I have a few questions about the ZPF proposal as it might pertain to ZSAs, bridges (e.g. this proposal), and interoperation with other assets and ecosystems:
- Could the ZPF accept deposits in other assets? For example, if fee payment is supported with ZSAs directly (instead of requiring all fees to be paid in ZEC) - perhaps with some multi-token EIP1559 variant - could the ZPF take part or all of those fees in deposits, and pay them out following the same “four-year halving” schedule? It seems to me like in principle this should be possible, but it depends of course on the details of the implementation.
- Could the ZPF accept deposits of assets sent across a bridge? For example, if another ecosystem wished to donate another asset - perhaps ETH, USDC, some other native token - to support Zcash development, and if the Zcash network (PoW or PoS) via a bridge were able to receive other assets, could these assets be deposited into the ZPF (and paid out in the same way)? Would this be a good way for other ecosystems - which do not in general have a lot of ZEC - to fund Zcash development (and also perhaps to diversify ZPF / Zcash network revenue)?
Note: In general, I don’t think that the security models of proof-of-work or proof-of-stake are dependent on security payments (to miners or validators) being made in a single/native asset, but I haven’t done extensive research here and would like to hear if anyone has.
- Could the ZPF, if it accepted deposits in other assets, implement other issuance curves, but pay the same participants?
- Relatedly, could the ZPF, if it accepted deposits in other assets, allow depositors to choose the recipients and issuance curves of their deposits?
These questions may seem odd or pointed - the general thrust of my inquiry is this: could the ZPF be turned into a more general public-goods funding mechanism for the Zcash ecosystem? Network security, development, research, and outreach are all public goods - which I expect myself and many others would be interested in funding - but perhaps not all in the exact same way or with the exact same assets.
For example, the Namada network under development by Heliax builds on the technology originally developed by the Electric Coin Company and Zcash, implements a public-goods funding mechanism capable of both proactive and retroactive disbursement, including over bridges, and we would like to find a good way to contribute back to the Zcash ecosystem & community to support both the past research and continued development without which our work wouldn’t be possible. One way I can imagine doing that is by directing a small part of the inflation from our network over a Zcash bridge to the ZPF, where it can be disbursed to the ZPF recipients, who can use it as they would prefer. As compared to an airdrop or once-off funding of individual people/organisations, I like this approach because I think it better captures our desire to fund collective public goods, in a fashion sustainable over time, and to fund public goods in a way approved by the Zcash ecosystem - but there may be downsides (for example, I expect this would increase ZPF implementation complexity somewhat) and I’d like to hear what folks think.