Why? ECC Holds Agoric, Starkware, and Other Coins and Sells ZEC

General
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Disclosure: This is not my personal Twitter post but I was alerted to it and it hit a nerve this morning.

As a seed investor at ECC (been around since 2015)…

As someone who continues to buy/accumulate/hold a significant position in ZEC…

As someone who was asked to sign away my membership interests in ECC (which included seed level interests in Starkware/Agoric/etc.) to help transition ECC to a non-profit to support the further development of ZEC…

I would like to better understand why ECC continues to diamond hold a treasury of these other coins while ZEC continues to spiral downward. There isn’t any logic for the ECC to be in a budget crisis, dumping Zcash into all time lows, but also sitting on millions of dollars of some other random tokens that nobody cares about.

A few year back when ECC became part of the non-profit called Bootstrap, Zooko explained to ECC investors that the investments in Agoric and Starkware and others were part of a strategy to support ECC’s development of ZEC. We were reassured that our surrendered interests in these other projects would be used to support the development of Zcash.

So I ask, why is ECC not selling these other assets to support the development of Zcash, and instead, selling ZEC?

I am fiercely loyal to Zcash and fiercely protective of the work being done by ECC, and yet I am struggling with the fact that I hold ZEC while ECC sells. Why?

(BTW - I am bullish about @joshs proposed architecture FWIW).

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Hi @NimmyNims

Fair question. I’m still just ramping on finance and operations but ECC did sell some BLD tokens via OTC some months ago which seemed to create significant slippage. As you call out, we still hold a fair bit. I believe the reasons for not immediately selling coins included mandatory lockups (which I believe are done as of last month), but mostly liquidity. I’ll be looking at a reasonable approach moving forward, which will likely involve a mix as well as staking the tokens we hold in custody.

Andy shopped some of our other non-liquid assets in the midst of this last bear cycle but there were no reasonable offers.

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@joshs

Fair response, and grateful for this response.

As an investor, my biggest worry is that ZEC holders are funding the development of new technology that is presently being directed elsewhere, or may be directed elsewhere in the future. I have seen this happen so many times before and question whether this might be happening here.

Until different actions are taken to create different outcomes, this project will continue to flounder despite having one of the finest development teams in all of crypto. To be clear, the quality of the development team is one of the fundamental reasons I remain committed to Zcash.

In fairness, I understand you have only been CEO since December 18 so you are going to a reasonable amount of time and patience from the entire community. Please know that despite my frustrations/questions expressed here, I remain fiercely loyal to Zcash and the work ECC is doing. I believe many of those on this forum will continue to hold our significant positions in ZEC and give you and the team the benefit of doubt while you right this ship. But now is the time to shake things up and communicate an entirely new narrative to the market about Zcash and why owning and holding ZEC matters.

I wish you the very best in this endeavor.

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Why?

I mean, it should be pretty obvious why they have been doing that for years:

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“And the truth shall set you free”

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Protect this house at all costs.

IMG_4941

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To be fair, they could use a couple more engineers. Especially if they anticipate further growth.

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Agree! Zcash provide a few awesome component to crypto and blockchain community, such as the implementation of ff, bls12-381, pairing, groth16, halo2.But as a product. Zcash is not qualified. Wallet is not user-friendly, no Programmability and development is so slow.From last year August, NU5, Zcash has not Introduced some new exciting features so many time.

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Yes, Some peoples in this community is not qualified. If ECC not provide the service of Zcash as product, please not waste the time and money of investors! I can afford the lost of invest. But please be responsible for investors if you receive money from community!

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Honestly, there’s no millions in there. They can sink all these illiquid projects by selling only 10% of their volume. But thank you for writing. There is a similar thread about ZF having some really serious assets on its balance sheet apparently in case ZEC is no longer liquid. I don’t know.

Agoric has similarly powerful builders, no irony. Price failed 7 times since its ICO on Coinlist. Had I known 7 years ago that a strong development team is a red flag for an investing to project, I would have been a millionaire long ago. But Agoric hasn’t had any major listings yet, so there is no liquidity. @zmanian keeps writing about BuiLDing, although in this stupid market, you should not build but just add listings one by one if you really care about the price. 10% devs 90% noise and all sorts of social media flirtations. Retweet, like, post - catch your piece. All these kinds of mem-projects succeed for some reason, even though they don’t have any development teams at all.
Such smart heads can’t not realize this, I refuse to believe it. So in all honesty no one cares about price. What does? I don’t know. Maybe work for work’s sake. Pardon my candor.

By the way, I’ve written a few times before, but we need to look at the questions, why do we need to sell ZEC at all? Miners swap ZEC for BTC - what is the solution? I see only PoS in the current situation. My previous opinion that PoW would add cost to the coin, just like in bitcoin, has collapsed about the ZEC/BTC chart. If I were a miner, I would be doing the same thing today. The only way we can stop this insane trend for us is to be more proactive in protecting ourselves from selling. At the current moment, creating incentives to use ZEC is not as important as stopping its depreciation. Again this is only an obvious thought if the price is of any interest to anyone at all.

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100% echo this sentiment.

We’re at the brink of total irrelevance, and it is because of the paralysis caused by ZEC-USD. No technology upgrades will save Zcash except for Proof of Stake

God Speed to @nathan-at-least and his research team, and @daira and the developers at ECC. We’re in a nuclear arms race against time.

Now that most of crypto is in a bull run, is Andy planning on shopping out any of these altcoins again?
StarkWare has got to be valued in the 4-5 billion range, so there must be some liquidity available.
Agoric obviously less so, their tokens are still effectively private placements (because no major exchanges have BLD markets opened yet).

At some point in time, the inertia will break in Zcash’s favor and we’ll collectively have missed the final opportunities to defend the native coin value. I continue to be perplexed by the enthusiasm that ECC - ZF have for selling their ZEC coins into this near void market.

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Since some forum users are taking it on themselves to silence my remarks/ questions for Zeboot in the ECC Zeboot schedule thread, I’ll create a visible instance here as well.

Replying to @Joshs schedule

Section:
Exploring opportunities where ECC can have the greatest impact on Zcash adoption (1 hour) : Josh

@NoamChom:
Will this be the period in Zeboot where a discussion is held about the treasury financial conflicts of interest (against Zcash adoption)?

I don’t see anywhere else on the agenda that would be more appropriate(?)

ECC cannot sustain the path of tossing so many ZEC into the void, while sitting on its relatively large allocations in Agoric and Starkware assets.

One of the highest ranking chronic hinderances to Zcash adoption is a picture, that each and every person to ever adopt (or think about adopting) Zcash has battled with:

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Just imagine being a merchant who is considering services payments in Zcash.

I’m not sure how we can be doing the mental gymnastics needed to exclude the topic of Price/ Value, in the context of a conference about Project adoption.

Last Year, the ECC liquidated Zcash vs. Agoric from its treasury at a ratio of approx. 30:1

In 2024, if driving Zcash adoption, rather than Agoric adoption, is the objective

Then how about the ECC liquidate Agoric at a ratio of 30: 1 ZEC

How do the engineers and researchers at the ECC feel about this?

They’re who are doing the hard work to presumably create value and adoption in Zcash, yet the behavior from the top down is holding the value in StarkWare and Agoric instead(?)

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Sir, as I’ve said before, our financial state is a priority. Your analysis is overly simplistic.

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Context here before my question was flagged was, Zcash Adoption, and a question about whether or not ECC has ever reflected on the fact that its treatment of ZEC (selling it constantly) might be part of the factors hurting Zcash Adoption.

And whether or not that would be a topic acknowledged during the Zeboot panel related to Zcash Adoption.

The 800 pound gorilla in the room.

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