We have a serious governance problem. Two actually.
ZEC holders have no proportional voice. I am not saying the governance should be solely based on ZEC holders opinion. I am saying that it is ridiculous that we do not know their opinion on critical matters.
ZCG is great in some regards, a joke in some others. The way I see it, a Zcash member that accepts to pass KYC in order to gain governance powers, should be a basic litmus test. If you accept KYC, then clearly, you don’t need privacy all that much. So here’s the question: Who is representing people who actually need the privacy that Zcash is here to provide?
Anyone in this forum still cares about privacy or are we only left with pump boys and KYC band?
By following the community on socials, I think you can get a very good idea of the community’s opinions on critical matters. With PoS, on the other hand, I guess there will be the opportunity to give a voice to ZEC holders.
ECC will be leaning into this. @paulbrigner will be on point for us. He is currently on paternity leave but has already started thinking about a path for engaging the community on this and governance more broadly.
Just a thought on the two points initially raised:
Regarding giving a voice to ZEC holders: I am very happy that @paulbrigner (extremely thankful for your work!!) will be looking into this. I would like to say right from this early stage how important delegation is. Without it, the token holders voting turnouts are generally extremely low and therefore not that representative of the ZEC holders as a whole. Most people, myself included, do not want or are simply not equipped with the appropriate knowledge to vote on all critical matters; yet they do know what “more educated” people have views that are aligned with theirs. Now, possibly, that will be complicated to implement on Zcash, I don’t know. The alternative would be for trusted orgs or people, to publish their opinion clearly. ECC, for example, could post a note prior to a vote, expressing their opinion. Same for ZF, ZCG, or any person or group that wishes to express their reasoning.
Again, who is representing people who actually need the privacy that Zcash is here to provide? Could I please be reminded why ZCG only has KYC’d people? I understand why ECC/ZF cannot send money to people that are not KYC’d, is that the only reason? If so, can non-KYC’d people still join if they understand they cannot receive any money from ECC/ZF?
Not a lawyer here but that’s probably because they are orgs subject to US laws. They “can’t” do a bunch of things depending of US’ foreign policy and all that jazz. If you reside in embargo’d countries for example you can’t receive payment from many countries allied or submitted to US foreign policy. Cubans or North Koreans probably can’t apply to a grant. Because the ZF would be “given the choice” (aka extortion) to either refuse or “become enemies of the US”, with all the things that entails.
At least that’s what I understood from some discussions on a sadly memorable panel on zcon4
Fortunately ZF announced their plans to limit their exposure to all of this which I think is the correct strategy
It’s due to tax reasons and 501c reporting requirements. ZCG is still paid through accounting that is part of the ZF, and issues a IRS 1099 to those that receive funds.
I imagine if someone who was to be elected to ZCG chose not to get paid then they could probably not do KYC.
The other issue in that situation would be potential conflict of interest when reviewing grants. If someone is anonymous they could potentially push a project that they’re a part of for funding without properly disclosing the conflict of interest to the other ZCG members.
Ok so that’s what I thought. I don’t particularly need the money and I would gladly participate.
Bigger issue here, ok. I can’t think of a good solution.
Either way, I am just trying to find a way to give a voice to people and orgs that do not wish to be KYC’d. It’s a wider scope than “just” approving grants. We just don’t have that right now. Example of what this looks like in Polkadot: https://twitter.com/ChaosDAO/ - https://delegation.polkadot.network/
Polkadot is not even a privacy project, yet it leads us on private governance; we should really pay attention. We don’t need the level of governance toolset they have, but we do need a basic yet strongly privacy preserving one.
I wish some more of the PoS transition discussions would be on the forum, some answers are undoubtedly part of that research.
@paulbrigner maybe there’s something to be salvaged from this thread:
it also addresses some of the funding concerns mentioned by @joshs on his recent podcast appearance, i.e. 4-year funding cycles promote a slower development pace