Why do you need Zcash?

General
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Hello!

I wanted to start simple thread to complement the retrospective and constructive criticism threads on the forums.

Let’s simply tell others

Why is Zcash important to you?

What do you need Zcash for?

What would you like Zcash to be in 6 months and within a year from now?

And try to abstain to judging others or trying to argue their feelings, hopes and beliefs
I’ll start:

Why is Zcash important to you?

Zcash is important to me because I’ve lived the “not your keys not your coins” for real in 2001 when the government, banks and corporations colluded to steal people’s savings. I’ve lived how when people could salvage some of their belongings from banks, 5-pesos wrench attacks and “express kidnapping gangs” became a thing where neighbors would tip each other off to mob and thieves and for some money to survive. I know first hand that people need a way to preserve their privacy and freedom in a fair economic system.

What do you need Zcash for?
I need a cryptocurrency project that preserves my privacy and the safety of my loved ones and myself while being compliant with the rest of the world economy so that people can start getting the benefit of economic self-sovereignty without the feeling that they will be off-the-grid and isolated from their communities. I need a cryptocurrency that is private, fair and human: for everyone.

What would you like Zcash to be in 6 months and within a year from now?
6 months, I’d like the spam-a-drama to be in the past, and that users can actually USE and more importanly ENJOY Zcash and that the community had debated all the wrong we’ve been through, healed out wounds and be focused on discussing a future we can be proud of.

12 months: I’d like to be planning ZSAs, using hardware wallets, seeing ZEC flourishing on p2p and exchanges, Zebra nodes everywhere, and Zcashd slowly being turned off and given the well deserved farewell and gratitude for all the good it has brought to humanity. I’d like to see new faces here, better documentation, and halving that means the start of a new era with more organizations looking to make Zcash thrive and be global, and not like doomsday is coming.

Your turn!!

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As we sit here today. zec is not important to me. it doesn’t work as a store of value, the wallet doesn’t work well etc etc… I originally bought zec as a hedge and belief it could be something useful. but today it just is not. I use paypal, cash, venmo almost daily. i don’t ever use my bank much anymore except to just hold money. i don’t see where zec fits.

If it doesn’t work as a store of value, I don’t need it. Privacy is a feature. the core function of money is to retain its value first and foremost.

I would like to see in the next 30 days a clear path and plan.

  1. fixing the issues that make zec unreliable: for end user it’s the wallet SDK and wallet that syncs and works as expected.i’m sure there is a lot more we can’t see.
  2. put all marketing and advertising on hold and redirect all resources to fix and build. It’s a waste of money to market a product that doesn’t work as people expect. that includes zec as a token not being able to be a store of value.
  3. privacy based stsblecoins. Centralized stable coins if it has to be 100% backed stablecoins. The market is just too big to ignore. The float interest income can be an engine for growth and for zec value. This does not hurt the people who fear centralization. Even if they don’t use it, it even helps them. I feel the fact we even have to ask for it shows ZEC is too centralized. a decentralized ecosystem is needed. people can decide for themselves if they want to accept the risk of using stablecoins. people have lost way more money in zec (as a group) than they likely will ever lose from a properly collateralized centralized USD or euro. This is the future of money.
  4. ZSAs
  5. POS with ZEC staking and were ZEC earning yield based on powering the entire blockchain. This would give zec a real underlying value proposition.
  6. A market based ecosystem where block rewards are eliminated. Block rewards obfuscates the value proposition. it’s the achilles heal of value creation and development where ZEC holders subsidize transactions and development with no visible way to get anything back in return. We have to accept the risk of a fork, giving the technology away for free, a highly centralized funding mechanism where zec holders take all the risk (a lot of our money is wasted) and no visible ways to earn yield or gain value.
  7. a cultural shift towards a) privacy for all as represented by ZEC or any assets in the zcash blockchain b) zec as an asset to have real value. also a shift in thinking where the foundation/ECC/grants committee understand and believe they are fiduciaries for ZEC holders. i don’t believe people actually see themselves as fiduciaries to ZEC holders and would like to be proven wrong. i have a hard time reconciling a belief in forks and a belief in being a fiduciary to zec holders. I for one am not buying ZEC to fund someone’s social agenda or ideology. I want to see ZEC capture and retain the value from what ZEC holders fund and create. If there is a conflict between someone’s ideology and beliefs for making the world a better place, the duty to ZEC holders comes first. the beauty of ethereum is it appears they’ve built the protections to eth holders into the protocol and made it open and dectralized so anyone can create on it.
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Because I’ve seen a government inflate a currency into oblivion and when broke, take people’s money from the banks.

Having an alternative that cuts out all these intermediaries, that gain undeserved power over everyone because of their central position, seems like a necessity for a better society.

To pay others and get paid. Directly, across borders, for low fees and without anyone having the power to cut me out of the system.

In 6 months, I’d love to see many wallets back to their functionality pre-sandblasting or even better.
In a year, I’d love to see multiple ways for new people to get ZEC that don’t involve buying it at an exchange.

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You’ve described Bitcoin offering. Why do you need Zcash?

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None of this works without privacy.

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Well Bitcoin market cap is half a trillion market cap, so I guess it kind of works.

So you’re saying you need Zcash because you want private Bitcoin, essentially.

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You and I have very different definitions of “works”. If “works” means rich people park their money in it hoping to get richer, then bitcoin works.

I need Zcash because I want digital cash.

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Ah, so you need private digital cash. Sorry if I’m slow ahaha. I need the same.

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I you may, please share your thoughts on the questions without arguing others :pray:

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Well I like to understand exactly what people mean sometimes. It’s certainly a fine line but it’s a forum where I think we’re supposed to exchange thoughts?

Anyway, personally

  1. I am looking forward to seeing the digital cash announced by Satoshi finally realized
  2. With privacy on top

So it’s not so much that I cannot live without it. I want it because I truly believe so many people are financially oppressed and Zcash could have a big role in restoring freedom for those.

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I would love to see the ability to gamble on chain. Live action sports betting, horse races, etc. Like Barstool tried to do with Penn or Augur, even.

Additionally, it’s the closest thing in crypto to real cash, which is losing a battle against credit cards and being tracked for all of your financial habits.

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Sorry @pacu gotta comment on this one too. I mean well, I promise!

For anyone that has been following Augur for a long time, you have probably seen how it was one of the best developed, actually decentralized, project. Technically, way ahead of most others. Yet it’s not used today. Why? There are a couple of reasons for this but privacy is indeed probably an important culprit.

Bets can be heated, super controversial and/or political. Say you bet that Agent X is about to release a massive amount of classified document from country Y. What is country Y going to do? Figure out asap who agent X is before it happens. As things stand currently, a quick call to Binance and you can probably get names on most relevant ETH address, assuming the person making the bet has useful details on this matter. Consequently, you cannot make the high stakes bets Augur has been designed for, it’s a major extrinsic flaw.

Anyway, just some details I thought you may find interesting.

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You are making the case for the USD and fiat! fiat forces people to invest in productive assets.
no one gets rich by parking money in fiat. Dwell on that for a bit. if you don’t want zec to make people rich, then the alternative is to make them poor with a coin like zec. we need to chose to enable zec to have real value.

owning zec or btc is not parking your money. we are taking on major risk funding the development of the zec blockchain. btc is the survivor, people have lost a lot of money funding the losers. and so have we. and i’d like to see zec become a productive asset that will make people rich by holding and staking it.

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Put this in the Louvre.

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