The engineers we hired as independent contractors (that I mentioned above) are paid in shielded ZEC based on an agreed-upon amount in euros.
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Awesome! This aligns with my values. I wouldnāt support Shielded Labs if it werenāt true. Do the traditional institutions ZF and ECC pay their employees in Zcash?
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I think itās important to be honest about how much we each actually use Zcash for payments, so being candid, from memory, Iāve bought a piece of artwork, donated to a few nonprofits, anonymously bought a domain name for my friend, sent a tip to an Uber driver after onboarding him onto a wallet, paid back money I owed to a friend using ZEC, given ZEC as birthday/christmas presents, paid for a VPN service, and sent ZEC to exchanges to convert into USD/CAD. Thereās probably a few things Iām forgetting, but thatās pretty much it. I recognize that it isnāt much for someone whoās been involved with the project as long as I have, and that should be a red flag.
I personally donāt try to onboard people. Part of the reason is that my personality/anxiety doesnāt make that easy, but itās also because I just donāt think we have products that are usable enough for it to work. Iāve vicariously experienced, through entrepreneur friends, how hard it is to get in the door; basically any kind of inconvenience ends up being a roadblock, and it takes a concerted effort to help adopters get past those roadblocks quickly.
Asking to pay in ZEC is a good idea though, itās low-cost, so Iāll try to do it more. Iāve asked to be paid (for audits) in ZEC, and that has actually worked a couple times, especially when the project I was auditing was crypto-related.
I should also mention that for me, Iām hesitant to actually use ZEC because figuring out the taxes is so damn stressful, Iāve had a couple accountants quit on me, and Iām still not 100% confident my taxes are correct despite checking everything as best I can. Itās a massive amount of anxiety. Iām also hesitant to spend ZEC, because for me itās more of a long-term investment than cash.
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If you feel like sharing who/how youāve asked that great! But Iām not really asking for disclosures. Rather I am advocating that people check in with themselvesā¦ honestly.
Folks, like @Jgx7 say things like:
My bet is that @Jgx7 isnāt trying to use zcash for day-to-day transactions. To be fair, that possibility is itself new, and-still-klunkyā¦ and as has been pointed out to me elsewhere:
Asking for accommodation is *difficult*, prohibitively so for some of us!
All well and good, but I am noticing a pattern, thatās something like this:
āAsking for accommodation, requesting deviations from default patterns, is difficult for me, therefore I will generate justifications for why itās not important.ā
Thatās not necessary. If asking your local community barista to make space for your needs isnāt comfortable, then donāt! No need to justify how you are! Be you.
What I am requesting is that folks notice that itās possible.
Itās possible to ask for the community that youāre a part of to adapt itself for you.
It makes you vulnerable to rejectionā¦ probably the deepest form of fear weāve evolved, fear of shunning. Butā¦ itās possible. If not for you personally, then for your compaƱeros.
I probably was too forceful when I proposed that everyone ought to try to use zcashā¦ at leastā¦ in some waysā¦ thatās not right for everyone. Butā¦ everyone can be aware that the possibility exists.
Itās OK, to ask your community to accept you, with your values.
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I work with people from a wide variety of coercion-jurisdictions ācoercidictionsā every day. Seems to me that the volatility of zcash isnāt a deal-breaker.
Per the woes of āAmericansā (I presume āUS Citizenā, is meant here.), my experience is that inefficiencies in that population make their labor ludicrously over-priced. Personally I think that betting on the stability of the USD, is a mistake.
Alert: Zancos is about to Fall Out The Overton (FOTO) Again .
I believe that much of the value that accrues to US Citizens is due to the coercive leverage the largest military-industrial-police-state in the history of the planet provides them. In particular, I believe that the āstabilityā of the US dollar rests on this base of blood-and-tears. Not really something Iād like my efforts to be pegged to.
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Just to make sure that I am not ānormalizing through passivityā, (and this is in no way a critique of any particular personās behavior)ā¦
Paying taxes has the same moral form as giving oneās lunch money to the school bully. It is done for the same (very rational, and completely understandable) reason, fear. It has the same effect:
It empowers, and implicitly, endorses bullying behavior thereby causing the oppression of others.
Soā¦ yeahā¦ Iām saying it (should make me quite popular)ā¦
Paying taxes is an act of cowardice, it's an act of cowardice that inflicts harm on others... particularly the vulnerable.
But PLEASE donāt feel defensive, and angry, and then perversely abet your oppressor by chucking rocks at me.
How about this alternative reaction to my positionā¦ āWhelpā¦ that canary said it!ā
Or to put it another way:
āWeāre in the same trench, and Zancos stuck his head above the parapet.ā
ORā¦ maybeā¦ you disagree with me! I think the morality of paying taxes is a topic that ought to be comfortably debatableā¦ butā¦ I also think that the US is an oppressive propaganda stew of fear-culture.
Zancos FOTO.
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I am a Zcash holder, and only want to see it thrive. With that people need to live in the real world.
Stability regardless of jurisdiction is important. I again stress the point, in my view, Zcash can not work as a broad based form of money because of its limited supply, and its volatility, possibly the lack of focus on the core blockchain, among other factors. Maybe US labor is not overpriced, its the other regions that are under-priced because of legal risks, inability to reap the rewards of their labor, corruption, inability to move money around freely, their governments print too much money relative to production or trade, inflation, etc etc. So it appears the USD is overpriced; but maybe its not when you consider so many variables that affect the USD value compared to other currencies. We have seen many currencies fail and its devastating. With that betting on the USD has never been a mistake. The USD is going to fail is a rabbit hole. It is not good for your mental health because you will end up focusing and overweighting the negatives and not enough on the positives. The sky is always failing; everywhere. After a while, you realize it isnāt all that bad. So, I would like to see Zcash improve the attributes of the USD or any other currency that chooses to use a derivative of Zcash as a stablecoin USDz, EUROzā¦Not try to replace it entirely. So Zcash as private gold. And a Z stable coin, which has all the same benefits as Zcash; but its stable for every day people. I believe you will come to this same conclusion at some point.
So, I would like to see the governance of Zcash focus on the blockchain, the benefits of privacy. And open it up so developers anywhere can build on it. Much the same way Apple built the software for the Iphone and developers worldwide create applications people use every day. So Zcash becomes the blockchain of money, and Zcash is one application on the Zcash blockchain focused purely on money. Is this feasible? Now, a lot of work would be needed to ensure the applications are safe, trustworthy etc. But, I think developers could then create things that no development fund can think of. And they will do it at their own cost because they will get a transaction fee (as they should). This decentralizes the transaction fee which today goes largely to Visa, the banks, and processors which can be done more cheaply on the blockchain (I believe) which then opens up development to add value to the currency. Zcash takes a cut of the revenue to support the ecosystem and continue to build the platform and broaden the user base.
It might just be impossible to get around a transaction fee of 1% or 2% and get all the functionality and benefits people expect or āwill wantā from digital money. People pay 3% to Visa because they add value. They make moving money around easy. However, we are at a point where people want more for their money. So its quite possible, the fees need to stay at some level like 2%; but the value consumer gets is much more than just moving money around. So we get 5x more than Visa offers today at the same price. Privacy, theft protection, and an ability to save, invest and spend outside a traditional bank, are just a few I can think of. To me that is value added and progress. I dont have the answers to what people will get extra compared to what we get from Visa; but that is what an open blockchain is forā¦It unleases the power of people to create.
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Iād take this a step further:
The governance mechanisms in place are obsolete structures that evolved to support/comprise effective military-industrial states in their bloody competition for survival.
That @zooko and @Dodger are repositories of so much agency is a dinosaur-esque anti-pattern.
A counter-example, ZL Viridian:
- each of us argues for direction and implementation as we see fit (fortunately for me, I often benefit from advocating a losing position against a better argument)
- each of us requests zec from the treasury, and (as with all expenditures) the request is put to a vote
- we stay small, when the need arises we fission into more instances of ZLs, and collaborate peer-to-peer across labs
- bang-for-the buck, I suspect we are extremely competitive
I think the role of the executive is ill-suited to the distributed consent-based culture(s) that I want to be a part of.
Nowā¦ if youāll excuse me, I want to go contribute to ZL Viridian, so that when I stand in front of my peers and ask for an allocation of our shared resource I can do so with pride and integrity.
P.S.ā Effective Argument Driven Action (EADA) is antithetical to hierarchy. We make better decisions, because our arguments arenāt contaminated by role-codified power imbalances.
P.P.S. ā These forms leverage the strengths of zcashā¦ in order to enhance the strengths of zcash.
P.P.P.S. ā To clarify I think @zooko and @Dodger have made fantasticā¦ even heroic contributions to the community. I have am not disparaging their efforts, or integrity. I am critiquing the structures we are operating with.
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Would that be because Zerocoin was funded by the U.S. DOC, DARPA, and NIST?
Or maybe itās the fact that myself any my family rely on the public health system the taxes myself and other in Australia pay for. I feel itād be immoral/unethical for me to cheat the system then take advantage of the very services I refuse to pay for.
Iām sorry American politics is so divisive but I fail to see how passing judgement on people who choose to pay taxes is constructive in any way. Maybe I missed the point you were trying to make 
.
Maybe putting our efforts towards thinking of solutions and supporting users with systems and UX that support their usecases might be a better approach than dismissing their needs/requirements .
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It comes down to risks. What do you have to lose @zancas ? This question isnt simple, but it is important to think about.
When @aquietinvestor mentioned on the other thread that they (shielded labs) had applied for tax exemption status, that it was rejected subsequently and may apply for it again, implies that they were applying for charity status. I know of no other legally recognized entity that can receive unlimited funding and not be liable to taxes from the government of the jurisdiction in which it resides, if it were not one of these very special charity models. Like echoed many times on this forum, the charity model not only more closely aligns with the community values but It also carries with it a tangible measure of enforcement to remain aligned with said community values via the accountability requirements imposed upon it by the entity that grants its status priviledges. This is the only real measure of alignment enforcement the community actually has, if only secondary. The community has no enforcement means against a for-profit entity pivoting the company ideas etc at any time, for any reason; those ideas are easily captured because they are completely profit driven by their nature and the survival of their entity depends on that, not our community values.
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I very much agree with @Autotunafish. This is the reason why I set up Shielded Labs as a non-profit. It is the reason why āsupporting the Zcash community, ecosystem, and protocolā is explicitly included in the Articles of Associationās mission statement for Shielded Labs. Shielded Labs serves a charitable purpose, similar to the Zcash Foundation, and will continue to pursue tax exemption status as a charitable organization.
Please see this post for additional information and context:
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Iād love to see this thread get back on topic and discuss some of the issues Josh brought up around governance. As I mentioned on Telegram the other day: in my opinion, the most important thing Joshās post does is make clear the role the trademark agreement plays in Zcash governance and how undefined the concept of ācommunity consensusā really is. In my experience, most people in the community see the trademark in a conventional sense where you need to get approval before you do something like sell Zcash stickers or as an enforcement tool that can be used to take down scams that misuse the Zcash brand. But, itās much more than that: itās a legal agreement that has created this 2-of-2 multisig governance structure between ECC and the Foundation where they (and not the community, ZEC holders, nodes, etc.) decide what Zcash is.
Iām not optimistic that the trademark agreement will be dissolved or nullified, primarily because, based on what I understand, the Foundation wants to keep it in place. However, I do think we can address some of the underlying issues Josh highlights by making some changes to governance and doing more to formally define how community consensus is determined. I have some ideas that Iāll share during the Town Hall at Zcon4.
If the community wants to see a meaningful change in governance come out of these Dev Fund discussions, then active members of the community need to align on key issues and work together to push those issues forward. That needs to happen sooner than later. New ideas take time to gain support. If we wait too long, everyone will gravitate towards the status quo because itās what theyāre used to.
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I think thatās all it should be - things like stickers, t-shirts, basically anything thatās not a coin should be free to use logos etc without having to get permission first. It just adds friction & smells of over-reach.
Do we really care if the world gets swamped with logos?
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While the trademark agreement is is in place, and the trademark itself is owned and enforced by the Zcash Foundation without limitation, Zcash is not decentralized.
Additionally, while this āring of powerā is in place, and ECC and ZF receive funding from the implementation of network upgrades that they alone ratify as the true Zcash, they leave themselves and the project open to accusations of self-dealing.
Zcash should no longer be under the thumb of these two organizations. Itās time to free Zcash.
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Agologies for the confusion about the for profit thing, I still have more questions though 
Iām not against decentralizing the dev fund iām just a big fan of its recipients being able to signal a very particular thing
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This whole thing about profit or non profit is a red herring isnāt it? non profits in many cases just pay out what would be a profit to higher salaries, or do related party transactions to shell companies, companies in which the people running it have a financial interest to strip out profits to give the appearance of non profit but in reality its not. Itās a marketing scam.
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Josh, I have a concern regarding operational risk of not holding a trademark over Zcash which is specifically mobile App store use case.
Iām not a trademark law expert, just someone that has been releasing Apps to the App Store for more than a decade.
I think holding the trademark is important because itās the fastest way to make Apple Store or Google Play Store to pull the plug on malicious applications that could disguise as Zcash legit applications to steal from Zodlers.
When a trademark holder calls the Apple legal department over an unauthorized use of a trademark, nothing but the documents have to be checked. Then, itās the infringing party who has to respond with the appropriate documentation that proves that they are allowed to use the Zcash trademark the way they are.
Proving that an executable binary is stealing funds ant that it has to be taken down from the stores is much harder than just sending a āCEASE AND DESISTā email to Apple or Googleās legal department.
Do you consider this being a non-issue? or something thatās an acceptable trade-off? What are your thoughts around this specific issue considering that āmass adoptionā will probably happen (if it ever) on mobile?
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Iāve emphasized this in past comments, and emphasized a few times during my participation in the first Zcash DevFund Twitter space.
Memes must be treated with utmost respect because of their potential relative power/ virality.
- this topic regards disussions here about Governance, Power-Brokering, Trademarks, et al
- the ongoing Dev-Fund discussions
- the messaging about Zcash Posterity Fund
- Zcash coin value (a crisis)
- the now mitigated Spam Attack
HLoo clearly understands the power of memes for communication. A concisely termed meme can have a radically more substantive impact than 5 paragraphs of text (sadly this is my default mode lol).
As with Nathan, there is a ton of content, opinion, and speculation to digest hereā¦ Iāll be back with more follow-up remarks when the time is available.
@Chammy have you got any tangible reasons to have the hunch that @aquietinvestor is an extension from your powers-that-be? In my time here, Iāve never got even a pinch of a hint that Jason has legacy or current direct links to the old guard at ZF and-or ECC
This twice:
The Electric Coin Company owes the Wilcoxā headed company Least Authority an almost 4 million dollar loan. And some ECC developers have equity in Least Authority
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