This is so obviously true as to hardly bear mentioning, but since you bring it up, I’ll offer that I agree.
I would be offended if anyone were to attempt to associate me with such a position.
When I mentioned that some of your language was hurtful to me, that was not to suggest that the merits or flaws of a technology should be ignored out of a perverse concern for the author.
Is communication better when it does not do unnecessary harm?
A common failure mode with DAOs and group based decision making in general is an attention denial of service attack that cripples the sense-making capabilities of the group and therefore the ability to make good decisions, or make decisions at all.
DAO Stack had a mechanism of preventing spam proposals using futarchy, it was a bit early for its time but an interesting concept nonetheless.
As an entrepreneur, I am accustomed to being bombarded with requests for attention and am effective at prioritization and protecting the time and attention of effective builders and decision makers.
My focus is ruthlessly on results. A vote for me is a vote for my judgement.
Hello
How do you evaluate the role of local communities within the Zcash ecosystem? In your view, how critical are local communities for Zcash’s global growth, awareness building, and adoption? Do you see this as a driving force for progress, and how seriously do you personally take this aspect?
If you are elected to ZCG, what will be your perspective on proposals focused on local community development? Which criteria will you prioritize when reviewing such proposals? For example, how will you approach factors like sustainability, community impact, measurable outcomes, cost-effectiveness, transparency, and alignment with the broader ecosystem? Additionally, how do you believe local community initiatives should contribute long-term value to Zcash?
Tom, I’m so happy to see you run for ZCG!
I’ve followed your perspectives on Twitter for a while, and I genuinely appreciate your no-bullshit approach. You speak plainly, even when it ruffles feathers, and we need more of that. Zcash is entering a much bigger stage now, and I believe you’ll fiercely defend the interests of Zcashers in the moments that matter. Where we’re going, we’ll need that.
And yes, I also disagree with you on the use of the word “tax” 
, but I don’t want to get hung up on framing or make more of it than it deserves. What matters more is your independent voice, your clarity, and your willingness to say what needs to be said.
Zcash is entering a whole new phase, and we need people who bring strength, honesty, and perspective. You do that. We’d be lucky to have you on ZCG.
Good question Batuhan.
I’ve personally been a part of and run local crypto communities around the world (including privately financed Zcash events), and I think they are incredibly powerful when you have the right evangelists leading the community.
That being said, I’ve also seen many failure modes in crypto when it comes to localization:
My solution to this is:
tldr; cautiously optimistic
I’ll make you a deal: I will stop calling it a tax when the majority of the community celebrates the results!
I don’t mind you calling it a tax. I go through phases when I do too.
I don’t agree. The implication is that what “needs to be said” includes:
In the spirit of:
I assert that an inability to interact effectively without violent communication falls short of the bar we should set, not just for ZCG membership, but for the discourse on this forum. Zcash stands for far more than simple “financial privacy”, we embody interwoven lineages that extend back to the cradles of civilization, the lineages that refused to yield to forces that would coerce or corrupt human dignity.
Compassion is not weakness, and anger must not be confused for strength. Those who have not yet attained the skill to discern these things are fortunate to read these forums where we aspire to cultivate such skills.
Dignity is incompatible with coercion, this is why most of those who have been working on Zcash for the last ten years have done so.
Respectfully, this whole detour is unnecessary.
Strong opinions you don’t like can come from a place of zero anger. Personally, I’m not here to lecture grown men on how to use words or to debate moral correctness.
Censorship, however mild, is anti-Zcash. There’s no “compassion” bar a comment must meet. You can always refute or ignore the comments you disagree with.
This is pejorative. I believe that it’s wrong to use pejorative language.
Would you like to argue that my belief is wrong?
(paraphrasing)
This is the place to debate moral correctness. Those who have power are not above moral scrutiny. I believe that, in fact, the reverse is true.
I don’t care.
This conversation has drifted into the absurd. So I’m going to state a few things plainly, because euphemisms only enable what you’re doing.
In a free society, self-regulation of feelings is an individual’s responsibility. No one owes you emotional safety from criticism. Plus this is all very much self-inflicted. You’ve been an active participant in creating the dynamic you’re now objecting to.
What you’re doing is a bigger problem than someone’s “wrong” tone. This is weaponized virtue signaling, an easily recognizable pattern of discourse control:
A) He criticizes your work.
B) Instead of debating the work, you assume moral superiority and reframe the disagreement as a question of character or “values.” You turn it into an attack on his character.
C) A discussion about performance devolves into an unsolicited lecture on compassion and dignity, where, conveniently, everyone else’s character is suspect and yours is immaculate.
This is not subtle. It is not novel. Unfortunately, I’m sure we’ll see more of it.
I’m not new to the “good vibes only” façade and what’s behind it.
It just so happens that these deflective tactics are widely used across many contexts to avoid accountability. It’s how power insulates itself when results are lacking. I’m deeply skeptical of anyone who reaches for this tactic, and I have no sympathy for it, especially in a community that funds work precisely so it can be evaluated openly and critically.
Now let’s get back to reality, because while you’re doing this in the forum, your wallet is proving to be a failed experiment. And I’m not referring to its MySpace-era UX design.
Here’s my experience with Zingo last Friday:
I opened Zingo and was welcomed by a screen I’ve never seen before. My balance was gone, and while I was told not to worry because “my funds are safe,” the performative reassurance was functionally meaningless because immediately after that, Zingo forced a full resync from the wallet’s birthday height.
This is a 4-year-old wallet, which means I am now locked out of my own funds for weeks because that’s how long it will take to restore it.
Did you know the wallet you built does this? That is not a UX nit. That is a fundamental failure of a financial tool. A wallet that can unpredictably revoke access to funds, without user consent and without a fast recovery path, violates the most basic expectations.
While users can lose access to their funds at any time, you are in public threads moralizing, tone-policing, and posturing about values. I would never invest in that combination. It tells me you do not fully grasp the weight of the responsibility that comes with building infrastructure people trust with their money. Your rhetoric does not compensate for catastrophic UX. And it certainly does not entitle you to continued funding.
We do not need moral lectures from wallet developers. We need wallets that work.
As a user, yes, I am (gasp!) angry. Mostly at myself for not moving to a different secondary wallet sooner.
I’m done with Zingo.
I will not be restoring that wallet using Zingo.
I recommend others move their funds elsewhere immediately.
Zingo had a head start on Zashi, and it still looks and works like a prototype. At this point, it will not catch up. A wallet that can arbitrarily cut off access to funds by forcing a multi-week resync fails the minimum bar for production software.
I hope this answers all further questions.
I have 4.5 ZEC stuck in Zingo I understand why now. I knew it didn’t make sense to save a seed with no funds, but I did.
i personally find the latest Zingo sync to be very fast, so i doubt this is true.
i recently restored 1 year old wallet in minutes with zingo. i know 4 year wallet will be much slower cause of spam attack but its gonna be max hours not weeks. (i dont have that old active wallet to test it tho)
i will not comment on UX which aint perfect and forcing user to resync sucks.
I left Zingo open for about an hour. Sync progress was at ~1%. I need my phone for other things and won’t pause my life to watch Zingo sync for another 99 hours just to have it kick me out again in a few days/weeks/months.
100% agree.
AFAIK: Pepper-Sync is best in class.
Obviously because I have been affiliated with ZingoLabs in the past, my perspective might be skewed, but I don’t think there has been any objective demonstration that anything else is faster in the whole ecosystem, given the same sync job.
If @thowar2 thinks this is a weekend hackathon level project, I think a great demonstration would be for THEM to spend one or even two weekends to make something better someone could benchmark.
And to be extra fair… no peeking at the Pepper-Sync code while they work! Pepper-Sync was written without a clear model - and IIUC, ECC devs writing a sync engine are currently using Pepper-Sync as a reference to work from.
EDIT:
I see now @thowar2 's comment was directed toward an overall impression of the UI/UX, not Pepper-Sync. I’ll leave up my comments unchanged because even if their subjective view on those parts is correct, it shows a certain ignorance or dismissal of what’s going on under the surface.
@thowar2 it seems like your experience primarily revolved around ETH based projects, and now you’re looking at SOL.
How have those projects done since the early days where everything on ETH seemed to have its value blast off by mere association, and budgets were suddenly, and for a time, essentially unlimited? Is there a place we can look at valuations that reflect your stated goals? What about your more recent experiences with SOL? With the high volatility of that token have you found successes?
I note you joined this forum in October of this year. This leads me to ask, what projects underlining privacy or security have you been involved with before? Why did you show up in October and why do you think running for office so quickly after appearing is appropriate in a complex ecosystem? As someone who has appeared recently, is it proper to show up somewhere and begin by telling people the things they are doing are wrong, while also trying to attach to and profit from the place? Or to put it bluntly, why should Zcash think you’re interested in anything more than the thing that’s growing the most right now? Why would Zcash benefit from these approaches?
It would be good to follow up on the error you are experiencing. Have you reported it? Could you provide more details about it?
I know that ZingoLabs has channels for receiving bug reports, such as email (there is an option in the app), Discord, Telegram, X, and GitHub.
Hello, I’m aware of the support just haven’t had time to reach out.
This is a 4-year-old wallet, which means I am now locked out of my own funds for weeks because that’s how long it will take to restore it.
Hi Tatyana!
I’ll answer based on my experience as a user of every wallet I’ve used and tested within the Zcash ecosystem.
Yes, resyncing is a pain, we all know that, but not because of Zingo (or any other wallet), but because of what happened within Zcash that now makes resyncing before June 2022 (when the spam started) a major problem for Zingo, Zashi, YWallet… basically all of them.
Resynchronization in Zingo after Pepper Sync is necessary (as a user, I wish it weren’t) since this new algorithm not only has improvements in speed, but also in what it achieves and shows the user as total and spendable balance. It also allows spending before syncing, and I understand that the migration from v1 to v2 had to happen. I’m sure its developer can be more specific with the details.
It’s not necessary to allow days to complete the synchronization with this new algorithm. It would only take weeks to sync if you didn’t leave the app open. The same goes for Zashi, YWallet, Zkool… all of them, since syncing doesn’t continue when you exit the application.
I know that each of the aforementioned applications has scheduled sync tasks that run at certain times, meeting certain requirements. This would definitely help you sync while you sleep.
Based on what I know, in those other existing Zcash wallet apps, when restoring, you have to do the same: keep the app open to sync. Some are slower than others, but according to my tests, Zingo is the second fastest today (and again, it allows you to spend before syncing), and YWallet (or Zkool) is first.
Honestly, as an experienced Zcash user, I’m sorry that others have to go through this. Even so, I’mm glad that ZingoLabs has improved its sync algorithm.
