The Last Swing of The Stick

General
21

Which hazard?

The hazard that we can see all around us today, 6+ years of freely spending ZEC that were free via block rewards. And we haven’t got intuitive, simple, working wallets, we’ve only got 150 full nodes running globally, the coin value is a disaster, governance remains centralized under the ZF and ECC/ Bootstrap, We’ve even got the ZF Executive Director violating Zcash Community Rules on stage at Zcon4 without being levied any repercussion. (these are the productive hazards). The moral hazard is that the block reward ZEC predominantly go to affluent Americans, despite there being hundreds of members of the Zcash community in day-to-day material stress. Removing free ZEC block rewards, removes the moral dilemma of giving free ZEC to affluent researchers, policy lobbyists, managers, and engineers

How?
Everyone in the Zcash ecosystem shares the same skin in the game. Salaries are no longer indiscriminately paid vis-a-vis ZEC holder devaluation-dilution, et al. Alignment of all material interests behind the value of ZEC is critical in fostering an egalitarian, decentralized ecosystem. Until then we remain trapped in an Us vs Them dilemma
(block rewardees/ insiders wanting to keep their power and free spigot of ZEC flowing vs non-block rewardee community, ZEC holders, ZEC users)

How?
Here

How does a fee market solves the problem the dev fund is designed to solve?
This has been described at length by @Jgx7 in other recent threads.
ELi5 - a fee market is necessary in combination with the Sustainibility Fund, such that transactors or builders are empowered to automate (or at discretion) new treasury funding. Secondly fees are perpetually generated, which mitigates against funding risks around a hard capped coin supply.

From where would they get funds?
They already have a ton of ZEC and cash, and theyll be receiving more free ZEC all the way up to the November 2024 halving. After that point, presume ZEC has accrued value above $100 and their ZEC can be used to create new routine yield via PoS staking. These organizations if endeared by the Zcash ecosystem, will also be receiving opt-in direct donations and funding from community members.

Why? It’s very likely that miners sell all the ZEC they mine. How would that change?
Giving miners today, or stakers of the future, an additional 20% yield increases their ROI, which increases their odds of retaining ZEC in their portfolio rather than instantly liquidating into cash or BTC. Retaining ZEC is a win-win-win, but as the current model takes 20% from miner yield - they are perpetually kept in distress.

PoS is a super complex thing to implement. Who is going to do that without the dev fund?
ECC is and will continue to do this, even at depressed ZEC values the ECC has ~2 years worth of funding to invest in their PoS work. Again to the above point, factor in an increase of ZEC value with an increase of opt-in community member donations, and they’ll have more than a long enough runway to complete the PoS upgrade. If times become critically stressed, extra-ECC individuals may support PoS efforts via ZCG minor or major grants proposals/ funding.

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22

Thank you for your reply. I’d like to encourage others that also believe removing the Dev Fund will be such a huge solution to share their views.

I’ll be honest as always. It is very hard to think that a solution that addresses those many problems you enumerate does not qualify as a “silver bullet”.

I make @conradoplg questions mine as well. I’m very interested on learning more about on the “hows” of your arguments.

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23

If you’re pressuring me, I’d call it a 5 year silver bullet. Sunsetting the block reward in November 2024 wouldn’t immediately create any of the positive affects that I’m asserting it would. Those shifts of ecosystem, the economics of ZEC, governance reconstruction, all of it - changes will take time to manifest. Necessary changes. Zcash cannot sustain itself under the block reward experiment, as I’ve already remarked countless times, the proof is in the pudding. Here we are +7 years in and $25,000,000 of Free ZEC spending and this is all we’ve got to show for it. The evidence of the failed experiment is all around us, its like water surrounding fish in the ocean.

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24

what would be the difference, if miners sell those coins anyway ?
we need to wait until Zcash matures, and then we can think about termination of the Dev Fund.
someone has to pay for the development, lawyers etc

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25

I’ve already made the point, I’m confused why the same question is represented over and over again.

Removing the block reward is primarily about aligning material interests for the whole ecosystem - Everyone becomes an advocate for ZEC to accrue value, for adoption to grow, for more and better products to be built.

The primary idea has nothing to do with who is selling ZEC from where. The potentially marginal shift of buy-sell dynamics of miners or stakers is one of many other assertions.

The many other assertions: decreased regulatory risk, a great meme, more decentralization, et al above and in other prior threads.

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26

Echoing @januszgrze 's message from Zcon4, I think there’s too much focus in achieving some imaginary “purity” Zcash should have based on each Zcasher’s political/philosophical views.

  • The “privacy or death” crowd thinks that t-addresses make Zcash impure
  • The “death before taxes” crowd thinks that the Dev Fund makes Zcash impure
  • The “death before authority” crowd thinks that ZF/ECC/ZCG make Zcash impure
  • The “death before woke” crowd thinks that having people with blue hair makes Zcash impure
  • The “death before corporate control” crowd(maybe just me) thinks that only using Twitter, Telegram and Discord makes Zcash impure

We can’t get broad adoption if we argue that the project should be tailored so only interpretative-dancing, ska-listening, anarcho-capitalists are satisfied.

Broad or narrow adoption, that’s the choice. If we want broad, we can’t build moral/philosophical moats around the project. We need to build a super useful, easy to use network and lower the friction of entering the network as much as possible.

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27

There is nothing imaginary.

The measurements of Zcash and its use today are very concrete, substantive and they paint a very bleak message. Transparency features are severely preventing the proliferation of privacy features.

There is nothing philosophical or hand-wavy about this. Facts are Facts.

In the trailing few months, we’ve got about 3,000-4,000 transactions happening per day that are fully or partially transparent. And the fully shielded transaction count is roughly 10% of that, meaning 300-400 daily. (if anyone is paying Coinmetrics for full data, including explicit z-2-z counts, plz correct me)

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The ideas and strawmen that you’re presenting here ZealWizard are what have been the dominant modes of thought and action for the past 5-7 years. They’re what have prevented (any, let alone radical) change, they’re what have entrenched the transparency model, they’re what have entrenched the somewhat unisipiring block reward entities. So lets have a look at the results. Abysmal by most measures (value, usage, usability, decentralization, treasury, brand perception, brand awareness).

It’s time for new and radical thought and action. (or inaction: Re: Defense of the Status Quo) Zcash deserves better than more of the same old same old. There is nothing radical about upgrading Zcash the privacy project, to become a real privacy project where common users aren’t accidentally exposing their wealth and transaction data (to the tune of 3000-4000 times per day atm).

Under the current Transparency Model, there are hundreds and thousands of common ZEC users on exchange who believe they have privacy in their ZEC, but in fact they have none.

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28

We need to purge the “we know what best for society” and “our values” cancer… Its about privacy and freedom to choose. We even need to accept some level of centralization as it relates to stablecoins. The markets and technology and regulations are just not there for complete decentralization. But we need to start now or it will be too late if we wait for them to catch up…For it work it needs to be inclusive. The same USD is used by the priest, the prostitute, the socialst, and the capitalist. It needs to work for everyone or we end up just being surrounded by grifters.

You have to marvel at corporations in once sense. They are very good at defining a mission, at getting thousands if not hundreds of 1000s of people of different beliefs all focused on delivering high quality goods & services to people. Look around, a socialist country, China is making the goods most of us consumer daily. This will never work if your real mission is political and not about private money. Decentralization is just more efficient, plain and simple. And corporations that can use it, once they figure it out will just make better products for people at either the same or lower price. So, lets get on with it and try to be a part of bringing money into the digital age and lose the politics.

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I think you’re counting the spam Z->T transactions.

People who keep their coins in exchanges are not users of ZEC, they’re speculators waiting for wen moon. And arguing that people expect privacy while someone else holds their coins makes no sense to me.

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30

The problem is that t-addrs can lead to breaks in the social contract. Lots of people buy Zcash on an exchange, withdraw it to a t-address, and then never shield it.

having an option for t-addrs means that apps out there will only use them, and their users are not getting the product they wanted.

Only having shielded transactions isn’t appeasing to niche communities, it’s building the thing that Zcash is supposed to be. Private, digital cash.

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Is their a parallel to this idea with OS’s: you have the Apple crowd, which caters to the simple, elegant, social contract status quo, and then you have other linux distros where you have more choice and freedom ( more education needed though! ) ?

I love the social contract framing but I think what folks like is going to come down to preference.

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32

Total Agreement here Ian! Well Said

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Although I agree with the sentiment, from an engineering perspective it can’t be neglected that t-addresses are the way most institutions connect to zcash. Those institutions are the roads that bring novice zcash first hand users from other coins. Before T can be removed, We need to extract the engineering requirements and provide private replacement for them. we need everyone. Zcash need more, not less users.

It has been brought up by core team engineers that T-addresses are a technical burden.

Additionally, They are a source of narrative conflict within the community and a controversial source of “consent”.

Why? because I’ve known from people conducting studies that it has come up in many user tests that transparent zec was being used unknowingly by users because the cryptic nature of transparent ledger cryptocurrency. Many users assume that ZEC is private by default and don’t know that they hold a fork of bitcoin core from 2016. It can’t be stated that t-addresses provide “consent” when users misuse zcash because of them

Besides private focus groups and feedback I’ve mentioned here. There’s plenty of peer reviewed research that shows that bitcoin users don’t know they can be surveilled, it’s correct to infer the same for transparent zcash.

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34

This is not how it works unfortunately. Read here:

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35

This is the detailed way of saying T-address are an albatross around our necks.

T-addresses force Zcash to cater to a small handful of centralized crypto brokerages, rather than to cater to its core project mission (bringing private digital money-assets to everyone).

For every 1 new ZEC that is shielded, there are 9-10 new ZEC that become fully transparent and surveil-able by any government, corporation, or citizen on Earth. A quite bad ratio, considering that this is a self-proclaimed privacy project.

How can any of us within the project try and sell in-good-faith, that Zcash is a project with privacy as its main mission, whenever 90% of the evidence shows the opposite?

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36

TIL: “albatross”. :grin:

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Friendly reminder that the Zcash CoC is a piece of intellectual terrorism, inherited and promoted by leftwing and antifa activists.

It is my belief the Zcash CoC hinders adoption because a large majority of people in the World have a different opinion than US liberals / Europeans antifa demons.

Bitcoin core doesn’t have a CoC. Why would Zcash ? This CoC is a shame.

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38

Whatever happened to ASIC-resistance? I wasnt following super closely when that was given up. Can we bring it back? Making all the coins go to centralized miners → exchanges was a huge misstep, no? Is there any way to reverse course and bring back hobby mining by individuals?

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39

It is not though, 2 talks at zcon4 go more into depth. All ZSA minting always happens transparently.

Yes, and the free market decides whether or not to adopt risky pink-promise stables, just like they did 200 years ago with free banking in the US

Tether already has freezing capabilities. They could for example demand viewing keys upon redemption at one of their settlers.

I’m saying Tether, but I mean any stablecoin without clear (chainlink) proof of reserves. This includes Circle.

40

Just to make a simple calculation 4000 shielded tx/day will generate roughly ~50 additional MB to the blockchain. if we want 10K tx/day then we will break the 0.1 Gb/day. Not insignificant.