I’d love to see some kind of on-chain voting incorporated as an extra signal. I even included it in my proposal as something to be developed. However, this needs to be done properly. The details need to be worked out, the risks addressed, the parameters nailed down, and the instructions properly announced. Maybe even requisite technology developed to solve problems.
This isn’t the case here yet, so I strongly advise against giving any weight to this on-chain polling as a signal, for now. The results will be completely dominated by whether potential participants even hear of this just-now-suggested vote, their risk tolerance for the privacy risks, and their access to their wallets on the yet-to-be-determined-but-probably-short schedule.
Put otherwise: the results may be easily dominated by one or two ZEC holders, who happen to read this thread, and don’t appreciate the risks to funds or privacy. In my estimate this is fairly likely to happen, and even in hindsight we won’t even be able to tell whether this was the case.
Worse yet, any attempt to judge the validity of the poll after it concludes may be seen as picking and choosing signals to support an agenda. So it’s important for Zfnd to pre-commit to what polling signals are valid before their results are known.
Indeed, this thread has been open for 3 months. Thanks, @amiller, for proactively raising the possibility of coin-weighted voting! Unfortunately, the details have not been finalized in time (e.g., the voting format was suggested just today, and no one knows the dates when the staking balance needs to be maintained). Also and crucially, it’s not on the Zcash Dev Fund Community Sentiment Collection Poll announcement.