Zcash Protocol Hangout, Dev Fund Edition

Community Collaborations protocol
21

Hi Josh,

Not meaning to be a dick, but I thought this was last Thursday? Was it meant to be yesterday? Any chace you could post a short update. Just so the community knows the ECC is still working on this. I want to keep this conversation going so I am asking now and not in a weeks time, id rather be proactive than moan. (but it does feel like I am moaning a lot).

The forums have stagnated a lot recently after a lot of involvement. I know the trademark is a big thing. If the trademark is going to be sorted out before the development fund decisions are made cant we just assume that it is sorted out in the best case.

If not, can we just use the proposals as they are (they all assume best case already) and have a discussion about what they would need to look like in ā€œworst caseā€.

And I still havenā€™t had an answer to my question as to which of the proposals were judged. I asked this question lots now, and it should be a simple answer.

I know you are a busy man, so maybe get the comms manager (is that short for community or communications) @hels or an intern to handle it?

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22

Thatā€™s correct.

We worked through ECC priorities for the next 6 months and made a few org changes within my team. We formed a communications team to handle various aspects of communications across different levels of engagement including corporate communications and models for community engagement. They are working out a plan.

We, as a company, also set direction for the next 6 months. Weā€™ll share more on that on our blog and a company livestream on the 28th. I did sit down with Leigh at Coindesk here at Devcon in Japan and outlined some of it to her - so you may see something posted there ahead of our post.

Iā€™m not sure what you mean exactly. This is our response to the proposals: An Update from ECC on the Initial Assessment of Community Proposals - Electric Coin Company

Are you looking for something else?

23

Hi,

That is really cool.

It would have been nice if you could have just dropped a short note to the forum explaining that though. Especially seeing as you were responding to me complaining about the lack of information and communication from the ECC.

I have asked this question several times, I even link to it in my above post. (the 10 day old one)

Yes, I am looking for an answer to the question regarding the proposals. ā€œWere the GitHub versions used to judge or was it the forum versions?ā€ - to me it seems the forum versions were used.

It may or may not make a difference to how the ECC perceives things, but it certainly makes a difference to any modifications I make to the proposals.

This is my original response to Hels, (21 days ago according to the forum software)

This also goes towards a number of other proposals I wrote, not just for myself but for other people.

In addition, the forum versions of these are different to the .rst files I submitted as pull requests. All of the links on the blog go to this forum. It is not a huge deal but, it caused real problems in the voice chat too, because I was looking at different versions to everyone else. (they were looking at the forum versions, I was using local copies and my .rstā€™s - thatā€™s what I double check, when I say ā€œlet me just checkā€ in the livestream.

So were these judged on the pull requests or on the forum posts? (you cannot edit a forum post after 2 months)



For a nicely formatted version of the pull requests, I have linked my merge requests, from my GitHub.

Should be (and is different to the actual pull request)

Then:

Should be (and is different to the actual pull request)

I am given credit for kekā€™s proposal, this is mentioned in the forum thread but not the .rst

notice is has the same header as

So why am I an advocate for one and not the other? @kek should have been on both. (I donā€™t mind I will advocate for them both. it is just confusing)

Thanks for your time.

24

Iā€™m doing the best that I can. The meetings concluded Thursday and I was on a flight to Japan early Sunday morning. We canā€™t communicate all things in realtime for various reasons.

Iā€™ll have to go back through all these links later, however, we did review versions saved in Git and I did review for differences. However, I didnā€™t look for changes in the advocates - sorry for any confusion there.

I did review the Git version of your proposal and our assessment hasnā€™t changed. If you believe there was a fundamental change to a proposal I missed and that would affect our position based on the framework provided, please let me know and Iā€™ll take another look.

Please note that I am in China for meetings this coming week and may be slow to respond.

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25

So am I.

I never said you were not.

maybe hire a comms manager or intern to interact with whats left of the community.

Cool. So you couldnā€™t communicate to anyone at all to post to the forums that the engagement you promised wouldnā€™t happen?

Why did that take 3 weeks to get that answer?

Wait, so a ZIP that says:
1 - the FR must end
2 - Any forced protocol donations would be considered a continuation of the FR

(because that is all it says)

Is not compatible with the vision of the ECC? Which part? maybe some more feedback would be useful?

What am I missing?

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26

I appreciate your engagement and questions. This tone feels off, however.

The framework is whether or not it provides funding in a manner consistent with our mission. We said that it doesnā€™t provide funding.

I also included an update at the bottom that recognized that we reviewed your changes.

Iā€™ve copied the full text here:

Proposal 2

ZIP Proposal ā€“ A genuine opt-in protocol level, development donation option

Advocate: mistfpga

Could ECC accept jobs from this fund while remaining true to our mission?

By design, this proposal does not provide funding for jobs.

Conclusion: ECC would wind down or pivot .

Update: The proposal was updated by the advocate to clarify and finalize language. Our initial conclusion has not changed.

27

I feel off key, that is probably why. It is not meant as a slight against you.

I understand this is a personal issue for you and that you are under a lot of stress at the moment, not to mention jetlagged and tired from meetings. so appreciate the time you take to respond to my posts.

you can stop reading here, there rest goes on for a bit. but addresses your point I quoted above in more detail.

More of my messages might start to sound off key, this is just simply how it goes. if I get banned I get banned. However I do not think you can find a more ardent supporter of the general community that is not involved with either the ECC or ZFND than me.

so lets just cut to brass tacks.

It is clear your heart and mind is in the right place, but you do not have the support/time to drive the engagement on the forum and do the stuff you are actually meant to be doing (like regulation and marketing). you need an assistant or 4.

It annoys me that the level of engagement on this forum from the ECC used to be high. now it is virtually nil.

The community managed to generate a lot of new buzz and some big names came to get involved (PL BT, sgp, etc) and where are they now? they havenā€™t even assigned even an intern to keep up to speed and keep community involvement going, why is that? (this is in no way a slight against the companies or people mentioned. it is not rhetorical either.)

Like I said before if the forums do not matter to the ECC please stop saying this is the primary means of communication.

I feel frustrated that there is no one you (as in you josh) can just say ā€œhey, let the forum know we wont be able to do that Thursday updateā€ (you did say you had already been talking about it that week - I even left it a week in case I got the wrong Thursday) - or say you forgot, why was there no one saying ā€œhey josh is out of town, we promised an update, but xyz, will keep you updated.ā€.

When the forums where given to the foundation the ECC said it would not remove them from the conversation, if anything it will allow them to communicate more. - this didnā€™t quite work out as planned.

the misattribution - I only pointed that out because it made me think you had seen the GitHub, but at the same time hadnā€™t - I understand mistakes happen.

Like I said it was no big deal if the wrong proposal was looked at, but 3 weeks for a simple response is not a timescale I can work with. The fact I had to throw a fit just to get an answer is really off putting.

I think the ECC is just pushing what is left of the community further away.

I really hope you understand where I am coming from with this. Sorry if I am being overly pushy and you have other things to do but I do give a shit, I do care and I know you do too. i fear that there wont be a community in 6 weeks. I/we have developed some quite cool stuff over the past year, there is a lot more to mist than me talking on a forum.

I guess I am just not forward thinking enough, or im too abrasive, i genuinely donā€™t know.

If this conversation is happening in other places, I will just bow out of the conversation now. I will keep with my proposals though, and I will uphold any commitments I have already made to the community.

take care.

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28

I naturally now have more questions, to the response given to my proposal by the ECC but is there any point in asking them? I mean who do I address them to? and will I get an answer.

If you remember from the protocol hangout people were hoping to adjust their proposals, maybe add or remove some. There has been no movement at all. The only person who has asked for movement on their proposal is me. I have asked several times, each time the foundation either has to step in to get the ECC to talk or it just gets ignored even if the foundation ask.

Would the ECC block this proposal with their 2-2 sign off (assuming it takes two parties to agree for a change to be made). This is nearly but not quite the status quo.

The proposal was meant to be a simple, yep. at block x it all stops. at block x+y we start a new form of dev fund or whatever.

The responses from the ECC that were posted seem very one dimensional, as in there is only one proposal that can pass. This conflicts with information given by the ECC.

So the feedback on the proposals is pretty useless, there is nothing I can do with that information.

I would like to say that @ttmariemia has posted some great stuff. but even then it is hard to get the engagement on the forum rather than somewhere else.

If this conversation is happening in other places, I will just bow out of the conversation now. I will keep with my proposals though, and I will uphold any commitments I have already made to the community.

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29

Thanks for the response Steve.

I have to head out for meetings but wanted to highlight a couple things quickly. Please circle back with me if I didnā€™t address your concern.

I donā€™t recall promising that I would provide an update immediately after the meetings this week. These are company planning sessions. A key topic for my team was community engagement, which we are in the process of addressing. That includes, but is not exclusive to, the forum. Where are we saying that the forum is the primary means of communication?

On the proposals, we have stated that we will honor the communityā€™s decision with the trademark. If the community determines it wonā€™t fund ECC, we have no intention of blocking that with the trademark agreement. Itā€™s the opposite! It simply means that we (ECC) have to wind down the company or pivot to something else that would allow us to pay the team for their work. There are a large number of proposals that could potentially support ECCā€™s ongoing development and support work.

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30

What is the progress of the negotiations between ECC and ZF after all this time?
Thatā€™s disappointingļ¼ To be honest, I used to visit this forum every day, but now I come here once a week.The atmosphere made me feel that Zcash was dying.

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31

Letā€™s fix it!

The trademark agreement is very close to done.

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32

Sure, here:

I read that as on Thursday you would be engaging with the community. - I guess you could read it that you set aside Thursday to talk internally about it. to me the wording would seem clumsy if that was the intent. (not having a go, just saying that is why I read it the other way)

Okay that sort of answers my question but doesnā€™t at the same time. The company can accept that proposal and another one that doesnā€™t wind down and pivot. but this is getting circular so I will leave it we both have better things to be doing. I think we understand each other.

Not the primary, you do also say GitHub too.

Seeing as this is the protocol section and I dont want to fill this post up with lots of quotes, please check zip 0. and search for forum.

Here are few quotes from zip 0

Then you have zooko on twitter asking people to add proposals to the forum so they can be discussed. (The person came to me asking me to write their proposal and saying zooko told them to put it on the forum when they suggested it on twitter. I have not seen the twitter conversation)

And old post from zooko

I really donā€™t have time to find more examples but There are plenty out there.

There are some threads in the meta category about it. (there is 10 threads total in meta)

From the website

I am on the community governance panel so i feel i should keep abreast of what is going on regarding the proposals I will have to vote on. If that is other places than the forum and github, where are they?

I do not have time to follow all the other places. I need to eat and pay bills too.

Thinking about it, if the forum and GitHub are not the primary places for official engagement from the ECC, where is.?

(I wrote my last two posts between midnight and 2 am, I was up again at 6 for work. It is now 10:30 and I still have a full day of work ahead. this is what I mean when I said we both had better things to do. I wasnā€™t being passive aggressive.)

Cheers,

Steve

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33

We met internally and established a plan. Thatā€™s the disconnect.

ECC uses its blog, ECCs Twitter and Blockfolio for official comms.

Sometimes we announce things on the forum to help facilitate community engagement and discussion. We use git for engagement around protocol dev, zips, etc. We also engage on the community chat, Telegram and sometimes other places but less frequently (LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit, etc).

I agree that itā€™s confusing.

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34

Fair enough. my mistake then.

Okay, but they are more announcements. I was talking about interactive communication. where does that happen? I mean what platforms does the ECC officially commit to publicly hold two way conversations on?

Yes very. It never used to be though, and the point of the foundation taking over the forums was to allow more discussion from the ECC not less. idk.

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35

@mistfpga thank you for expressing your concerns with determination and humility. I think this is how community and decentralized governance is strengthened.

@joshs thank you for also responding to @mistfpga with fairness and as much diligence as you could afford.

I guess Iā€™ll start with where Iā€™m atā€¦ beyond some intital exchanges with @zooko (and I thank you again for that :zebra:) I have had some silence from ECC. This is discouraging more than anything and @mistfpga Iā€™m guessing you and I share in that sentimentā€¦

That being said, I donā€™t think this is a @zooko or @joshs problem, but a challenge of decentralized governance ( which is in progress, in testing and needs some ideation/ iteration as can be seen from this thread). We want decentralization, but who/whom is/are appointed to drive this very task? Maybe itā€™s just not a priority right now, thatā€™s okay, but then when will it be?

I am not satisfied with official publications as the primary source of communication by the ECC- thatā€™s not decentralized at all- It feels like the wall shared by the Amazonā€™s, the Googleā€™s, the Facebookā€™sā€¦ As a community member, my reward is not in dollars (or ZECā€™s) but in the recognition that ZFND and ECC are listening.

So what to do? Walls exist because CEOā€™s and VPā€™s canā€™t be everywhere at once and be pulled in a million directions and respond to everything. Thatā€™s not productive, and, to me, itā€™s also undesirable.

But it sounds like a bridge between ECC and ZFND and the Zcashers needs to be built. But what kind of bridge? What does it look like? How does it work? Who maintains it?

@mistfpga suggested a rep on the ECC side, similar to @sonya. This is a viable solution, but for that to work, ECC has to want to build that bridge, and they have bake-in time, money, and effort to make it work (I.e review the forum, consider Zcashersā€™ thoughts, and then build trust in that elected rep to respond on behalf of ECC) and, again, that just may not be a priority right now.

And there are other options tooā€¦

ECC can commit to being more vocal, either as an entity or as individuals responding directly to the community in their area of interest / expertiseā€¦

Or, simply. ECC can tell us, the community, what model they want to pursue, so that we (as a community) can have clear expectations of one another.

I will say however, that I do know that Zooko (canā€™t speak on behalf of ECC since Iā€™m limited in my acquaintance with all members) wants to give the community its freedom to choose what it wants to do with Zcash. And I really respect this, but I do disagree with the sentiment (somewhat).

I want ECC to be more involved, and I think that as a whole community (ECC included) we need to decide on some things together.

Where Iā€™m standing (aka as a newbie) beyond the ground-breaking, industry-setting tech, I fell in love with Zcash because for-once it felt like it was accessible to a random person like meā€¦and if I worked hard, read a lot, listened to podcasts, and took time to write something and publish it here- then could even be a part of it too.

So, what should I / can I expect?
Have I overstepped a boundary?
Am I asking for too much?
How should we move forward?
All these questions, Iā€™m open to your honest response.

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36

Hi there!

Iā€™m chiming in so that @joshs isnā€™t the lone ECC voice on this thread. Iā€™ll start by expressing deep gratitude to community members like @mistfpga and @ttmariemia - your love for and dedication to Zcash is inspiring.

I know the silence can be deafening especially in moments of uncertainly like the one our community is currently in. Iā€™ve only been with the team for four weeks and I can tell you that community engagement is a priority that comes up daily. Thereā€™s more I want to do in addition to the weekly updates (alternating between community/ engineering), but it will take me some time just to get my Z legs (:grin:).

@ttmariemia to your questions

  • ā€œWhat should I expect?ā€ Expect updates from me every week and feel free to reach out! Iā€™m a newbie too.
  • ā€œOverstepped a boundary?ā€ No, your comments were thoughtful and respectful.
  • ā€œAm I asking for too much?ā€ Are you asking for ECC to be more involved? I will check this forum more regularly, and responding when appropriate.
  • ā€œHow should we move forward?ā€ Baby steps is my favorite way to go but Iā€™m open to other approaches. Bridges take time to build, especially if theyā€™re going to last!
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37

Hey Elena! Welcome and congrats! :zebra: Z legs :zebra:, love it, seriously the terminology for Zcash is unlimited in possibility - just like the opportunities held within Zcashers, ZFND, and the ECC.

I know that this time of uncertainty must be stressful for everyone, and especially for ECC members, but I do see this moment a sign of strength and a pivotal opportunity for Zcash.

I hope that the ECC seesā€™ this as a proof-point: the community cares. Weā€™re here. We have a voice. Most of us love Zcash. Some of us want to see it fail - a good thing- as those members are best at highlighting our weaknesses :wink: .

When you say, ā€œAre you asking for ECC to be more involved?ā€ my answer is: yes and no.

I want ECCā€™s specialists to have the time, space, and silence to focus on the technology that gives Zcash its edge. However, there has been a shared sentiment (by the community, by ZFND, and by the ECC) that Zcash needs to move towards decentralization, in this, I would like to see more involvement from the ECC. Otherwise, weā€™re all in our separate silos and playing into traditional inefficiencies.

This is a shame when we have a unique opportunity to rewrite the book on governance and become industry-setters for how decentralized governance is to be created and maintained.

In other words, Iā€™m selfish. Not only do I want us to have the most widely adopted crypto, the most technologically-advanced blockchain, but also have the most forward-thinking and functioning decentralized governance.

For Zcash, I hold tech and governance with equal importance, at this stage of development.

This is the gap: not so much in terms of updates, but in terms of intentionality towards decentralization. (although I still do love updates!)

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38

I wonder what people mean when they say for ā€˜ECC to be more involvedā€™ ?

ECCs ā€˜official positionā€™ can only come from their updates, theyā€™re a company so have a process for releasing information & thatā€™s just fine - weā€™re familiar with their regular updates & they seem to be getting better. More detail is always good but not always possible.

The opinions of ā€˜ECC staffā€™ are different - as individuals they seem free to say/think/post whatever they want BUT canā€™t be expected to speak for ECC. Scroll back on the devfund thread & youā€™ll see theyā€™re careful to separate their opinions from the company.

I enjoy reading posts from our ā€˜deep thinkersā€™ & itā€™d be nice if they hung out here more often, but Iā€™m sure they have more productive things to do with their time.

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39

Just stick around a while ok? ; )

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40

I want the Electric Coin Company to have official two way conversations via an appointed representative of the ECC. - This person should also be able to distil down the issues then tag the relevant ECC people who can pick up and officially answer a question.

That is what I specifically mean when I say I want the ECC more involved.

Regarding that of the employees of the company:

I also want the ECC staff to be able to express their opinions and not fear for repercussions.

Still waiting for an official answer to what public, official means of two way communication the ECC endorses for communication with the community

Up until two days ago I would have said Zcash forums and GitHub. Now, I am not sure if it is either.

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