Vlad Costea for ZCG (ZECember 2025)

Governance ZCG Elections
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Hello!

My name is Vlad and I am probably best known for hosting the Bitcoin Takeover podcast – for which I interviewed Josh Swihart alongside Kris Nuttycombe (S15 E62), Zooko (S16 E29), and more recently Sean Bowe (S16 E51).

By virtue of this post, I hereby announce my application to the Zcash community grants. My considerations are quite simple:

– I issued a Twitter challenge to which the community at large responded positively: https://x.com/thevladcostea/status/1990512411238158426?s=46&t=gsfNwtDtLBe-E5UXg0sh5A

– as a true Bitcoin maximalist™, I want to push the offspring of the Zerocash paper to the absolute limits and turn it into a serious contender to BTC as both a store of value and a medium of exchange. Hopefully, this effort will also push Bitcoin to adapt to the latest industry standards for privacy.

– Zcash is part of my “Freedom Gainzz” fund and I would like to further promote the narrative that investing in privacy really doesn’t make you poor because you can outperform bitcoin.

– I really enjoy trolling the Monero community and the grant would be a perfect opportunity to fuel their “you’re getting paid by Zcash” accusations. While this may sound silly, I think that drawing more attention to Zcash is a net positive.

While my application might sound unserious and rather memetic in nature, I do want to add that I genuinely care about Zcash and it’s the Bitcoin we were promised a decade ago. So let me state my intentions and philosophy too.

I want Zcash to succeed because it’s exactly what the world needs in the age of automated surveillance, CBDCs, and mandatory KYC/digital ID.

I do believe that my work provides a significant boost to the Zcash marketing and culture – and with or without the grant, it will continue to do so.

But I also think that the competitive advantage of Zcash is the development culture: it’s avant-garde, it’s cypherpunk, and it strikes the perfect balance between legality and the freedom to use your money however you want, without surveillance.

If accepted for the ZCG, I will further emphasize the importance of hiring good devs who build stuff that improves the Zcash privacy and scalability, but also increases ZEC adoption. While marketing and awareness are important, I believe that the value of Zcash as a project comes from persistence over time and innovation.

So with or without the grant, I want to make the point that Zcash should focus on innovations like Tachyon and shielded assets that anyone can use with the same user friendliness of Zashi, on home nodes and miners that anyone can configure from a stunning UX, and on more smooth integrations such as NEAR in order to increase adoption.

Furthermore, I want to suggest that in order to become truly unstoppable, Zcash needs more than nodes, miners & adoption. And while I love the contributions of genius developers such as Sean Bowe, the community should focus on finding and training more of these brilliant devs. Yes, even Bitcoin still relies on the expertise of Pieter Wuille, the opinions of Greg Maxwell, and the wisdom of Adam Back.

But since Zcash has a budget for hiring developers, it can be so much better than Bitcoin in terms of shipping innovations for both ZEC holders and the entire crypto industry. Training a new generation of Sean Bowes is an endeavor that is worth exploring.

In a nutshell, this is what I stand for and how I believe the 8% of the Zcash should be used.

Whether or not you like my ideas and want to support my candidacy, it’s up to you. But I do hope that I can use my disappointment and disillusionment in Bitcoin development to fuel something productive, that helps maintain a positive development culture.

In the end, it’s the zebras that adapt to their environment and innovate that win the savanna battles.

Onwards! :saluting_face:

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Feel free to ask questions, guys. I may not have strong opinions on some issues such as CrossLink PoS (it definitely has tradeoffs), but I am very much for progress and cypherpunk experimentation as I believe it’s these advancements that make Zcash valuable.

What I dislike most about any cryptocurrency project is complacency and stagnation. We’re at the bleeding edge of financial innovation, we are contributing to the kind of tech that can shape our future, and there are hundreds of interesting research papers that get published every year.

Unlike Bitcoin, which rewrote its market narrative around conservatism and pragmatic development, Zcash is better off experimenting. Even if a state of affairs proves to be popular on markets, that should never be a good reason to stop improving the privacy, scalability & overall features.

I do believe that Zcash is the most interesting financial experiment of our decade and the trend-setter for financial privacy. Falling behind is not an option, but also making changes just for the sake of it is unwise.

If elected for ZCG, I will use the best of my ability to advise on how to make the most of that 8% of the ZEC issuance. And I will make sure that any good decision also turns into positive market information for ZEC holders. There’s a long history of pessimism around here and I believe it’s something we should fix :saluting_face:

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Hello Vlad

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?

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That’s a very good question and I took a few hours to think about it.

Local communities are the place where real adoption is happening and conviction is built and taught to people outside of our social media bubbles. They’re also excellent for taking feedback from everyday “normies” who see our tech as something foreign.

Do I believe that they deserve funding? Absolutely – but not to the point where they cannot exist without financing. Local communities should get incentivized to get established and expand, then receive guidance to develop their own revenue system via funding from Zcash-friendly sponsors (wallets, exchanges, ATMs, local businesses) or community membership fees.

Otherwise, there is no way to test people’s conviction in the project – you enable people to build local communities only to extract money from the project. This can become a very expensive endeavor that takes most of the 20% block reward allocation.

In regards to metrics for success, I think what should get measured is personal evolution and growth: did these people install self-custodial wallets and withdraw from exchanges? Do they have proper backups? Did they sync their full Zebra node and use it with Zashi? Did they also become interested in mining?

For a decentralized money project, these are the most important metrics: self custody, self validation, and participation in block creation.

Long term, I also see federations getting established around the small local communities: basically national or language-specific bodies that gather everyone to meet and interact with each other, without exerting any central control. It’s definitely an interesting thought experiment to try to figure out how this would work.

But ultimately, the goal of Zcash is to get adopted by the people who need it the most. So absolutely, local communities play a very significant role. But there should be limits to funding and performance benchmarks for everyone, to truly help the project at large progress and move forward.

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Congratulations on your application. Good luck!

I would like to know your vision: How can we promote Zcash more in Latin America? What ideas can you give us in the Spanish-speaking communities of Latin America and Spain to increase the adoption of Zcash?

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Thank you, Gordones!

Given Latin America’s history with communism, military dictatorships & various experiments with authoritarianism, I think it’s one of the best places to promote Zcash adoption.

Advocates don’t even have to explain anything about the global financial system or how ZK SNARKs work. Zcash is scarce, private for both storing and transacting, similar enough with Bitcoin to ring a bell, but also different enough to stir interest.

“Money that your government cannot steal because they don’t even see it” is a very powerful narrative.

But beyond corrupt governments you also have cartels and various militias that frighten normal everyday people. The good news is that these mafiosos can’t see your Zcash transactions either.

However, there needs to be some education to support self custody and shielding. Also, I hope Zashi adds duress mode soon: so even the public advocates, when they get arrested and asked to unlock their wallets to show how much money they have, they can type a different PIN which opens the secondary wallet where only $10 is inside. Edge wallet already has it, such a simple but powerful feature!

Anyway, I love Latin America (I’ve visited Mexico & Argentina over the last year) and I do believe it’s one of the easiest places to promote private peer to peer cash. Just be sure to always use relevant examples and stories – because everyone knows about wealth confiscation, high inflation & the lies of their politicians.

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Thanks! Good luck in the elections!

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I have some questions:

  1. What are your views on Crosslink? Do you have a preference for pure PoS or hybrid PoS/PoW (Crosslink).

  2. Assume for a moment Zcash goes for pure PoS and we therefore have to choose a new consensus algorithm. Do you think it is more important to support a high validator count so that home staking is possible, or is it more important to get automatic interoperability with other blockchains by choosing a standardized algorithm?

  3. What are your thoughts on ZSAs? More broadly what are your thoughts on making Zcash programmable by adding private smart contracts?

  4. What are your views on layer 2s? Do you think Zcash needs a layer 2?

  5. Do you want to keep or get rid of the transparent pool?

  6. Do you think it is more important to focus on making ZEC a store-of-value or a means of payment?

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1/ I’m not a huge fan of Proof of Stake, I believe that every coin should have an issuance cost in electricity. However, a hybrid between Proof of Work and Proof of Stake sounds a lot more interesting, as it also incentivizes users to run validating nodes and removes concerns about large mining pool attacks. I’m not an expert in CrossLink and don’t have strong opinions like it. Maybe Zcash can also continue as pure Proof of Work if we figure out how to make mining more accessible (like Bitcoin does with BitAxe, Braiins BMM101 & FutureBit). There are tradeoffs in every model, but I believe the future of money should have a fair issuance and thermodynamic security.

2/ A high validator count is more important in order to make the network resilient. In the absence of this robust layer, interoperability is kind of pointless. We can figure out bridging mechanisms across blockchains later, but this is about security.

3/ I like ZSAs a lot and they’re part of the reason why I am super bullish on Zcash on the long term. Sure, they can be a trojan horse (for instance, maybe a private stablecoin can become more popular than ZEC). But even a situation where ZEC is the gas token for other assets is bullish and a net benefit for privacy.

4/ Bitcoin Cash used to say that they will never build layer 2s because they scale on chain. Now they are building ZK rollups. Never say never, the tech improves over time and user demand can also change the development priorities. Maybe having Lightning network atomic swaps betwen BTC and ZEC would be useful? Maybe some kind of rollup or sidechain will enable new use cases? It’s good to stay open about it and think in terms of making Zcash more useful for a larger number of people without compromising on security and decentralization.

5/ I’ve recently observed how ordinal inscription artists have moved from Bitcoin to Zcash. They increased the daily transaction count, brought community members on board and I’m sure many of them will use the shielded pool too. I think the transparent side of Zcash has its usefulness, at least for now. It onboards people who are familiar with Bitcoin and also makes ZEC easier to list on exchanges, swapping services, DeFi protocols & ATMs.

Sure, I’d be happy if a transition to fully private was made. Now that would make the tech stack truly shine! But I’m not sure we’re ready for it now, we need to win some significant political battles first. Prematurely transitioning to private by default can diminish the magnitude of adoption.

6/ I think Zcash currently makes a lot of sense as a store of value – 2 MB blocks every 90 seconds aren’t gonna replace Visa, but they can help millions of people shield their savings. But once Tachyon is out and the project can scale to billions of users, it’s gonna be the best form of digital cash.

But then again, this dichotomy is silly: you can use your coins for saving or spending today, depending on your preference. It’s just that technical limitations often lead to the creation of narratives about technology. Once the limits get removed, new narratives and use cases will emerge. But you can still use a highly scalable coin as a store of value, it’s always up to the individual user.

What really matters is that we find the tech useful and use it.

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velocity is the key variable that most people ignore.

With a truly fixed 21M supply, zcash’s price is roughly “dollar demand ÷ velocity”. If Zcash ever becomes heavily used as everyday cash (high velocity), the same amount of dollar inflows supports far more transactions, so much less money flows into price appreciation.

If almost everyone treats it as a long term savings asset or pristine collateral (very low velocity), almost every new dollar from ETFs, companies, or countries pushes the price up dramatically.

You can always personally choose to spend or save, but if scaling makes mass spending practical and common, the aggregate velocity rises and the “digital gold” price explosion becomes mathematically much harder. So the dichotomy isn’t silly at all… widespread spending would actually cap the upside for holders.

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I find the main problem to be that having centralized fiat or fiat proxies on your chain, you de facto fall under the jurisdiction and scrutinity of the issuing countries, and it gives them much more convenient pretexts and powers to meddle in your affairs.

Just because they have been quite permissive to date doesn’t mean it will stay that way.

The only free cheese is in the mousetrap.

It would be wiser for Zcash to stay away from the fiat drama that will unravel in the next couple of years. If you want to use stablecoins or other assets privately with ZEC, use Zashi.

And even other “decentralized” imported assets can bring chaos, look how Cosmos never truly recovered so far from the Terra Luna shenanigans. Basically you lose sovereignty on your chain and subject yourself to other actors behaviors.

All not really worth of trying to become a poor man’s Ethereum in my opinion.

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That’s a fair point. Also, if Zcash becomes Proof of Stake then stablecoin issuers can get a lot of leverage. So maybe it’s unwise to pursue shielded assets at this point… though Zano and Beam created their own overcollaterlized algorithmic stablecoins. Look at FUSD, it sort of revitalized Zano and it’s not issued by Tether or Circle.

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Yes just put ZSAs on the back burner until the heat comes down and we get more clarity.

No need to overcomplicate things for now, we can just acknowledge what has worked for Bitcoin (simplicity of the proposition) and what has not (lack of privacy / fungibility, lack of scalability, lack of long term security budget and doubtful POW finality with mining cartels).

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You mention that Zcash is innovative relative to Bitcoin.

Do you have any opinions on how the End Of Service halt written into Zcash nodes relates to this?

You mention that the

is a key part of the Zcash innovation story.

Are you aware of the history of Zashi design? Do you know who designed it?

Thanks.

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In what ways is privacy not “default” in current Zcash?

At least via Zingo, transparent addresses are not the default flow for any User initiated actions. I feel confident no major shielded-first Zcash wallet, makes transparent action “default”.

It might be that multi-coin wallets that support Zcash are more complacent about prioritizing shielding, but I believe that Unstoppable and Edge are also Shielded first in most cases.

Modern Zebra and Zcashd both support mining to shielded addresses.

Finally in cases where interfacing with legacy systems (e.g. Binance) has required support for transparent addresses, the TEX specification has minimized privacy leakage via “ephemeral” taddresses. So even in this case where we interface with a toxically centralized legacy system, the default minimizes the use of transparent addresses.

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I’m really excited that you’re doing this!

Any interest in selling your toxic waste?

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Zingo sounds like a wallet I should try :upside_down_face:

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Maybe check out the Crosslink demo on December 3d.

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Seriously, check it out!

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