In my opinion, it is because the block rewards has perverted the ideology of Zcash leadership. (Which in concert has perverted the common ideology of the entire ecosystem)
The luxury of perpetual free funding has lead their focus astray into realms that are not practical, nor feasible for sustainable value accrual.
If this community were forced to stand on it’s own two feet, I think it would be an unambiguous theme that ZEC is a rare, private Bitcoin variant that should be treated with the utmost respect.
But instead here we are in 2023, and ZEC are being liquidated at $26 each to pay (using just one example) the radio-silent Zcash Media team, to the total sum (including the leading 10 months) of $1,000,000
Foolish, Disrespectful, and Destructive if you ask me!
The Leadership of This Project Must Respect ZEC if we are ever going to succeed, if not we are destined to continue toward the failure end state.
Zcash presents itself as a private currency. It will never achieve network effect unless it dominates that niche. IMHO Zcash undercuts its desired purpose by allowing transparent transactions on chain. Zcash should focus on capturing market share from Monero (dominating the privacy niche). Going after Bitcoin or Visa is pointless at this point, because much of the public will never take Zcash seriously as a “private currency” so long as transparent transactions persist.
If Zcash hopes to become the most used blockchain for private transaction and wealth storage, it must first eliminate its achilles heel (on chain transparency). Until/unless that happens it will remain an academic experiment that attracts the interest if some mathematicians interested in zero knowledge proofs, but never achieve its potential of large scale utility in the real world.
It’s a security issue, too. I’ve known at least a few people who assumed they had privacy using their transparent-only wallet. “Oh, I thought Zcash was private.”
In hindsight, relying on transparent address’ compatibility with existing Bitcoin libraries to make adoption easier was probably a mistake. It stopped us from seeing all of the roadblocks to shielded adoption when we had enough funds to address those problems. If usable shielded libraries and wallets were necessary to use Zcash earlier on, then we would have had them much sooner.
It would probably be a disaster to remove transparent addresses at this time. But the degree to which removing them would be a disaster is the degree to which shielded adoption has failed. Perhaps by deciding to remove them, we would helpfully force ourselves to confront all of the blockers to shielded adoption.
In practice I agree with this as well. It’s sad to see many former community members give up on Zcash because of the transparency issue that leadership refuses to address.
Adding unified addresses (rather than eliminating transparency) was the final nail in the coffin for many of the privacy focused former Zcash followers I talk to. So much zcash development has negative value both on the technical level and in driving away those that value privacy the most
Unified addresses are a necessary step on the path to deprecating t-addrs, and they’re necessary for solving the usability problem presented by there being multiple shielded pools. We don’t want users to have to understand different address types, and unified addresses solve that problem.
This may not be the right place to mention this, but it pains me to notice that any thread on twitter that talks about privacy or the need for privacy never has any mention of Zcash in the main post or in any of the comments. Even on Vitalik’s recent post about Railgun, there was mention of many other privacy coin options but not a single $ZEC or Zcash mention. Not sure how to overcome that issue, but we need to be in the conversation to even matter.
As for T-addresses, I see them as equivalent to ATMs. Allow for the entry/exit to be public and permitted in the real world (while still allowing for other options in the future with private dexs / ZSAs, etc…).
Once the asset is out of the ATM, anything can happen to it and privacy begins. Buying $ZEC now and shielding it for years down the road while it (hopefully) accrues in value is great.
With everything thats going on right now, the work you guys have been putting in, the resilience the team has shown, the slight change in leadership & extremely hefty roadmap. You guys are important. THANK YOU!
This is what’s frightening about Zcash. I’d say we’d struggle to line up 100 reasonably dedicated community members (excluding devs and anyone who receives a slice from the dev fund). Alarmingly low on bodies and we’re stuck in a bubble within a bubble. Zashi has 429 followers on X, Zooko of all people struggles to get 30 likes on his tweets, and this forum feels empty most of the time. Somethings not adding up. I hope @David_Heisenberg has the next Gangnam Style: Zcash Edition video that’s going to make #Zcash trend everyday for the next six months. Because no one seems to have the answer for this, and even worse, no one wants to have the answer.
I started in cryptocurrencies with Zcash, mainly due to the maximum amount of 21 million, when I analyzed Zcash I found the price to be very discounted, I made an average price of 90 dollars, I believed that Zcash would rise infinitely.
I still believe in Zcash, despite also realizing that Zcash has little visibility.
In my opinion, Zcash is a kind of improved Bitcoin, with privacy features, that’s very good, but it seems like people don’t see that.
In my opinion, what makes Bitcoin so appreciated is decentralization, the mystical and mythical side of having an unknown creator, the romance of the boy who created Bitcoin without ever revealing himself and who disappeared leaving this legacy to humanity, the romantic side of a cryptocurrency created anonymously by a totally unknown person, the libertarian side of leaving the system, the red pill.
I see Zcash as a bank account in Switzerland, or even better, with complex anonymity. I know that many people with a lot of money would love to have a bank account like Zcash, where there is a complex layer of anonymity, but without the risk of confiscation by the government.
Zcash has a lot of potential, it has everything to be in the top 10, it has everything to be appreciated, but there is still something missing for this to happen.
The plot twist is Satoshi Nakamoto wanted us all to have a story like him (in our own little realms and fantasies). Zcash provides that escape.
Making that transition from Bitcoin to Zcash is EXTREMELY DIFFICULT/ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE. People or Bitcoiners will not make this choice willingly. They are quite literally under a spell (I was there once and for quite a while (2016-2022), that “belief” is up there with the belief in religion, trust me).
Either we need new people (but hard to keep them if price doesn’t move ). Or the only thing that will convert Bitcoiners is if Zcash proves itself by climbing the ranks on coinmarketcap one day at a time, one dollar/pound/euro/pesos/dinar/lei … at a time. One new believer at time.
All I’m saying is our community numbers and social media presence are INCREDIBLY LOW. And we’re in a bubble, no one else is talking about Zcash apart from Zcashers. They’ll use and praise Zcash tech all day and all night. NOT ONE MENTION OF ZCASH
Despite only having Zcash in my cryptocurrency wallet, I appreciate Bitcoin for being the pioneer of this revolution, where governments themselves fear its existence.
In my opinion, Bitcoin is outdated, there are few advances in technology, what’s more, anyone is subject to being recognized as the owner of a wallet, each currency is fully traceable, people run the risk of the government itself preventing transactions, forcing miners to disregard some coins because they belonged to illicit acts in the past, harming people who have nothing to do with what happened in the past, but there may even be a differentiation in the value of certain coins that belonged to the first emissions and mining or those that Satoshi Nakamoto himself sent to someone.
people are very deluded with Bitcoin, thinking that there is privacy, but what actually makes popularity is related to value, to the dream of becoming a millionaire, like a democratic lottery, where everyone can get rich, the essence of cryptocurrencies has been lost , many do not value it because the government cannot confiscate it, but the value is literally linked to the person’s chances of getting rich and the dream of changing their life, becoming rich and then selling everything and buying everything they ever wanted.
In my opinion, Zcash is not being reported in the news, people are not talking about zcash precisely because they do not see Zcash as an opportunity to get rich, people just want to get rich, make a lot of money. as the value of zcash is low, they disregard all robustness, disregard all applicability, all complex features, simply because of the value and expectation of becoming millionaires.
I sometimes contemplate whether I’ll be ok with Zcash staying at $20 forever. The answer often is HELL NO. This whole game is built on greed the same way most of the world was built on greed.its inherent in us and completely normal imo so long as you don’t sacrifice other nobilities like your or others freedom, dignity, honour, privacy, safety, etc.
The thing about Zcash that I find weird is no one at the top wants to talk PROPERLY about price and what actually can be done to raise awareness, increase the base, and ultimately increase the price. When I scout for answers, I see terms like adoption, UI, availability, etc but these are just gimmicks imo, useful and fun, but gimmicks. These will not be THE REASON why adoption goes up. It’ll be one of two reasons 1) something serious and real (think Arab spring/political dissonants) 2) price increase and taking over Bitcoin. I think it’ll be the former. Bitcoin was a “money thing”, Zcash is a “power thing”. Then and only then will these gimmicks come in handy and help with adoption.
The bubble/echo chamber is real. Filled with sycophants who think zooko is some kind of second coming, moon boys non-sensical bull posting (exhibit a: https://x.com/nextiscrypto/status/1781317559910117400), and what I think are in general sock puppets meant to prop up the illusion that there even is a community.
1k total downloads for a mobile wallet says everything you need to know. And no, Zcash Media is not going to save anything (probably not even the hundreds of thousands in ZEC they’ve also received).
FWIW, I’m pleased with the 1k unique downloads (not total) for Zashi iOS v1 in under 30 days - and this is limited to one wallet out of the various options out there today. I suspect we’ll see even more uptake with Android. If we do it right, this will grow exponentially as we add differentiated capabilities.
@joshs it’s not great but not terrible. Certainly good to add a comma to the number.
I think a HUGE miss is not having a mailing list. Why there wasn’t one established years ago that covered zk-* topics (not solely Zcash – as A) there’s not enough content and B) no one cares about Zcash).
You could have easily blasted this newsletter to promote the new wallet (amongst other things). This forum is an awful medium for the “community” to come together.
You could even post your weekly updates (which are nice) on it. It could even be super generalized to “Cypherpunks” https://www.2600.com/ (one of my fav zines growing up). Call it “Zypher” or “Zypherpunk”.
1000 downloads is a good number for a short launch time, I don’t use an iPhone, but when it comes out on Android I will certainly download it.
I confess that I don’t like the idea of putting all my Zcash on my smartphone, I prefer the computer, I feel safer with a computer properly configured and exclusive just for Zcash.
but I intend to use zashi on my cell phone with a few coins, up to the limit that I feel comfortable using on my smartphone.
It would be interesting to be able to make purchases or sales between users, using a credit card, trading Zcash, accumulating Zcash and transferring the coins to the financial reserve wallet located on the computer. when you need to use Zcash, just go and sell through the zashi wallet itself, without needing to use binance, in a completely decentralized and secure way, I think it would be a good feature for the zashi wallet, I would use this resource a lot to buy Zcash and not I would use binance more to buy Zcash. But here comes a regulatory problem, room for illegality, it is very complex to have a functionality like this.
I believe zashi would be more excitingly accepted if it has the functionality to buy Zcash and sell Zcash, an optional functionality. Anyone who wants the functionality should register with ECC, send documents, photos, prove who the person is, nationality, passport, everything managed by ECC, enabling zcash trading between qualified users, like on a stock exchange, like a digital bank that uses a strong currency. but even with all the control to avoid illegalities, this would generate conflicts with the government, wanting information on transactions between users, demanding that ECC disclose all negotiations and user data to the government, but this could be provided for in the functionality contract , as it is optional, accepts anyone who is aware that the government may request this information and that users must always be right with the government, paying taxes, giving Cesar what belongs to Cesar.
). Or the only thing that will convert Bitcoiners is if Zcash proves itself by climbing the ranks on coinmarketcap one day at a time, one dollar/pound/euro/pesos/dinar/lei … at a time. One new believer at time.