UpOnlyTV with Cobie & Ledger - "ZCASH Episode"

We all know that ZCASH protocol and its underlying technology is held in extremely high regard among the developer community of various crypto projects, unfortunately the wider crypto community really knows very little about all the great stuff thats going on and is planned for ZCASH.

I have spent countless hours educating people both while moderating the telegram chat and on twitter about the ZCASH plans for the future as well as the upcoming Halo 2 upgrade and that is where I got a sense of how little the average person outside of the ZCASH community knows about ZEC. Unfortunately my approach doesn’t scale well…

The moment that I realized that something needs to be done about this is during an episode of my favorite Crypto podcast called UpOnlyTV. The episode featured @cryptopathic, a well known ZCASH bull and during that episode cryptopathic mentioned our moon math and how ZCASH was in development for years and one of the hosts Brian Krogsgard (AKA @ledgerstatus) remarked “So we are all just FUD ing this incredible technological breakthrough.” and @cryptopathic answered “Yes”. Here is the timestamp to the mentioned episode.

In a more recent charity episode David Hoffman from Bankless also had absolutely no idea about anything going on in ZCASH and why Chris, @cburniske, was so bullish on it. And later remarked that he may be missing something. Below is a timestamp to the conversation.

Now a little bit about UpOnlyTV its hosted by Jordan Fish (AKA @cryptocobain) and Brian Krogsgard (AKA @ledgerstatus) and its a fun show which discuses everything related to crypto. Its on Youtube, Apple podcasts, Spotify, Twitch and Google podcasts. It has featured many prominent guests so far like Raoul Pal (RealVision), Mark Cuban (Owner of the Dallas Mavericks), Charlie Lee (LTC founder), Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal (Solana founders), Justin Sun (Tron founder), Meltem Demirors (Coinshares), Dan Matuszewsky (CMS holdings), Carlee Chaikin (The actress that plays Darlene in the tv show Mr. Robot) and many others.

As for the outreach episode view counts vary greatly depending on the guests from around 10 000 views on Youtube all the way up to 140 000 views. This would be youtube alone and we can count on more from the other different platforms. We can also count on social engagement from the two hosts twitter accounts. Cobie has 517 000 followers on Twitter and Ledger has around 169 000.

Recently one of the hosts Brian (AKA ledgerstatus) became a zcasher. And ZCASH comes up quite often both in the podcast and on his tweets.
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And they have rather clumsily invited @zooko to be a guest on the show. And I say rather clumsily because we all know you invite Zooko to a nice steak rather than for drinks.
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(Spoiler alert! Its just a joke they dont really get drunk on the show. All Ive seen cobie drink is a glass of apple cider while Ive never seen Ledger drink at all.)

Some community members have asked me to ask @zooko if he would appear on the UpOnlyTV podcast to discuss many of the great things that are coming to ZCASH. Ethereum, Filecoin, ZCASH partnership, ZCASH shielded assets, move to proof of stake as well as some history behind the asset. Either alone or with someone else from the ECC or from the Zcash Foundation. We have asked Dan Matuszewsky on telegram and he would be prepared to contact them and setup an episode.

Anyway I want to see how the rest of the community feels about this idea as quite a few people over on telegram would love to see this happen. What does the rest of the community think? Would you like to see something like this happen? Would you like to see Zooko alone or with someone else on the show (If of course he accepts)? Would you like to see someone else entirely? So please lets discuss…

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I personally think this is a great idea, there are still a lot of misconceptions about this project and any opportunity to reach people and discuss all of the work that’s happening should be grabbed with both hands.

I’d love to see @zooko on an UpOnlyTV interview, long form podcasts are a great way to delve into a topic.

I’d like to hear discussions about how Zooko got started in this space, his interactions with Satoshi and Hal Finney etc., Zcash’s origins (including the trusted ceremonies), and then into more recent enhancements and how they address many of the earlier issues, such as performance improvements, trustless setup, unified addresses, shielded by default, funding model, governance, Halo, supply audit etc. etc.

With regard to additional guests, I don’t think any would be needed, but Vitalik and sometime from Filecoin could be a good option, or Chris from ZOMG would be good too.

UpOnlyTV is a really popular show so let’s get this one booked in!

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I like this idea as well. Aside from the developer standpoint, up until now a big part of the Zcash community have felt identified with the project’s libertarian ideals and believe in the need for privacy in an open digital society. Personally, this is one of the main reasons that motivated me to join.

However, I also believe that the need for privacy is still neglected by the general public and it is unlikely that the same libertarian principles that brought many of us to Zcash will attract the mainstream without raising some awareness through popular channels. UpOnly may not seem like it if you’ve never actually listened to the podcast, but their conversations are not only funny and enjoyable, they are also quite interesting and offer valuable perspectives.

Zooko would be an amazing guest and it would be a great opportunity to show the world what Zcash is, what it stands for and its path moving forward.

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This is exactly how I saw the episode going in my head. There arent many people who have witnessed the birth of cryptocurrencies. Thats probably why they have been trying to get Zooko to come on the show.

And I agree that Vitalik would be a great guest along with Zooko, because he seems to be very excited about the new Halo upgrade and it would be an amazing listen. I am just not sure that he would agree to come on. We still dont know if Zooko has the time or the motivation to appear…

Absolutely. Both hosts are extremely intelligent and ask the right questions. I would say that they are right up there with Hasu and Su Zsu’s Uncommon Core. Incidentally Both Su Zsu and Hasu have already been guests on UpOnlyTV.

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I appreciate the thorough and enthusiastic appeal you make Alex. I have thought about this before and have mixed feelings. On the one hand, shows like uponly are a good way for people to learn about crypto things. On the other hand, they can barely get a word in edgewise without talking about price as the all powerful metric of everything. Plus seems like cobie is incredibly sarcastic towards Zcash (and zooko) in general, so I can’t blame zooko for wanting to skip out. On the other hand, zooko speaks well and makes convincing arguments for zcash every time he goes on “TV”, so he could likely do a lot of good by reaching some of the audience with a more earnest and long term interest in crypto. I’d leave it totally up to Zooko if he wanted to go on and wouldn’t be disappointed at all if he opted out.

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I think Zooko on the show would be good for Zcash. We need more exposure to the overall market. I hope he would help move the “privacy” topic away from buying drugs on the darkweb and into other aspects of privacy.
Explaining Zcash “privacy” in terms of the Upholding the Bill of Rights (effectively founded on implied privacy - such as the First and Fourth Amendment).
I think discussing “love notes on the Zcash blockchain” should be expanded to include all aspects of communication. For example…

In China it would be impossible to start a movement, or even a discussion, which is not 100% aligned with the government because they have no freedom of speech. Zcash guarantees freedom of speech, whether that speech is between 2 people or whether the speech is online in a Zcash social network (or whatever gets developed in the future).
I think Zcash is just getting started, IF Zooko and the greater community can transition the “private monetary transactions” into a greater narrative, more fundamental to the values of privacy and freedom - aside from buying drugs, or insider trading cues, or whatever online.

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Zcash guarantees the communication networks necessary to do what the Declaration of Independence commands we do.

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Can you please show me one UpOnly episode where the hosts were disrespectful to their guests?

I haven’t seen them being disrespectful to their guests. They(along with most of trader/influencer Twitter) do treat Zcash as a running joke because of the price history vs BTC and Eth - Cobain in particular. Ledger has been bullish on ZEC a number of times building positions though.
I know they have wanted Zooko on the show, from memory they indicated that they wanted to berate him about the price(I think?).
It could be good exposure having Zooko on the show to dispel some of the myths/false narratives around the project, particularly if Vitalik/someone not directly involved in ZEC who also has a positive view on ZEC is also a guest. Maybe Vitalik, Vorhees, Winklevoss twins, someone from Qedit.

If done well it could be very good, I can also understand why Zooko might not want to though

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I’ve been ragging on Zooko all year to do their podcast (sorry Zooko). UpOnly can be pretty cringe at times, but generally speaking, it’s a great platform to properly educate CT on Zcash. They spew out a lot of non sense, but they do seek legit information. The timing would be perfect with the new roadmap release and Halo coming out.

In addition to UpOnly, I’d also like to see Zcash represented on Bankless, Lex Fridman (he would love chatting about zkps), Tim Ferris, etc. We need better content for Zcash and this would be a huge step in the right direction.

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Yeah would be awesome to get Zooko on Tim Ferris as part of the crypto series with Naval. I was hoping they would move from BTC, to Eth, to ZEC. But their BTC with Nick Szabo and the Eth with Vitalik were excellent

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Kevin Rose’s ModernFi would be probably the most “legit”, IMO, for crypto based podcasts.

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Exactly my sentiment. I have been saying this for years. Privacy is for everybody not just for people that have something to hide. You cant have a free and open society without the right to privacy.

I dont think your memory serves you correctly in this case. There already was a ZCASH only episode featuring @tm3k @Cryptopathic and a third guest which I forgot and nobody made fun of them about the price and they are traders.

On UpOnly guests speak about what they know. So price discussion is for people who know about charting. None of the other coin founders or developers discussed prices.

If however you are correct I will consider this to be a very bad idea, and request a moderator to close the thread.

I will try to contact Ledgerstatus and ask him directly he did respond to my DMs in one instance a while back after after the Meltem Demirors episode. Maybe he could dispel any fears the community has. Cobies dms are closed unfortunately.

I agree, and I would love to see ZCASH being on every popular podcast out there. But the thing is we have an invitation to this one.

For some reason I could never get into Bankless I dont know why, but I would watch anything that features ZCASH.

I never knew about this one, I am looking at the list of guests right now and I dont know any names. Heh the problem is that I only hold ZEC so I dont follow other projects that closely, but I will certainly check it out. Thanks!

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As one of the members of the Telegram Community who encouraged Alex to post this, I want to offer my support for his idea. I’m a fan of UpOnly and watch it often. The hosts are very entertaining, they ask good questions, and are always respectful to their guests. The show has a massive following with Crypto Twitter.

Most of the negative sentiment about Zcash has been related to its price action, not its fundamentals. By any measure, Zcash’s bear market was excruciatingly painful; it culminated in a multi-year 98% drawdown from its 2017 all-time highs in terms of USD and BTC. The price action created a negative feedback loop that led many people to incorrectly believe the project was a failure. As a result, people left the community, developers became reluctant to build on top of Zcash, and Zcash became one of Crypto Twitter’s favorite punching bags.

But while Crypto Twitter was hyper focused on Zcash’s bearish price action, the brilliant team at the Electric Coin Company kept their heads down and focused on protocol development. And now, Zcash has a lot to brag about with shielded adoption rapidly growing, NU5, Halo, no more trusted setup, shielded by default, Web 3.0 and interoperability, shielded assets, and a future transition to proof of stake. As @ziga said, the timing is perfect with the new upgrade and roadmap release.

Sentiment is changing, we’re approaching a tipping point, and this is a great opportunity to turn things around with the Crypto Twitter crowd. An appearance on a popular program like UpOnly is a nice mix of education, marketing, and public relations that has the ability to clear up a lot of the misconceptions people have about Zcash. Given its viewership, it also has the potential to bring a new generation of Zcashers into the community. Sure, some will be “moonboys” who only care about “number go up.” But a handful will be high-quality community members who make a meaningful contribution to the Zcash ecosystem.

While I hope Zooko gives this proposal some consideration, he may have legitimate reasons for not wanting to appear on UpOnly with Cobie and Ledger. If that’s the case, I understand and respect his decision to decline the invite. If UpOnly doesn’t work out, it would be good to see a similar “Zcash Episode” on another popular Crypto Twitter podcast.

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Looks like this may finally be happening:

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anyone know if this is being rescheduled?

@alexontelegram

Its happening… Zooko UpOnlyTV podcast dropping today…

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I tried to watch also but then the audio-video had a breakdown so now they’re rescheduling?!

@zooko can you share any teaser info about when the second attempt will happen?

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Lmao. Only this would happen to Zcash.

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(Not everything had to be wrapped in a snark around here ya know)

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