Shielded Assets Discussion

[GGuy]

@Shawn

Slightly higher in terms of ZEC cost, say .001ZEC or even 0.01, compared to the current ZEC tx fee of 0.00001 ZEC.

Ah, you mean “slightly” in an absolute sense (where fees are only a few cents more) rather the an relative sense (10x or 100x higher fees) . It’s true that would help alleviate some of the concern and maybe it’s a good thing to do initially.

But I believe comparing ZSA prices against other cryptocurrencies is the wrong metric to use. Longer term we need to focus on making sure ZSA fees are as cheap as, or cheaper then, centralised exchanges. I don’t believe we can easily achieve that by slightly raising the cost of ZSA transactions.

I believe the way we avoid the “freerider” concern is by focusing on increasing the utility of ZEC over ZSAs. One example of how to do this is by allowing ZSAs to have locked in value. One way of doing this is with contract like addresses I call ZSA addresses. The reason ZSA providers will use the ZEC token for locked in value is because it’ll be used as the base currency for exchange.

1. User locks some ZEC into the zBTC ZSA address and is issued some zBTC.
2. User decides they want to exchange zBTC for zETH.
3. User burns zBTC and is given ZEC.
4. User locks ZEC into zETH ZSA address and is issued some zETH.

For what it’s worth contract like addresses might be on the cards for the future .

@LeCryptoMath

Regarding the ZSA addresses, we were also playing with the idea, and though it is in principle out of scope for the project, it is one of the use-cases that I am personally most excited about.
Having “contract-like” addresses in Zcash would not only enable DAO-like structures for funds to be controlled by some specific trigger or other, but also things like non-interactive atomic-swaps, fund locking mechanisms for DeFi, as liquidity providers / custodian addresses.