The future of Zcash in the year 2020

[dontbeevil]

It was me who proposed fixed dollars rewards

[Autotunafish]

A multifaceted problem
We need a better understanding of the multisig governance model because the way I see it the ECC is probably the most qualified group of people in the world to work on zcash today and the odds of finding another and coercing them into doing what these people want to do are slim in comparison
Terminating the devfee and kicking ECC to the curb would be extremely detrimental to the future of zcash so if you’re not gonna mine it has to come from somewhere else, same goes for the foundation who’s entire existence depends on sponsorship
The new problems where does the Devfee come from, how much, where does it go (and who decides that) and how does the ECC maintain the same level of productivity and efficiency without having access to the same kind of control?

I’m a Miner, I pay the dev fee, it affects me monetarily, it’s worth it
And that’s why I don’t think eliminating the dev fee solely because of the halving or because that’s what they said back then should stand because I don’t think any of them really understood at the time what would fully come from it

[mistfpga]

@acityinohio

We would support proposals that change consensus rules if there’s overwhelming consensus to do so, but specifically in the case of opt-in we were imagining some flag for users (to enable in their transactions) and/or miners (in their coinbase transactions) that would determine whether funds are awarded to a potential future dev fund (and at what proportion to potential recipients). A scheme along these lines would definitely require a consensus change.

Thank you for clarifying the position of the foundation. I thought this is what you meant.

@str4d - fwiw I completely agree with the complexity argument. I also see the foundations point too.

@zooko @nathan-at-least

So we have a definitive statement from the foundation. Please may we have one from the ECC.

[dontbeevil]

This is great! On the lines of what I suggested. Glad this is what Zcash Foundation agreed on!

[Anton1]

The lack of interest in the development of the project in the form of its cost and not attracting investors suggests that the company is in order or the task to get money in the beginning and in the long run to bankrupt the company. Judging by the movement around the ECC, we have the second point. Very upset about what is happening. It would be fair to sell the project with the return of the entire founders award in favor of the fund until 2020, and the implementation of the task that was originally set, but who will refuse such money, right?

[Autotunafish]

[redirecting you back to the topic reminding you that the only opinions that matter in that particular situation will be belonging soley to those who will be in the courtroom]

[joshs]

@Anton1

The lack of interest in the development of the project in the form of its cost and not attracting investors suggests that the company is in order or the task to get money in the beginning and in the long run to bankrupt the company. Judging by the movement around the ECC, we have the second point. Very upset about what is happening

Hi @Anton1 - I’m not sure what you mean. Can you explain a little more?

[Anton1]

Hello. Previously, I wrote that it was necessary to sell the product while increasing its cost, but funding for marketing was curtailed, due to which there was a bad situation, less money, less cost, less money, after which the renewal of financing directly from the block resumed.
Total we get: the ЕСС and the fund create a high-class product from a technical point of view, but do not care at all about its value, and therefore everyone is dissatisfied except for the recipients of money (a small group of people), if experts leave the project, then there is neither money nor opportunity to lead it further.
Now all decisions lead to splits in the community, the team and the absence of potential investors (this is evidenced by the fact that when new exchanges join and the news is present, the coin does not react in any way), what’s next, finalize by inertia
(now preparations are underway that the ECC will exist without ZCASH, that the fund without support will not be able to work further, i.e. there is no way out, and the price will fall on such news and lower price — less funding — worse than zcash) ----Google----

[boxalex]

@Spiral1990

Damn, if everything in this article is true, it really puts me off from buying and investing in Zcash. I guess we will need to wait for the trial and hope that the verdict is public and not secret.

The most important part for me is actually the ECC funding by the founders, investors, whomever. It really strikes me that out of so much money that the Founders Reward generates we got into a situation where the ECC and development is financinally struggling with the peanuts and small fraction they get from the Founders Reward.

[BUS]

What do you want to say by this? That it is not our deal.

[Shawn]

@local_miner

We should make a new thread for updating this legal case.

Agree, a new thread has been made for discussion of that case: Simon Liu v ECC

Further discussion on that specific case should be in that thread.

[zooko]

Hello to one of my favorite pockets of the Zcash community! I just had a lovely weekend of playing video games with my kids and biking around Boulder, and I finally have a day with almost no meetings, so I can try to catch up on this thread. Let’s see…254 posts? I think I’m probably somewhere around 100 in. I’ll try to respond to things as I go along, but one thing I’ve noticed about this Discourse software is that it forbids me from posting more than two replies in a row, so I might get stuck and have to wait for someone else to post something before I can post any more replies. Nice to catch up with y’all.

[update] Looks like I’m on post… 204.

[Shawn]

@zooko

I’ll try to respond to things as I go along, but one thing I’ve noticed about this Discourse software is that it forbids me from posting more than two replies in a row

@zooko I have bumped your member level so it shouldn’t have that restriction anymore. If it does, PM me and I will tweak things on the back end.

[boxalex]

I think the article/opinion above adresses indeed some points that need to be discussed.

@boxalex

The total ECC annual operating budget is $8.2 million and it’s going broke , while the company’s CEO is getting $1.464 million per year. Assuming these numbers are correct, the Electric Coin Company CEO’s earnings are equivalent to 17.85% of the struggling company’s annual budget.

@boxalex

Of course, you can’t really separate the amount going to founders and vested employees from the company’s finances itself. The Founders Reward is hardcoded into Zcash as a system that currently diverts 20% of the mining rewards to the specified Founder wallets, so those founders, including Wilcox, are directly funding the Electric Coin Company with voluntary donations of their own. That’s where the 2.8% comes from.

That’s on one side amazing and on the other it just shouldn’t be like that. This is exactly one point i tried to adress several times in this thread. Several FR receivers receive way more than it gives to the ECC budget. This just can’t be right and good.

@boxalex

And then there’s the Zcash Foundation, which is getting a bigger slice of the funding than ECC itself for performing what sounds like a very similar function.

I didn’t think so far about it. But this is a valid point. I believed until 2 weeks ago that the foundation will be responsible at some time and take over full responsibility over Zcash. This was a wrong believe as i know today. But exactly this believe made me think that there is a reason the foundation is there. After i/we know now better that no such step is planned why indeed do we have a foundation that receices more funding than the ECC developement? I several times allready mentioned that the foundation is in my opinion lagging ages behind.
IF Zcash doesn’t have funds and/or runs out of funding in 2020 i think it’s a valid question if we indeed need a foundation at all? As no decentralization and giving the foundation full responsibility anyway over Zash a lot of funds could be used for direct development.

@boxalex

Zcash created both, and then funded them both with a system that doles out ongoing mining rewards to a small handful of key players who then voluntarily fund these two organisations. It’s quite different.

This raises the question why these key players only fund ECC and the foundation with just such little portion of the Founders Reward? Doesn’t sound right to me and raises automaticly the question: IF the keyplayers and founders are that stingy on their own project why the hell should the community/miners be generously?
The very last thing i think bevor even continue to disucss a dev reward beyound 2020 is an immediate re-organisation and new distributin of the founders towards ECC development. Only if the community sees satisfactory self organization towards developement the community should be willing to give it’s part as well.

@boxalex

What we have here is a company’s piece of code that’s vacuuming up an enormous portion of its product’s total earnings and giving it to a team of executives and investors, only some of whom are employees of the company, who then donate some of it to the company they are employees of. A portion of the executive earnings is also diverted to a separate charity organisation whose board members also include some founders of the company.

Exactly my thoughts. With an estiminated Founders Reward with an value of way over $300,000,000 at the current exchange rate from today until 2020 and the previous rates until last month it’s just a bad joke that the ECC gets into a budget deficit.

@boxalex

What started as an effort to imbue the organisation’s finances with a new level of transparency have also made the entire thing wonderfully opaque and complicated.

Me personally would go even further and remove the transparency part and add that the current founders reward is everything else but not something that garantees the best possible developement funding. Actually it’s totally wrong designed for such purpose, complicated, unefficient, unflexible and having development at the last piority. Designed to fail…

@boxalex

History says that those founders have not tended to be overly generous. Plus, like any open cryptocurrency, Zcash is largely dependent on volunteers to survive, but there’s not a lot of incentive to start volunteering when there’s also a team of well-paid founders and investors hanging around.

This pretty much fits up my thoughts and why i’am currently that critical to a new dev found.
The winzec dev had to beg for some ZEC, ECC runs on a deficit and meanwhile the receivers of the current Founders Reward obviously don’t show too much interest while counting their bucks…

[zooko]

Thank! Great, now I can just spam the thread with 100 replies in a row! Okay srsly, I’ll try to respect the intent of that default limitation by replying only when I can add value…

[zooko]

Dear Anton1:

I’m afraid I do not understand your post, even though I read it, and then read it again more slowly. Please see if I’m getting closer with what I write below, and then write back.

I think the question of “Where the value comes from” is the most important question in this entire discussion. It would be easy to believe that when a block is found, and that block contains a coinbase with new ZEC in the coinbase, that new value has been created. A lot of people probably believe that, because it seems natural. But, it is incorrect. Generating new ZEC in a coinbase does not create new value. Therefore, it must be a transfer of value. Value is not thereby created, so if the recipients of the coinbase received some value, someone else must have lost an equal amount of value. Who?

This is the fundamental fact that everyone needs to understand in order to know what would happen if we—the Zcash community—adopt different dev funding designs.

This same confusion also happens in regular old monetary policy discussions in pre-cybercoin economics. In that context, economists call it “Real Vs. Nominal Value”. “Real” value means how much you can get out of something, “Nominal” means what the number is. If I gave you 1,000,000 Venezuelan Bolivars in June of 2009, you could probably get a beautiful house in Caracas for it. That’s a lot of value! If I gave you 1,000,000 Venezuelan Bolivars today, ten years later, you’d be lucky if you get a single chicken egg for it. The real value of that has been vastly reduced, but the nominal value is the same.

Let’s talk about cybercoins. Here’s how you can tell that coinbases create nominal value but do not create real value: suppose Bitcoin had been defined, instead of generating 50 BTC every block (resulting in an eventual 21,000,000 BTC), that instead it would generate 500 BTC every block (resulting in an eventual 210,000,000 BTC). What would the situation be like today. Would every BTC hodler be ten times as rich? After all, every BTC hodler would have ten times as many BTC! And every BTC is worth $9221.00 today! But no, that’s not what would happen. What would happen is that the price of BTC would be $922.10, and every BTC hodler would have exactly as much real value.

Coinbases create nominal value. Supply and demand is what determines real value. Since a coinbase increases the nominal supply without changing the demand, a coinbase causes every coin holder’s real value to go down a little. The total amount of real value that all the coinholders put together lose is exactly equal to the total amount of real value that the recipient of the coinbase gains.

Therefore, a coinbase is a transfer of value, not a creation of value. And it is a transfer of value from all coin-holders, to the recipient of the coinbase.

Please let me know if that makes sense.

[Autotunafish]

This is a good article that talks about a good paper that you should like actually read (I remember reading it a while back but yeah, refresh)

Principles for decision-making in a flat organization

https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7282

This belongs in the future 2020 thread @Shawn

[Anton1]

Hello.
The real value is formed by buyers, everything is correct, and is related to the cost of other goods and services, higher cost is better for holders, there is no confusion here, but there are slightly different rules for coins on the stock exchange because the number of coins is maximum and is known unlike the rest of real economy, so your reasoning is fundamentally wrong (and that is why Bitcoin is growing all the time, unlike the Venezuelan bolivar). When generating coins, the cost is not created, I talked about this in my post, the cost is created when buying, the question is what will happen if 0.0001% of all mined coins are traded? Coin holders will shape the value?Richer, too, probably will not be due to the volatility of the market, but now it’s not about that, I said that it’s the current buyer who today acquires a coin that forms its value, and it doesn’t matter how much is sold on the market (the amount of coins is known), and coin holders in this case do not transmit anything and do not get everything simple.
I am the holder, how much do I give each day as a founder reward?

• if you count in Zec
• if you count in dollars in a falling market
• if you count in dollars in a growing market
  I guess nothing.Money previously spent is no longer involved in pricing.
  But if we take the value of coins on the market, then the calculation is different, transferring the cost to the number of coins I get different values, and by the way this is exactly what I am not satisfied with when the market is falling.
  Coins with a finite amount cannot have inflation, there is only the present value (demand) and output. Higher demand means higher value currently on the traded coins.
  Because when I exchanged coins for bitcoins, I had more than now, and the company that worked for this money did not meet expectations, but this is my problem

[zooko]

@mistfpga

Am I fair in rephrasing this as “Mining new blocks dilutes the total supply, therefore, coin holders are paying towards FR via dilution”?

Yes. New ZEC in coinbases do not create new real value (they only create new nominal value). They cause a transfer of real value to the recipients of the coinbases. And who is that value transferred from? It is transferred from all coin-holders. Please see this recent post for further arguments to that effect.