Honestly with regard to the coinholder “vote” all I’m seeing is one side with inflated expectations of the value of the vote and another side with over-exaggerated claims of doom/gloom for a completely opt-in consensual process that isn’t even binding on any decisions.
Talk about literally anything else please… 
Ian, please don’t put words in my mouth. That’s not what I said. What I said is available for you and anyone else to read here.
Honest question: if there’s no way to know if the poll/process represents honest players, and it’s not binding, then what is its purpose? “Gathering viewpoints and sentiment” seems like an ideal purpose, but if there’s no way to know if that’s actually the case, what is actually gained except doubt and confusion?
Ah more rhetoric based on emotion and no engagement with the actual arguments people are making. I’m sorry Zooko, I didn’t mean to put words in your mouth, I believe that was an accurate summary of your position. If you feel it miss represents your position, my apologies.
Here is a version using quotes instead.
Everyone else: But thats not the case. The voices we heard last time we did this were tiny and could purchased in their entirety for $600 in interest plus temporary collateral.
Everyone: It would have cost $600 dollars to buy those voices last time, nothing stops someone from buying them this time. We have no way of knowing they are honest and many reasons to think they won’t be. And the attack wouldn’t be to make a point, it would be to manipulation the vote and get more money from removing or keeping the cap. The attacker is very well motivated.
Everyone: Yeah, that’s not how security works: you look at what an attacker could do. And we know they could have bought the vote for $600. Things aren’t secure based on optimism.
A result that seems to contradict the Helios poll outcome would be potential ammunition for FUD. That’s not harmless.
I considered using my ZEC to vote for discounting the results of the coin-weighted poll (like whoever voted 155.6054747 ZEC to do that — that wasn’t me but I wholeheartedly approve). I decided that I can’t justify the security exposure.
Every company I’ve ever worked for had a CEO who did the occasional daft thing… its their job to make sparks and play with new things, right? I don’t work for ECC but we’re all connected via Zcash so it kinda feels the same.
The coin-petition is ‘zooko being zooko’ - its a fun idea, no effect on the formal vote, interesting concept to play with & in the future who knows.
I disagree. This is an important decision whose process and result need to be taken seriously.
I don’t know what @zooko’s intentions are but I can speculate based on the things he has already said: he seems to want to set a cadence for coinholders to begin voicing their opinions. @zooko has publicly expressed the desire to be inclusive of this group of people for a year now. The coinholder vote now is flawed in many ways but perhaps he feels waiting until a perfect process exists before getting (at least some) coinholders involved is detrimental to the project over the long term. After all, we’ve had very little input from “coinholders” on governance decisions so far, but they’re definitely an important group to at least try to involve.
In any case, who is taking the results of this coinholder vote seriously for governance purposes? It is so obviously flawed and biased that you’ll have a dozen or more reasons (that have already been mentioned) to reject those results and many more reasons to prefer the Helios vote. The fear that there will be a legitimacy crisis for the governance panel vote is way overblown. Does anyone honestly believe there will be a push to override the sentiment from the Helios vote and substitute it for a vote that is being openly mocked by its own participants?
I see this emotionally charged debate about something so easily dismissed/ignored as an extension of toxic relationships that have been developing between people in the community. Perhaps this is a time for us to reflect on that instead…
(Likely off-topic and better suited for other thread.)
Based on the (long) discussion so far, I’d argue that it isn’t that the proposed vote process is imperfect; it’s that it is not possible to know whether or not it’s valid at all based on how easy it would be to game. There’s a valid argument to make that waiting for the perfect solution is a bad idea, but there’s an equally valid argument that using an obviously flawed solution is also a bad idea.
And once again, to be clear: this is not about the desired result (getting coin-holder views). This is about the fact that not every method for attempting to obtain these views is equally valid, or even able to be trusted.
My worry is that this particular process offers nothing of verifiable value to the decision-makers or community. It would either confirm other (likely better) sentiment-gathering methods, or would conflict with them and simply cause confusion and unnecessary doubt, given the lack of trust in the method. I hold that this particular method is not harmless.
I see this emotionally-charged debate as unnecessary. One of the reasons that I often respect Zcash-affiliated decision-makers is because of the application of rigor and careful process. The fact that this particular approach is being so seriously debated and considered appears to fly in the face of these principles, and I find it frustrating.
ECC is, evidently. ECC has been treating the first “coin holder” petition as one of three signals, on the same footing as the two signals that ZF did painstakingly construct and announce. ECC is also giving strong indications, via Zooko’s endorsements here and on Twitter, that it will take seriously the results of this second petition.
Consequentially, if we end up with the Helios poll saying the opposite of an ECC-endorsed “coin holder petition”, the latter will definitely harm the clarity of the consensus established by the former.
Does anyone honestly believe there will be a push to override the sentiment from the Helios vote and substitute it for a vote that is being openly mocked by its own participants?
Yes. A push to override might not succeed, but even so it would be harmful: consuming attention and good will, casting doubts and and reducing legitimacy.
A governance process needs clear results, that will convince the “losers” that they indeed lost legitimately. Semi-legitimatized, ill-defined quasi-signals undermine this, by “keeping all options open” on how to interpret things in retrospect.
It’s especially frustrating that Zooko and ECC are refusing to even say what in their opinion should be the interpretation of this new signal. We’ve heard their apple-pie-and-motherhood narrative on the importance of listening to voices large and small. But they’re not saying how they would actually interpret those “small” voices, they’re not saying what is even the desired output of this voting system; and consequentially they haven’t made a case that the mechanism actually achieves what we desire. Instead of engaging in sound design of governance mechanisms and the requisite cryptographic protocols, we’re apparently engaging in blow-by-blow analysis of anecdotal random noise [1]. This is ludicrous.
@sarang really nailed it, above:
My worry is that this particular process offers nothing of verifiable value to the decision-makers or community. It would either confirm other (likely better) sentiment-gathering methods, or would conflict with them and simply cause confusion and unnecessary doubt, given the lack of trust in the method. I hold that this particular method is not harmless.
[1] To be clear, I don’t intend to slight whoever posted those particular ballots, or the importance of their opinion, or their exquisite sensor of humor. To the contrary: their opinion should be heard, by clear means that lend it proper weight, rather than feeding into an ill-defined process that culminates in graphs that bury their opinion in rounding errors. Participating in the forum and community panel are such means, and we may very well need more of these.
This is not a fair representation of what the blog post says. The blog post itself admits that the coinholder vote is controversial. You’ve skipped a step from “we believe the voices of coin holders are valuable and should be heard.” Simply including the information (however controversial or useless it might be) doesn’t imply anyone needs to make decisions based on that information. As it stands the coinholder vote is too controversial, too obviously biased/flawed that this information serves as a curiosity at best and I don’t think anyone can truly dispute that.
You’ve also read a deeper meaning out of the twitter post you linked to. Zooko simply talking on Twitter about the coinholder vote being a mechanism for expressing an opinion is not at all an ECC endorsement of the outcome being used for governance purposes as you quoted. ECC’s twitter account has not been retweeting any of Zooko’s tweets about this as far as I can tell.
A governance process needs clear results, that will convince the “losers” that they indeed lost legitimately. Semi-legitimatized, ill-defined quasi-signals undermine this, by “keeping all options open” on how to interpret things in retrospect.
I find this to be an interesting point that ties together your other concerns; it suggests ECC simply discussing a signal is enough to compromise the legitimacy of the vote and act as an endorsement of the signal for governance purposes. I think this is a stretch (especially when ECC explicitly says that the coinholder vote is controversial) but it helps clarify your overall objections for me.
This is why I don’t understand why respected people within the Zcash decision-making infrastructure are either advocating for this or otherwise encouraging it. If something is both flawed and possibly dangerous if not used correctly, I would hope that experts in the field would advocate against it. “Nobody can stop you” does not strike me as a good reason to do something.
Thats a good point.
As you say, " It is so obviously flawed and biased that you’ll have a dozen or more reasons (that have already been mentioned) to reject those results and many more reasons to prefer the Helios vote." It should be irrelevant. Perhaps you are right, this has gotten too emotional.
I think it would go a long way to assuage everyones concerns if @zooko and the handful of people pushing the coin holder vote committed clearly to the fact that they “are not seriously considering the coinholder vote as a governance process”
@zooko will you make such a commitment?
One of the reasons the blockchain poll is compelling to me is that I am not eligible to vote in the Foundation’s poll. I’m certainly not the only one, as others have expressed similar sentiments:
https://twitter.com/DigeNarrator/status/1218737689710792705
Maybe this perspective will help some of the blockchain poll critics understand why some of us like the existence of the blockchain poll, despite its numerous flaws.
Yikes!
In the next iteration, we need a better system to ask for an invitation, and track who already joined/invited.
Actually, in future updates of the panel, how about having people who asking to join (and maybe existing ones too?) post something about their background, past contributions, priorities, etc.?
(ping @acityinohio @sonya)
Especially with members who are pseudonymous, that information is hard to come by. I may personally know many of them based on, say, ongoing forum presence, but let’s make it easier to catch up and keep track.
It would be a fun idea if it wa for voting on a new mascot for Zcash but not for a multi-million US$ funding which effects the whole Zcash future and development.
Fun ideas have no place when it comes to serious business decisions.
Actually yes. After the last attempt by zooko to count “abstain” votes as “Yes” votes i honestly could imagine this as another step.
I personally totally agree that coinholders should have a say on governance decisions. And actually we saw that it’s possible that even large coinholders have a voice, see blocktown & placeholders proposals, discussions, views and even invitiation/seat in the community advisory panel today.
Both, blocktown and placholders voice have contributed a lot to the community on the forum and i’am pretty sure they will take an active part in the advisory panel as well.
I see it as an attempt to prevent damage of the helios voting result, confidence and avoid manipulation accusations afterwards which would additionally harm the community, price, whatever.
Just because a debate is emotionally charged doesn’t and shouldn’t automaticly mean it’s toxic and poison.
You have a point and i have critized that a lot that contributing people and even proposal makers did not have a chance to get into the community advisory panel. Where have you been? It’s definatly a flaw the ZF made by not organizing the advisory panel the best way but at least it’s a way smaller flaw/trade off than using the coin-weighted mechanism.
What’s your vote worth on the coin-weighted poll with some ZEC if it can get manipulated anyway and your voice/vote doesn’t count at all?
Just my opinion, but any changes to an ongoing voting/polling/signalling/whatever should be by default a no-go.
I am also unable to participate in the polling and hold ZEC. This alternative polling scheme does not seem like a prudent idea right now.
Moderator comment: Reminder to assume good faith unless you have very clear-cut proof of a direct lie. Be kind to each other.
Personal comment: The most interesting thing about the coinholder poll will be how people choose to participate. For example, the meta comments so far have been fascinating.
Governance via forums and committees doesn’t scale, especially for a living network like ZCash. Stake-polls/coin-votes have the advantage of weighting voices proportionally to the amount of skin-in-the-game one has. It is a very liquid form of voting that resist entrenchment of power.
Let me elaborate,
ZCash is a young community, but as time goes by, people will leave and go, or sell some of their ZEC. The project will mature and have more impact, for more people, etc. if we “hard-code” power into organizational structures based on early involvement and not current exposure, then we will do a great disservice to future generations of coin holders.
Coin vote reflects in real-time who is the most exposed to bad or good governance and weights their will accordingly. This is excellent for a network of money.
There are many protocol and cultural mechanisms that can defuse most of the concerns expressed in this thread. The most recurring concern is about “plutocracy” but even that one can be defended against by making the protection of minority rights (including property) a strong positive cultural norm that we all organize around.
If designed well, coin-votes and stake-polling are excellent tools for governance.
That’s a too idealistic view. I see where you are coming from but:
how much skin in the game does an exchange have that could use users funds to vote?
how much skin in the game does someone have that could just for 1 day obtain/borrow/exchange a huge amount of ZEC to influence/manipulate the coin weighted polling/voting?
Or does a coin holder with let’s say 10.000 ZEC has (10.000x) more skin in the game like a Zcash developer that holds 1 ZEC but contributed to the Zcash code 10.000 work hours?
As you said, IF. As this is currently not the case the attempt to introduce a more than flawed by design and doomed to fail coin-weightend mechanism out of nowhere in the middle of a voting process is just doing harm and no good. Easy and simple as that.
I’am all for having in future a coin weightened mechanism as part of future polling/votings/elections IF the major flaws have been dealt with, after it’s reliable and manipulation proof and of course, introduced in time and people are upfront aware of it. As none of this currently applies it doesn’t make sense to make an attempt to somehow add this mechanism right now beside the helios voting.