I don’t know what you want @zancas at this point but I’m loosing interest in your questioning.
What I can tell you is that I have been reading you carefully and questioned on how I express myself. I have agreed recently that my expression could use some improvement and I keep trying. My wording is probably borderline and your expectation of what should or should not be said, is also borderline. We’re in a grey area. I suggest we both improve. Me, wording. You, acceptance.
Now, I think the main issue we’re having is the stakeholders governance of the dev fund is just getting started and some of our expectations are at opposite ends of the spectrum. As more things get clarified and everybody is on the same page on how it should work, it’ll get better.
Ultimately, we should aim for high standards all over the governance. Both applicants with their applications, and stakeholders with how they react those those.
Governance is fascinating because striking the right balance of power and independence is incredibly hard and getting it wrong can doom even the best technology.
Zcash’s deliberately diverse ecosystem, institutions with different structures, funding, missions, time horizons, and stakeholders, is already remarkably mature for a nine-year-old project. Some overlap of talented individuals across organizations is normal, and actually helps coordination (you see the same in politics, finance, and economic sector at large).
I find this area particularly interesting because I personally participated in the governance preparatory work for the creation of the international Financial Stability Board (FSB). That experience taught me just how delicate and critical these decisions are, which is why I believe any further improvements to Zcash’s governance must always be thought through thoroughly.
Are you aware that FPF and SL are new organizations that are not domiciled in the US? If you wound the clock back you’d find that non-US domiciled organizations didn’t exist in earlier eras.
What about the composition of the ZCG? Is the membership of the ZCG diversified across nation-states, geographic regions or not?
Since “Kworks” stood for election in 2024, it seems reasonable that you’d be aware of the composition of the ZCG.
No doubt the governance of the Zcash community could be more diverse.. but to represent it as a “fairy tale” is a rhetorical device that distracts from meaningful diversity that does exist.
Combining questions about accountability with questions about diversity might make sense in some contexts, I’m not sure I see the benefit here.
Where I have failed to interact skillfully and spoken harmfully, I have taken responsibility and apologized.
If I left the previous statement as my only comment, how would you respond?
My experience is that you use acknowledgements of unskillful behavior as an opportunity to present yourself as high status relative to whomever has the courage to acknowledge their mistakes.
Because I’ve observed you doing this repeatedly it’s necessary to clarify that my apologies don’t imply that my argument is weakened.
I think there are fundamentally different reasons to dialog.
A reason to dialog is to discover (or create) new knowledge.
Another reason is to socially dominate participants to elevate ones status.
People who pay enough attention can reliably figure out what motivates a person to participate in a conversation.
Individuals and organizations invest in ZEC for its utility and future present value. One of the unique features of the encrypted Zcash Blockchain is the Dev Fund. The Dev Fund offers investors the chance to indirectly invest in cutting edge teams building zcash projects. In order to increase the stewardship of the Dev Fund and how it is managed and what operational guard rails are in place in order to increase value for current and future zcash teams.
Holding ZCG members accountable for the stewardship of the Dev Fund is in the hands of all zcash members. Demanding this accountability for public transparent independent reporting for the funds directed from Zcash Blockchain because of zip 1015 consensus.
The operational guard rails to protect the value placed inside the Dev Fund are extremely weak at best. Zcash Community members must demand stronger solutions such as:
Quarterly Reporting:
Proof of Reserves to each ZCG member
Viewkey for each zcash address holding Dev funds are provided to ZCG members.
ZCG members have full knowledge of the physical location where ZCG treasury funds are located.
ZCG members have full knowledge of who has operational spending authority of the Dev fund treasury.
ZCG members have full transactional history of any zcash address holding Dev Fund treasury.
ZCG paid service providers managing Dev Funds have clear separation from ZCG membership
ZCG membership requires a clear operational separation of personel overlap between ZF, ECC, SL, Q, FPF, ZL. (future orgs as they grow)
Annual - Third party independent accounting firm audits the use of Dev Funds and is reported to each ZCG member and publicly published.
All ZCG service providers contracts with zcg are publicly published.
In order to drive investment into current and future zcash teams we need to know the Dev Fund is not going to dance away.
Possibly the most famous of the Platonic dialogues is “The Apology”, in which Socrates apologizes to the citizens of Athens.
They subsequently order his execution. What does this tell us about their opinion of his apology?
The name of this thread is “Why Dialog?”.
Socrates claimed to be an expert of exactly three things. Politics was one of them.
You claim to be interested in politics (the actual word was governance).
If Socrates really was the world’s most expert practitioner of politics, and if his most famous speech was “The Apology”, and if the result of his speech was his execution.. then what does that imply?
I believe that Socrates actually was a master of politics, perhaps the greatest practitioner of the art that has ever lived. At a minimum he was very skilled and set a high bar that subsequent would-be politicians would do well to be aware of.
BUT.. I’m not necessarily sure where we’re going, or what answers we might find. I certainly have some ideas, but I’m not trying to start a dialog where I already know the conclusion.
Wouldn’t that basically be a waste of my time?
Instead I am inviting you to help me learn something.
I am guessing that by “governance” you mean persuading people to make the best choices for themselves.. or something like that.
Does that sound about right?
Or, do you have a better idea of what it means to shape Zcash via political mechanisms?
By governance, first and foremost I mean the structure necessary so that people legitimate to vote can do so with as little barriers as possible, technical or otherwise.
So right now we still have issues on both sides. A legitimacy problem, where some of the inflation goes in a direction that stakeholders have no control over (a simple on/off switch on the whole dev fund would be a good starting point). And a UX problem, where only the most technically inclined and the least risk averse will vote, certainly introducing substantial bias in the results. It’s a good start for sure, it just has to keep improving at a reasonable pace.
That first and foremost part were the fundamentals.
Then comes the politics aspect of governance. It’s ideal if all stakeholders can discuss and have an opportunity to defend their point of view and potentially help their comrades figure out what is the best way forward.
I don’t want to get all philosophical and make things murky, all I think that would be good for Zcash governance, and finances, is contained in the above lines.
“Apology” here doesn’t carry the same meaning as it does in modern English - it comes from the Greek Apologia, which is more akin to “a legal defense speech” or a “vigorous justification of one’s actions” as opposed to an acknowledgement of wrongdoing and a request for forgiveness.
This doesn’t materially change anyone’s point, so I apologize (in the normal sense) for indulging my inner pedant.