Do you think this should be prioritised or not? What is your impression on how this relates to Zcash’s mission and the other things being proposed?
Re t-address deprecation, just want to point out that multi-signature transactions only work with t-addresses currently. Adding features and performance improvements that focus on shielded transactions/addresses is the best way to push its use. Afaik, HTTPS is faster than HTTP because performance improvements are no longer made to HTTP, I don’t really see HTTP being deprecated any time soon though; it still has its use cases like local dev and tunnelled connections.
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It used to be the case we were waiting for shielded multisig and selective disclosure to be able to deprecate t-addrs. Now the narrative has notably shifted and t-addrs seem to be part of the future. I don’t think that’s a positive step.
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Some people have to pay taxes on capital gains, our private opinions about the tax act and other similar policies aside, the T-Address will make capital gains calculations more accessible for that demographic of zcash user.
Taxes can be calculated by sharing your Viewing Key with your Tax accountant.
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Maybe we revisit dropping T-address support and enabling only T to Z transactions when ECC/ZF works on architecting the PoS core? (Hopefully Zcash market cap is minimum 10x up from here by then).
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signmessage and verifymessage is done with the use of a taddy priv key and can be used in a method to prove in a z2z that you’re in fact the sender, it’s pretty neat
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Its a lot more convenient to just use a block explorer than teach an accountant how to use viewing keys.
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If its as easy as copy and pasting, then perhaps I could live without T address. Usability is the only concern I have for T address.
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z_importviewingkey and z_exportviewingkey are different from the above thing but easy enough as copypasta. Using a full node is really not that bad once you play with it, figure out and make a list of the commands that you’ll use most. I’ll definitely help if can 
It’s important to me that my ZCAP vote expresses that I am in favor of a “green” consensus mechanism.
I believe that the energy consumption of consensus algorithms is in many contexts the only thing people are aware of with respect to cryptocurrency. For those who are aware of nothing else, this awareness never implies positive perspective on cryptocurrency. Moving to an energy efficient POS allows us to flip that extremely potent narrative on its head.
It’s not that POS (or other energy efficient consensus mechanism) lets us say: “See!! We’re green!”… it’s that it allows us to say: “See fiat is black!! Like Coal Smoke.”
I would dearly love to report that Zcash is “Greener Than Greenbacks” (aka USD). Greener than fiat… etc.
ZSA, scalability… etc… these have 0 visibility in most of the marketplace. Notice that I am assuming our target market is humanity not (just) “crypto-twitter”.
Soo… of course, I can be persuaded otherwise, but for now I plan to vote for:
Moving away from PoW as the top priority, and ZSAs as the second.
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This is my top priority based on (my perception of) public perception of cryptocurrency.
Greener than fiat is a powerful statement.
What was a liability in the widest of public opinion spheres, becomes an asset. I am explicitly interested in energy efficiency, perhaps “as-efficient-as-POS”, as a design constraint on a new consensus mechanism.
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+1 FWIW Cardano went PoS before adding tokens.
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Some community members are anxiously waiting for NU5 Testnet. I would like to ask, when will NU5 Testnet be activated? 
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Likely next week. We are waiting on a report from one of the auditors (QEDIT).
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As @joshs mentioned above, QED-it is wrapping up their implementation audit and we’ll have their final feedback early next week. Once we’ve implemented any needed changes we’ll cut the zcashd release that sets testnet activation height shortly thereafter.
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imho
UDA/ZSA - top priority
POS - secondary
ZSA/UDA will lure developers to implement who knows what and will result in more usage and eco-system grow right away, while delay will boost other competing projects
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Hi all,
Here are my thoughts on the Future of Zcash. I put the topics in order of earlier to later priorities. Note that these are not ordered in terms of overall importance. Also, all these topics are later in priority than the clear top priority of NU5/Halo Arc release at end of this year.
ZSAs
In terms of other aspects of Zcash’s future, I think ZSA’s will be a great addition. For instance, being able to transact using a private stablecoin on Zcash will likely increase adoption of the Zcash network as a whole since businesses and individuals both rely on some currency stability. The implementations of ZSAs should obviously be done in such a way as to benefit zec holders. It would also be good to have an on-chain way to switch between zec and ZSA’s.
It is a nuanced issue to introduce a stablecoin on Zcash, since if people start to mainly use stablecoins, what is the point of zec as a form of money? I think following the road of Ethereum is one way to insure that zec maintains its role as a currency, since people would need to pay in Zec to send their ZSA’s around. Plus zec is a more scarce asset than the dollar without any plans to massively change the cap on number of coins, so people will also want to hold it as a store of value, which is part of the definition of a currency.
I think any way you cut it, it is better to add more applications to Zcash than not to. Without broader adoption, ease of use, and more things to do with it in both the digital and real world, zec may not become widely-used money. But at least with ZSAs, zec will still have its fundamental value proposition as money and it will allow more people to use the network, thereby increasing adoption and awareness of Zcash. I’m no expert on how a currency becomes stable around the world, and it seems like all cryptocurrencies will have volatility for the foreseeable future. But one way of having people think of zec or other cryptos as money is for things to be priced in zec. For now most of these things may be only in the digital realm (transaction fees for payments, fees for sending ZSAs, zNFTs, etc.). But having new generations getting used to pricing things in zec will only increase awareness of its utility and should be helpful for its widespread use.
Furthermore, having ZSAs on Zcash will better enable it to serve as a privacy layer for other chains, leading to more cross-chain interoperability and greater adoption. I envision a world of interoperability where certain financial applications are transparent – such as digital banks. This could enable, for example, anyone to be able to make sure these applications are not lending out way more than they store in reserve, thereby helping to prevent financial meltdowns. Also, other blockchains are likely not going anywhere anytime soon, and they may have features that Zcash will not have in the near future, or ever, so it is best to work with them as a privacy layer for the entire ecosystem. I feel like ZSAs will help this.
Education, Outreach, and Adoption
Before other protocol level changes take ahold of the attention of the community, I think a moment to plan a more concerted effort towards education, outreach, and adoption is the most powerful tool to strengthen Zcash. Zcash is clearly being built for the real world, where user security is of a fundamental importance for any sort of functioning economy. It is also being built with some of the most underserved populations in mind. In other words, Zcash is a very mission focused enterprise, and education and outreach with this mission in mind is a high priority.
Proof of Stake
I like the move towards proof of stake over the next couple years. I am not intimately familiar with the other varieties of consensus mechanisms, but proof of stake has a lot going for it: allows Zcash holders to participate and be rewarded for securing the network and is more environmentally friendly, which is a plus not only for the environment but also for the social perception of cryptocurrency. Zcash can observe Ethereum’s transition, as well as explore other mechanisms, to try to get all the good without any of the bad for a switch to a future-proof POS consensus mechanism.
I think Nathan’s point about Zcash holders being able to easily designate coins to validators (delegated staking) is an important consideration so that it is as easy as possible for anyone to participate with any amount of zec. I also think Vitalik’s point for Ethereum’s proof of stake validators being able to run on consumer grade hardware is also another good strategy to maintain as much decentralization as possible.
Scalability
This is a very important point that is one of those things that is not a problem until it is a problem. Having a good way to deploy scalable changes to Zcash in the future is something that should be kept in mind, and folks at ECC already are planning how scalability can be deployed in the future using Halo. Despite it not being a problem right now, I think it is an important factor to enable Zcash’s mission of being accessible to everyone since I presume scalability will allow more users on the network while also helping keep transaction fees low in the future.
Programmability
I believe adding smart contracts on top of Zcash would be a great way to add more applications to Zcash. For instance, a decentralized exchange to go between zec and ZSAs would allow more people to do more things in one place (the Zcash blockchain). This would help increase user friendliness and adoption. I also think borrowing/lending applications would be great to be able to easily use directly with zec since borrowing/lending are such a huge slice of the financial system pie. Despite the potential impact of having applications that can run on Zcash, I put programmability last of the priorities since it sounds like it might be one of the most difficult. However, listing programmability last also does not mean that if smart contracts were to launch tomorrow, I think that would be a bad thing.
T-address deprecation
I am in favor of taking a longer road to t-address deprecation. Many of the improvements being talked about and implemented already (specifically unified addresses and shielded by default wallet support) will begin to make the dichotomy between t- and z-address less apparent. Shielded hardware wallet support will also help ease the transition, as well as many other features already discussed by the ECC and mentioned in the 8/26/21 Arborist call. Hopefully, the ratio of zec in the transparent versus shielded pools will invert over the coming year or two, where the majority of zec is in the shielded pool. This would be a good indicator of a time to more explicitly explore deprecating t-addresses.
Deprecating t-addresses also feels a bit like Satoshi warning Wikileaks to not bring on the heat to Bitcoin quite yet. If Zcash deprecates t-addresses quickly, it might not give time for exchanges and regulators to get over the fact that Zcash is a completely shielded currency, even though the technology allows transparency through a user’s permission. I think the use of shielded addresses will grow naturally due to many of the current and future developments for Zcash and t-address deprecation can be tabled until some primitives have been taken care of (e.g., shielded hardware wallets, multi-signature shielded wallets).
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I believe that a “green” consensus mechanism has appeal in a vastly wider market than any other innovation in the entire cryptocurrency space.
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