FWIW, I didn’t take offense. Howard’s meme illuminated the point I was trying to make. Zcon is an event for the benefit of the Zcash community, but it is a Zcash Foundation event. For better or for worse, they’re in control.
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It’s a good question Pacu. I wonder how this is handled with Bitcoin and Bitcoin related projects. Do you know? Some of the tradeoff is personally acceptable to me but maybe not to others.
Perhaps stewardship of the mark with clear community guidelines on how it will be protected (against scams only for example), inline with a more distributed, robust and equitable governance process, would be more palatable.
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I posted an idea for an alternative model here: Development Fund and Governance Model
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I like this question. I think it provides a really useful framework for threat-modeling the problem.
It does have a particular property, though, which is that it’s focused on only a part of the problem:
“What do I have to lose?”
doesn’t address the implied “to whom”?
I think that actually matters quite a bit for this analysis. Who benefits?
Based on my reading of comments, I think there is increasing consensus for a Zenate using coin weighted values to nominate (there is really no other way because fake wallets can be used if based on number of votes). What does it do is still for debate. I believe to help improve the focus, it should have the following purpose.
Purpose - to improve the governance of ECC/Foundation, hold developers accountable for delivering projects funded by Zcash, and approving/dispursing payments for ongoing development, to recover payments made to the extent possible when Zcash has paid developers and the developer did not deliver as promised. The ECC and foundations decide what gets built; and all third parties should work through these two entities with one (the foundation) focused on the blockchain and the other (ECC) focused on the Zcash the coin/wallet (edge use cases). This is where the core technical know how should reside. The Zenate has some ability to influence future development; but more as a veto or swing vote for major funding and approving any agreements that might create an ongoing obligation from coin holders to third parties, and internal audit to make sure to related party transactions (unless approved), or other transactions not approved or that are not within the scope of blockchain or zcash development. So, it’s more of an accounting/auditing/governance function than technology/development function, which is done by ECC/Foundation. There could be oversight of a community based organization that is self funded and not funded by ECC where these people just want to help and contribute. But the projects do need to be approved and ultimately agreed upon by ECC/Foundaton/Zenate.
I dont think we should add any more organizations or entities that participate in the dev fund. I also think it should be more oversight with some teeth than gatekeeper. Anyone who wants funding should go to ECC/Foundation first based on layer 1/layer 2 category. Then, if it moves forward, the Zenate has oversight responsibilities and some veto power/ and limited approval development authority.
I think you’re conflating Zcash the infrastructure, which is a public good (software etc), with zatoshis. Holding zats may or may not be seen as a way to fund developers, which should, in theory, increase the value of the zats. But zats are privately owned, which is their entire point.
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Not sure i’m conflating it, although possible because i’m not a tech person. i’m trying to understand how it’s a public good for the modified blockchain. It seems like we took a public good (bitcoin) and then we privately funded a major improvement. So it’s part public and part something else, which i think was why BOSL was chosen. It’s not the best for us; but maybe can work out. If ZEC is considered public good and anyone can copy it and then create something unique and then privatize it, that’s a major risk isn’t it? to me it’s a major risk owning ZEC if the underlying tech can just be copied. Doesn’t that undermine the value of ZEC holders who are providing the funding? why should i own zec if there is a risk it’s value can be stripped away and become worthless? what gives zec value if it doesn’t own any core technology?
With that, my main question was why can’t ZEC be a layer 2 on the underlying blockchain (if that’s the right way to think about it) and then we have many privacy coins on the same blockchain. Then that might align better with your thoughts on public/private.
The core bitcoin tech is still public; but i think we got rid of that now. And everything funded by ZEC holders should be proprietary tech. and if it’s not, i can’t see any reason to own ZEC because there is no collateral backing it. please help me understand what gives ZEC value if there is nothing proprietary about it? and if there is something proprietary please explain.
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