only about 1/18th of the german miners operating costs. While the german miner, even if loyal, is forced to switching to cover his costs.
With this simple example i just want to try to example that your example is far from reality mining complexity only including loyality without taking into account electricity costs and other factors.
Summary: Win/Win!
Summary: Wish/Wish! fits better, couldn’t resist on this one 
Other thoughts, questions and conclusions:
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general question about block rewards: I’am not aware that the current asic block reward will be reduced with harmony blossom, or? If i’am right here there would be a higher introduction of ZEC daily, no matter algo-b is time delayed. Means, even if the algo-B mining rewards are time locked there would be still a daily higher insuance of ZEC daily, not? What i’am missing?
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IF the intention is to have loyal miners only, fine, do the same with asics. From several graphs i see that there is a 5-10% block mining at zero difficulty cost happening all the time. Why are asics excluding from time locking? I mean they should be able to profit as well from the great invention of time locking, not?
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weak network: All indicators so far point to a weak algo-B network. The arguments used aren’t convincing that this approach will lead to a good secure hashrate network. Doesn’t this arise immediatly security red flags that even the possibility this will be a weak hashrate algo-B? How will the algo-B secured against various attacks IF indeed it will be a not widely accepted mining algo for ZEC with minor hashrate? Any plan or research done?
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I’am still not convinced with the legal status of such implentation. It’s a forced implentation by Zcash, but as it seems will be handled by the mining pools. Following common logic this should change some legal terms/requirements as well.
Let’s take 1/4 mining rewards of the current ones. About $100,000 per day, makes $36.5M debt for the first year that is owed to miners and/or mining pools at current ZEC price. I have a hard time believing that such debts are subject to some kind of regulation or requirements. Same goes for the whole process and ZEC itself as it’s own. By now we have ZEC that can be spent and an instrument of payment. But locking them and being unable to spent them, no matter i’am owed them allready automaticly could/should change the status as of ZEC as well in my opinion. I’am an amateur on this exact field, even more i’am outside the US while zcash is a US company. But again, I’am owed something of value that should be a payment coin but a sudden i have more a future of that coin which 50 weeks later may have made me a profit or a loss meanwhile.
Last but not least, who is responsible i (and nobody else) indeed gets the rewards which are owed to me in 50 weeks? What’s the legal status for a mining pool in the US, China, EU for example if they have to delay reward payments. Is it problematic that the debts are internationally?
I’am again asking for legal consultation about these and mostly more questions that could be problematic. This should have been done allready bevor any further steps have been taken towards time locking in my opinion.
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Centralization in generally: With all the next steps is centralization or decentralization an issue at all? I mean by now nothing points anymore to it as a valid high priority target to have as much as possible decentralization
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About the dev reward: I doubt this one would be time locked as well, but still asking if the same goes for the dev reward.
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Transation fees for the time locked reward payouts: Will there be for each released transaction a fee, yes or no? Right now a mining reward is released and i have to pay 1x fee. If the very same mining reward is to be paid out in in 50x each week or 12 x each month does each payout include another transaction fee? I think yes, 50 weekly payouts would as well have 50x transaction fees, no matter these may be low, it would be still 50x times i had to pay it, means the final reward after 50 weeks is lower than the actual mined reward, not?
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Attack question: In an explaination after the sapling upgrade it was mentiond that Zcash can handle an attack on a given miningpool pretty fast, but at the cost that all mining that happend on this mining pool for a given period of time would be null and void. Would this affect time locked payout rewards as well?
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Compromised Wallet. Let’s say i have mined full power ZEC with time locked rewards. At some point my wallet, for whatever reason gets comprimised and/or i’am forced to change the wallet adress. What will happen with rewards i await for several months mining i’am owed? I think this is even a very important question.
Currently if my wallet or adress is comprimised i change my payout adress and i’am done, lose is maybe some hours at most some days mining. It’s a different story if we talk about 50 weeks of mining rewards, not? Is there a plan how to handle such issues?
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Mining pools: How many mining pools have been contacted so far and how much feedback (written) has been collected and researched. I think taking feedback from these upfront is absolutly necessary as well, not?
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Forks: What happens after forks? What happens if for some reason the chain splits into 2 supported forks? What happens to the time locked funds? Are these allready counted toward the current balance in case of a fork or not? In case they are not another con as i would get left coins from the forking chain due less balance, not?
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Many more questions but as i doubt anybody will answer these anyway i will wait first to have these answered bevor going ahead.