Nobody answered. Fair enough. Let me try a different angle.
Sean just tweeted that Bitcoin has been “taken over by a cult of ossification.”
He’s not wrong about Bitcoin. But it sharpens the question I was trying to ask: where should Zcash sit on this spectrum?
Two legitimate positions
Stability-first: Trust comes from predictability. Holders shouldn’t need to monitor forums to keep funds safe. High thresholds for change protect against capture. Security through simplicity.
Adaptation-first: Trust comes from competence. Quantum is real. Technical debt creates risk. Staying ahead of threats requires shipping improvements. Security through evolution.
Both want Zcash to succeed. Different theories of how.
The tension in practice
The Sprout deprecation thread shows this playing out.
@daira says: “I estimate that there is a significant chance within the next 3 years that we will be forced to make a decision about whether to also disable the ability to spend Sapling and pre-NU7 Orchard notes.”
That’s adaptation-first. Quantum is coming. Pools will need to migrate. Users should expect this.
@ValarDragon says: “it’ll always be a criticism that ‘one day people decided to just remove it in the next upgrade’, that will run counter to a moneyness narrative.”
That’s stability-first. Sound money means you can hold for decades without surprises.
Both are right about something. Neither extreme works alone.
My position
Balance. Progressive ossification.
Evolve the execution layer. Ossify the trust layer over time.
Quantum resistance, scaling, efficiency improvements. Keep shipping those.
But privacy guarantees, supply schedule, the expectation that current pools won’t vanish without years of warning and broad outreach. Those should get harder to change over time.
The threshold for fundamental changes should be high. Not impossible. High.
The question
Where do ECC, ZF, and Shielded Labs think we should sit on this spectrum?
Stability-first? Adaptation-first? Some specific balance?
The “encrypted Bitcoin” narrative implies stability-first. The Sprout deprecation approach implies adaptation-first. Which is it?