This Thread is the first community poll of its kind in more than 2 years.
As we Zeboot, as the Halving/ NU6 approaches, as the ECC R&D teams continue to keep their heads down, and as we all keep putting our energies into Zcash, this poll is an ad-hoc event to gauge the current Zcash community forum sentiment about where Zcash network consensus/ security should evolve to in the years ahead.
With regard to Zcash network consensus, I support that the protocol:
Remain As-Is Proof of Work (pro ASIC)
Transition from ASIC PoW to some ASIC resistant PoW hashing algorithm
Direct transition from PoW to Proof of Stake
Transition from PoW to Hybrid PoW/PoS TFL, then to PoS TBD in the future
Transition to Hybrid PoW/PoS TFL, then remain there
Fork the chain creating Two trademarked Zcashes (1- PoW, 2- PoS)
0voters
Comment with additional ideas/ or clarifications to the buckets above.
My opinion:
Direct to Proof of Stake is ideal. Although technically and practically, the Hybrid state TFL approach has many theorized pros, over the direct jump approach, I think it brings too much risk and additional uncertainty into the project. PoW ā TFL ā PoS doubles the engineering efforts (handing waving), and likely would double the calendar time for delivery assuming that total PoS is the preferred end state.
If a majority of the ecosystem want to invest in the Hybrid TFL solution, then Iām actually more inclined to suggest that we keep it as the end state.
Lingering in the Hybrid TFL state muddies the narrative, and takes value out of the core inspiration around getting to Proof of Stake (asap?) because of its better traits than Proof of Work (particularly speaking, ASIC controlled, non-Bitcoin PoW).
Its a tough debate. Be sure to view this (and some old links following)
Please be advised that these kinds of forum polls are not an accurate gauge of community sentiment.
This an open public forum, it takes 2 minutes to create an account here and there is no restrictions on account age or account standing to vote. Thereby forum polls are subject to sybil style attacks.
So these community polls are not adequate or reliable as a means to develop consensus.
A lot of people talk about DEX integration. What better way to do it than transitioning to POS with IBC on cosmos? DEX and DeFi in 1 go. ETH, BTC and all the other cosmos chains have access to IBC, ZEC would be a nice addition
Direct conversion to pos is the best choice. If you choose segmentation, it will likely cause various forks twice. PoW/PoS is a moderate and unconfident solution.We need a kind of courage
And Pos is more helpful for subsequent version updates
before voting id like to know.
difference in time to get to TFL and then from TFL to POS
vs straight to POS.
with funds for eveyone at low end wouldnt it make sense to go straight to pos because it wouldnt need 2 times changing stuff and also more clear for community and also miners.
Following up with another strong piece of going direct to PoS, it will have a sooner, significant improvement to ZEC economics. The longer that we linger along in this ASIC PoW or Hybrid PoW situation, the longer our project is made a victim of ASIC miner pools who treat ZEC not as a valuable asset, but instead, as a two step way to acquire more BTC.
It can be said that every miner who buys a zcash mining machine is optimistic about zcash. As for why they should switch to BTC, it is because miners also need income. Are you willing to switch to it?
Can someone comment first on which transition mitigates the most risk as it relates to a technical transition? My understanding from past posts that ECC like the Hybrid Approach as an interim step though I do not understand exactly why.
As you know from many of my earlier comments, Iām all about mitigating downward selling pressure so Iād like the transition to PoS to come as soon as reasonable and feasible.
Out of curiosity do you represent a mining company or manufacturer?
If I understand you, youāre referring to part of the Zcash code thatās inherited from Bitcoin.
You are correct that Zcash used Bitcoins code for transparent transactions, but private āshieldedā transactions using ZK-snarks were pioneered by Zcash and have been adopted by many other crypto projects.
The zcash foundation sold part of zcash and exchanged it for Bitcoin. In addition, miners selling zcash were less than one thousandth of the daily transaction volume. Especially at the current price, they would choose to hoard coins.
sorryļ¼my english is not greatć
Mining is a long-term investment that requires an in-depth understanding of the project. I am a programmer. If I want to do short-term, I will choose trading coins with high liquidity instead of mining.
Iām interested in any evidence behind this idea. The ZEC markets of the past 3-4 months are what I think make it patently clear, Zcash miners are not hoarding their ZEC, to the contrary they hedge out as soon as possible into BTC or USD.
With regard to risk, its all estimation right now (unless the ECC have published some technical reports that go into better detail). Until now, the community has received general talking points about the R&D progress, namely the Pros and Cons of either the Direct or Hybrid approach.
Going with the Hybrid approach reduces risk of a single point in time failure/ potentially a block creation halt or split, by securing a multi-source consensus state, prior to jumping into PoS only. However by ~double engineering the move to PoS, it is always possible that different/ new risks are created along the way. Going with the Direct approach, there is a single point in time where all new blocks come from PoS validators, and all PoW blocks are rejected. That places a larger burden on the implementation of the PoS blocks/ consensus mechanics/ et al, it centralizes those risks to that single, small window of time. The Hybrid approach creates a larger window of time for risk, but the potential magnitude is reduced.
Yes, I started mining zcash in 2018 and have been hoarding coins. Until March 12, 2020, all my zcash mortgages were liquidated. I have been following the forum since then. I didnāt sold a machine during the last bull market and always chose to hedge against the US dollar. I donāt believe in Bitcoin. I believe that zero-knowledge proofs can change the world!
