Zcash has a FUD problem

This post is hopeful, but it also highlights a problem… volunteerism is unstable.

For example, this kind of attention would also be great for matrix… but who’s got the time?

Maybe the folks who are already doing the work on reddit, could provide tips for other platforms? I agree with @macro that this feels like a significant issue.

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Maybe @Angst01 should receive some zec in return for dedicating time to reddit moderation?

I think a more general/sytematic approach, a full-time brain with an assigned “anti-FUD role” is called for. I am not aware of any careful characterization of the problem… that uncertainty in and of itself suggests that we need some dedicated minds.

Of course, there’s a confidentiality issue as well, depending on how motivated the FUDders are. I.E. are they reading this thread?

Anecdotally… this FUD feels… ubiquitous… it seems to show up in many different channels. Maybe not in Telegram, but that’s because of a specific moderation effort? That’s interesting data in its own right.

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I think it feels ubiquitous because it is. It’s almost impossible to find a ZEC thread on cryptocurrency reddit without a monero shill.

You could even make a game of it. How can you spot a zcash thread in r/cryptocurrency without reading the title? It’ll have a “Monero is better” comment somewhere in the thread.

Look at this one, first search result:

Title: Zcash ( ZEC ) missing here! (60% upvoted)
Body: “Hello. I’ve been thinking for a long time about how it is possible that in this subreddit does not mention ZEC at all.”
Top Comment: "Zcash is gone, not in a technological way but in a network way.

Projects like that are not bad at all, but they had their opportunity to shine and they failed. Also immagine a coin that wants to fight for the “digital cash” position, is that possible nowadays?

Monero is out there and is also very undervalued, but it works perfectly and it’s even better than Zcash; Bitcoin is out there, and its position is bery difficult to move because it’s both an asset and a way to transmit money. Also with the rise of the Lightning Network we saw the opportunities of having a very strong asset and ALSO a vehicle for value in the same protocol.

This is not a place for little projects without any strong distinctions. Ultimately Monero will stay and Bitcoin will obviously wipe his enemies in the field of Money…there is probably some room for things regarding gaming, cross blockchain projects and digital tokens, but no more room for digital cash."

Here’s another one:

Title: Zcash rallies following move to Proof-of-Stake (75% upvoted)
Comment: “As a big Monero believer I had no reason to own Zcash but now that it’s PoS I might need to start investing.”
Subcomment: “Pos is terrible for decentralization. 20% mining tax for developers and now they get free coins just for having them? Total scam. No one uses zcash by the way”

Title: A Deep Dive Analysis of ZEC (Zcash)- TL;DR: The Market is Undervaluing ZEC./my_bull_case_for_zec_follow_the_brains_follow_the/) (45% upvoted)
Shill post: “A privacy POW coin that can only be mined (rn) with ASICs? What does it give me compared to Monero (who even has a US-Bounty on it being cracked btw). Saying that ZEC will go to Bitcoin price levels - a mere x250 - is pure shilling. Sry. It certainly has it’s value, but it’s not THAT good.”

So what’s the strategy here? If you can hit zec threads early enough before they gain traction, they’ll never make it to the front page. No one will see them and for anyone curious enough to search for ZEC using reddit’s built in search, there’s the monero shill infodumping all the usual FUD. And they all sound exactly the same.

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It’s the case that deceit is the animating principle behind these messages. I am sympathetic to the philosophy that “Truth Will Out”… but I am not opposed to… uhhh… letting people know where it might be found?

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Relevant previous thread:
Information Warfare

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The Zcash Community Grants Committee is working on creating a “Global Ambassador Program,” which in its first iteration will be focused on growing the Zcash community and driving user adoption. If the program is successful, I hope we can eventually expand it to cover things like social network moderation. You’re right, being an administrator can be both time consuming and exhausting, and require significant effort. Compensation would incentivize community members to become moderators and reward them for their work.

In the meantime, I would love to see someone submit a grant proposal to police the various social networks and be assigned with an “anti-FUD role”. I’m not speaking for the committee, but it is something I would support. The attack vectors discussed in @joshs’s thread on Information Warfare are often used against the Zcash community, and I think we should make it a priority to better defend ourselves.

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It’s unfortunate of course that this is happening, but in the long run, and given the traceability of Monero, this is a losing strategy.

Here is the dilemma… “Turn the other cheek” or “the best defense is an attack.”

What were they thinking when they decided to do it?

Let’s move on to Halo + Unified Addresses. And after that, when there are no arguments left to attack Zcash, I will willingly participate in a retaliatory FUD attack. Probably it will be very un-Christian, I’m sorry. But it will be fun.

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I have nothing to add about what we should do or if we should do anything, but I do want to concur that I’ve seen a lot of incorrect/misleading — and in many cases probably dishonest — FUDs against Zcash over the years.

As a semi-aspie “Accuracy Maximalist”, seeing people say false things just makes me super uncomfortable. It makes my brain itch. But, about a year ago I gave up on my long-standing practice of arguing about it on social media and I switched tactics, which was whenever one of those well-trodden FUDs would come up, I would just say “Oh yeah, really? How about you install a Zcash wallet and we’ll see.”.

The results have been spectacularly good! I don’t know how many minds I changed in years of arguing — probably a few but not many — but I have seen a high percentage of really positive responses from people who try a wallet. Here is a post I just made about this on twitter:

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I don’t think we need detailed analysis, just some well placed more appealing narratives. Don’t let FUD drive the discourse!

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Thanks for bringing this up!

I can’t imagine it’s unusual for a company that is fighting misinformation and/or competition to study it. Marketing strategy will dictate what we do. But I find it hard to imagine this hasn’t been discussed at ECC/Zfnd (pinging @zooko @Dodger).

Between NFTs and Media campaigns it feels like the concerted (education and) marketing effort is costing “Zcash” $100,000s and 1000s of hours. Let’s imagine just 20% of those interested in learning more visit r/ZEC, and let’s imagine 50% are instantly turned off by the fud. Our marketing campaign instantly lost 10% of its effectiveness. That’s $10,000s and 100s of hours worth of effort instantly lost.

Anecdotally we all know having good mods on social platforms, that have the time, are likely to better outcomes. To me it’s a no brainer that money and man hours should be spent on this problem.

Unfortunately @zooko I’m going to call you out…

“or if we should do anything”?

I’m only calling you out because you said it out loud. I’ve certainly had the same thought. This thought process increases the likelihood we accept this reality/fud as something we can’t control and don’t spend thought/effort to actively fight it. I encourage yourself and others to break this toxic thought process of accepting fud and abuse from other communities.

The first thing we might do is think of ways we can stop r/ZEC from basically being a recruiting ground for Monero maximalists. Mods are probably a good start. Should ECC, ZEC, and @ZcashGrants recruit mods for socials in the same way we do for the forums?

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A question for everyone to gauge community sentiment:

Should the Zcash Community Grants Committee consider funding a program similar to what Cardano has with its “Moderator Rewards”?

Moderator Rewards
Moderators keep our channels informative, friendly and constructive. Moderators have a good understanding of how each specific channel works since each medium has different rules and cadence. Moderators are visible and active daily. The basis of the rewards relies on a set of defined activities. If Moderators successfully meet these criteria, they are eligible to receive a reward of up to US$300 each month. A few of the responsibilities include:

  • Welcome new members;
  • Ensure adherence to the Code of Conduct within the channels;
  • Provide interesting information and answer questions;
  • Maintain discussions constructive and mutually beneficial;
  • Constantly communicate with other Moderators to discuss tactics, flag unethical behaviors and determine actions to take;
  • Regularly provide proof of work reports with activity logs from each channel to the Cardano Foundation’s Community Management Team.
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I hate to be blunt:
ZEC is a high-status coin/idea/community.
Monero is a low-status coin/idea/community.
It is best not to get mixed up with the crap.

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@aquietinvestor thank you! No question. Given the upcoming “Zcash Media” release I think this should be a priority. If we could announce it before any wider Zcash Media announcement would be good :slightly_smiling_face::+1:.

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“It is remarkable how a man cannot summarize his thoughts in even the most general sort of way without betraying himself completely, without putting his whole self into it, quite unawares, presenting as if in allegory the basic themes and problems of his life.”
That’s about how I see it

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Mods are probably a good start. Should ECC, ZEC, and @ZcashGrants recruit mods for socials in the same way we do for the forums?

If anyone with good Zcash history and standing would like to apply, please DM me.

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Has there been any progress adding moderators to r/zec subreddit?

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I think they also need to get rid of the existing mods. It makes no sense that the “Monero is Better than Zcash” thread is allowed to stay up, especially when you consider later comments by the OP of that thread. Either the mods are asleep, or worse. Comment by the OP:

"Actually this was just a test post to see how you all react under basic criticism and normal thoughts anyone slightly familiar with the crypto space would convey. I was posting about this issue, since ARBK only invests in Bitcoin and Zcash, and needed to know if Zcash was a trustworthy community.

Suffice to say, this is a fail from you guys, and this has ensured I won’t be investing further in ARBK. For ARBK to only invest in Bitcoin -a coin that has an inferior code to Bitcoin Cash, and Zcash -a coin that has an inferior reputation AND community to Monero, ARBK must not have good judgement.

Here is what this community would have done, for a passing grade:

  1. Upvoted this post to encourage criticism and comparison with other coins, especially one as similar as Monero.
  2. Top-voted a central explanation of the ups AND downs of Zcash in an educated respectful manner.
  3. Upvoted people from the Monero community who chimed in, to show you are open-minded to other points of view. This in turn would have led to potentially us switching over, WHICH YOU NEED if you want to grow as Monero is the predominant privacy coin as things stand.

In my opinion, you all have the ethics of a pump-and-dump community, given this response, as well as the quality of posts in this subreddit. I fully predict Zcash will not catch on, or if it does, it will eventually die in the long-term.

This is a final wake-up call to you all, on the off-chance you all aren’t a scam -fix your ethics, or your cryptocurrency is going to die, regardless of code quality.

Edit: This post suddenly went from 0 upvotes to like 40+ upvotes and a bunch of awards. Either someone reposted this or reverse psychology was just applied to my argument. Grateful regardless.

Let me get this straight, this user makes a trollish “test post,” claims the community didn’t upvote the thread when it’s literally the highest upvoted post in the subreddit, name drops monero, and says the community has the ethics of a pump and dump, and the mods do nothing. Are you sure these moderators have the best interest of the community in mind? Or are they just comically ineffective?

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How about enough analysis to know where “well-placed” is?

Let me get this straight, this user makes a trollish “test post,” claims the community didn’t upvote the thread when it’s literally the highest upvoted post in the subreddit, name drops monero, and says the community has the ethics of a pump and dump, and the mods do nothing. Are you sure these moderators have the best interest of the community in mind? Or are they just comically ineffective?

Those kind of threads are a part of a wider, organised, campaign not exclusive to /r/zec ( see I was told this forum is a censored mess ). It is always a balance between keeping it up or removing it. In this case @Shawn decided to keep it up. Saying that moderators are malicious just because of they decided on the side of letting a person speak his piece is uncalled for.

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