The Last Swing of The Stick

A sign from above.

at the risk of derailing other threads, I’m posting these DM reflections here for public view

100% agree. If my proposal continues to get criticism, I’ll at some point have to speak against it and support Skyl’s proposal - which is essentially “Take Josh’s Proposal, but minus the extension”

The 1 year extension would set a really bad precedent… and also consider the math of it.

1 more year of Dev Fund provides

ECC - with another 45k ZEC ( at $30 ZEC - $1.3 million)
ZF - with another 33k ZEC ( $1 million)
ZCG - with another 52k ZEC ( $1.5 million)

Those USD amounts are almost pointless (especially so if ZEC stays even lower… suppose $25 or less), ZCG can spend that in 3 large grants. ECC and ZF spend those amounts in less than 3 months of operating expenses.

The extension doesn’t really serve much of a purpose if ZEC remains trapped so low against USD. And like you’re saying, I think an extension runs a huge risk of further frustrating the market/ Zcash investors - creating a self fulfilling prophecy where ZEC lags below $30-40 much longer than necessary.

If they eliminate the extension idea, providing clarity for November; that has good odds to be received as bullish catalyst for the market, the value of ZEC could have a better shot at rallying back to $50 or $60. Also keep in mind the many other catalysts that are already coming along in the years to come.

Crunching the numbers in a practical sense, with a 1-year extension and $30 ZEC, its the same equivalent to no extension, but ZEC is up at $60 next year.

As I’ve been saying for a while “Virtuous Growth Cycle” - with an extension, its the Dev Fund teams that get the extra funds at the expense of investors who have to keep holding $30 ZEC

Without the extension, and speculating that ZEC could return up to $50-60 - both the Dev teams And Zcash Investors Win


The 1 year extension feels like a lot of work, for marginal returns. Diminished ZCG funding/ ecosystem support sucks, but it is part of the crisis caused by chronically weak ZEC.

Also keep in mind that there is heightened regulatory risk in having the software engineers once again hard coding special wallet addresses into a new protocol upgrade.

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POS is complex and not-tested enough for censorship resistance or privacy that i agree

I didn’t say that, I support PoS

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yea i just agreed with part of your statement that POS is super complex

others part is form me about censorship resistance or privacy

The main problem with letting the Dev Fund expire in November is keeping the smaller projects going. We’re talking about ZCG grant recipients. So perhaps there can be a combination of @joshs’s and @skyl’s proposals, meaning ZCG is the only org that gets an extension for up to a year (similar to Josh’s proposal) and the rest of the funds go into some sort of storage (similar to Skylar’s proposal), while the non-direct model is being worked out.

This is what I like about the Dev Fund: since the funds originate in the community of ZEC holders, the community maintains its position as the key stakeholder. This means that the projects funded by the Dv Fund are accountable to the community. Developers that will get their funding from other sources will have to be accountable to those sources. There’s an expression, “whoever pays gets to choose the music.” The Dev Fund could be a great thing when it’s not mishandled. I’d hate to see us throw the baby out with the bathwater.

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As ZEC continues to show even greater weakness, consider the 1-year extension numbers today… is it really worth the effort, and is it worth keeping the regulatory risk of having hard coded special wallet addresses in the protocol? (All for just an extra few million dollars?)

ECC - with another 45k ZEC ( at $20 ZEC - $900,000)
ZF - with another 33k ZEC ( $660,000)
ZCG - with another 52k ZEC ( $1.04 million)

What is it that you have faith in will be accomplished in the next 2 years?
As far as I’m aware, none of the big ticket features (usable ZSA, PoS Hybrid, ZSF, Recursive Zkps) are even within 3 years of being fully delivered. I understand that ZSA will be in the protocol sooner, but then we’re up against the multi-year challenge of building product layer apps to actually utilize ZSA functionality.

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I’m oriented to the Zashi (ECC) roadmap:

There is no indication that ZSA/PoS cannot be implemented in 2 years.

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Agreed. It’s crazy that the dev fund discussion has revolved almost entirely around “who gets how much for how long” while there’s almost zero talk among the community, at least on these forums, about what concretely needs to be done over the next couple of years to save the project.

What to do should be the biggest discussion we’re having, over and above funding, but it’s nowhere to be found. Why is that? Do we just not have good ideas, or do we feel like it’s not worth the effort to put them forward? Or something else?

I look at this project with my investor hat on and I see potential but that potential only exists if others see it too and work towards it. Instead, we have in-fighting and way more effort devoted to “which orgs should be funded and how much?” than to using our collective brain power to come up with good ideas.

Josh’s leadership has been inspiring and I think it’s the best chance we have so I’m willing to fund that, and I want to make sure that engineers familiar with the codebases are kept around because that expertise is incredibly difficult to replace. Aside from that, my default is to only vote to fund leaders who’ve put forward good ideas and plans to address the current situation.

De-funding needs to be a real possibility for accountability to work; we need a system where we can de-fund ineffective leadership while retaining all of the engineers who are essential to keeping Zcash alive.

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A couple things I just tweeted:

My opinion is that the Zcash community should make it clear to engineers that they have our support and funding, but leadership needs to pass a higher bar of understanding current issues, presenting solid plans to tackle them, uniting the community, and being held accountable.

The biggest problem with the current dev fund structure is that I can’t vote to change leadership without risking losing crucial engineers. The engineers have performed excellently, and defunding whole orgs means defunding them, when I only want better leadership.

ECC & ZF’s engineers are critical to keeping Zcash safe and alive. So I think that for real accountability for dev fund recipients’ leadership, the engineers’ funding needs to be decoupled from the organization’s funding. I’m not sure how, if at all, that would be possible, but for myself personally, I would be much more willing to defund orgs if I knew the engineers inside could keep their same salaries.

Is it just me? Or do others hesitate to defund orgs because you want to retain the engineers?

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Do you think that things have changed significant since this poll was conducted?

That poll is from August 2021, which is a long time ago now. Back then, NU5 was scheduled to activate in late November 2021 but it ended up being delayed by 6 months, and then the sandblasting attack was a significant distraction for ~17 months.

My personal view is that adding support for User-Defined Assets (now known as ZSAs) is still the top priority. That’s being blocked by the need to sunset zcashd, which is why we’re prioritizing doing whatever is within our power to make that possible.

De-funding isn’t the only way for the Zcash community to hold leadership accountable, while retaining engineers.

As ZF ED, I’m directly accountable to the ZF board, which consults the Zcash Community Advisory Panel (ZCAP) when electing board members.

@earthrise The next opportunity to seek appointment for the ZF board is coming soon, in the next few months. I think you should stand. If you’re successful, and if you’re not happy with my performance, you can table a motion at your first board meeting to fire me!

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You don’t need to KYC to become ZCAP…

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I’m ZCAP and I never KYC’d

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This is not true. The only similar thing I can think of is KYC being required for ZCG grantees.

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During the Zcon3 Town Hall, there was a good discussion about what role coinholder polling should play in Zcash governance:

(The relevant section starts 90 seconds in.)

A couple of years ago, we defined a bunch of objective criteria by which community members could be eligible for ZCAP.

  • Grant recipients who have successfully completed more than 50% of their grant (as measured by the USD value of grant milestones that have been completed and paid out)
  • Zcash Community Grants Committee members (past and present)
  • Zcash Ambassadors from the ZCG Ambassadors Program (currently suspended, unfortunately)
  • Community contributors who have:
    • made a meaningful contribution to one of the Zcash node projects on Github (zcashd and Zebra),
    • authored or co-authored a ZIP (including ZIPs 1001-1013), or
    • led development of a significant Zcash software application, library, tool or similar.

We (ZF) proactively reach out to people who meet these criteria. Anyone we’ve missed should complete this form .

  • Active members of the forum that joined before March 2021.
  • Zcash Community Forums members who have recently visited the forum for 100 consecutive days and earned the “Aficionado” badge.
  • Zcash Community Forums members who have earned the “Regular” badge by being a regular part of the Zcash community over a period of months.

Forum members who meet the criteria listed above should fill out this form.

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If you want to have a voice, become the elite!

Thank you @AidenZ for pointing out why I left this project in 2020 and for reminding me how much I regret coming back.

Please don’t be sarcastic. The people here are genuinely trying to do something for Zcash.

You are not the only one doing something for Zcash.

I run a Zcash social media account with over 300 Korean followers and a Zcash blog with 266 members.

Your sarcastic attitude is very upsetting and comes across as quite low.

I do not wish to speak with you again.

I was not being sarcastic.

I sometimes forget how bad the political gap in this project is and that there are other projects/communities where that is not a constant stress for me and other contributors.

Perhaps I miss understood the intention of your original post. If so, I apologize for that.

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I would like to apologize as well. My previous message was written in the heat of the moment and came across as harsh.

I recognize and appreciate your contributions to Zcash. Moving forward, it would be beneficial for all of us to continue our efforts for Zcash from our respective roles.

Thank you for being the first to extend an apology.

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