ZEC Hldrs Group

Are there any ZEC holders out there with more than 10,000 ZEC interested in forming a group?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

The goal would be to form a group ideally comprising 20% - 30%+ of the circulating supply. The purpose of the group would be to ensure the ZEC holders are properly represented.

Some mechanism would need to be put in place to prove ownership at some point.

The group should be independent from ECC/foundation/grant recipients etc. as no one holder should have more than 1 voice if they already have a more formal role. No grant recipients would be allowed on the committee so as to avoid a conflict of interest.

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I like this idea. (Just for clarity I did not vote nor will I participate due to my role at ECC.)

Whoever is organizing this group will need to tackle a range of issues:

  • How to pick a threshold amount of ZEC. Why 10,000?
  • Does it matter how long someone has held ZEC or plans to?
  • Will participants be anonymous/pseudonymous or not?
  • If so, how can the group deal with Sybil attacks, or ensuring particpants aren’t in the excluded organizations?
  • If not, what kind of verification would be done by whom?
  • How will the group engage with the Zcash community? Will there be specific spokespeople?

I personally think this can be a useful group to set up even without perfect answers to all of those questions. Also, nothing would stop multiple groups from forming with different standards. The most important piece, IMO, is being transparent about the policies and in how the group engages with the rest of the Zcash community.

Im not sure how I feel about this concept. Its almost unionish. However in a privacy focus this could easily be a gov cyop to identify large independent holders to pressure them… Its a bulls eye for dark side money and influence. An anonymous voting based system would be still be better IMO.

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I think you can handle most of these issues with a simple protocol.
To vote, you would need to make a “semi-valid” transaction that:

  • has an anchor set to a cut off height,
  • put a fee that is equal to the minimum amount required
  • have valid zkp and signatures but with a sighash algorithm that guarantees rejection from the network.

For example, let’s say 1000 zec is needed for 1 vote, 10 000 zec would give you potentially 10 votes.
1 month before the vote takes place, you have to make sure you don’t move your coins

When the vote takes place, the organizer publishes a shielded address and set the anchor at height - 1 month.

To vote, you publish a tx with a fee of 1000 zec. It can’t be mined because of the modified sighash, but anyone can check in zk that the inputs are at least worth 1000 zec, they were not spent and they have at least 1 month of age. Once the vote is over, the organizers can publish the fvk for full transparency.

You can’t ban people from specific organizations or devfund recipients, but I don’t think they should since they are holders just like anyone else. However, the process is anonymous and prevents double voting.

5 Likes

10k is a placeholder. The amount can be adjusted depending on the level of interest. The idea is to give the people with the most to lose a voice. So anyone interested can vote and then we can decide where the cutoff holdings level is later.

No. I don’t see why it would matter how long someone has held ZEC. If it did, that would be a little bit like saying new immigrants into a country should not get a vote because they are new or someone who is dying should not get a vote because they wont be here tomorrow. And forcing a lock up would probably hurt more than it helps. The only downside could be someone buying coins to influence a large grant to themselves. Seems a little unlikely when all they have to do now is put people on the committees to vote for them, which is much cheaper.

I would imagine that ZEC holders would need to discuss topics anonymously. Then publish their views publicly as well as present their views to the Foundation, ECC, and grants committee. This group needs to be small enough that it can be effective and large enough to represent an meaningful % of the circulating supply.

Not sure who does verification. But I see other tokens, like Centrifuge who use 3rd party tools for voting. Seems like anything is better than what we have now.

I would invision the group interacts with the community initially as a type steering committee. I don’t see this as technology focused group that has any real input on how things get developed. But it would be expected to have a major impact on what gets developed from a broad top down category based perspective as well as on issues like the supply cap… So, not focused on individual projects; but very focused the types of projects and how projects are ultimately funded. A committee like this will take the guess work out of what ZEC holders want. How the group engages and by who or whom would be decided by the group.

I also think if we can get the voting solved for. Then this would be the way forward when voting for ECC/Foundation boards and grants committee boards.

2 Likes

I’d love to hear the topics/arguments this group wants to make. I hear in the channels that “those that HODL don’t have a voice” but never anything about what they want to say.

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Topics I would like the group to address and push for. Now most of these are already started. But there seems to be a lack of focus and commitment.

  1. Privacy everywhere and privacy by default. Focus on stablecoins, and ZSAs.

  2. Decentralized open ecosystem where a) developers can easily understand how they make money when building on top of the ZEC blockchain. and b) we move away from block rewards over time. ZEC becomes an L2 on the ZEC blockchain. ZEC is gas for the blockchain. Make it easy to build on; make it so easy and cost effective that it doesn’t make sense to fork; have some important tech as proprietary.

  3. Wallets - It’s hard to see how a wallet can be useful for mainstream useage unless it has an on and off ramp to a bank. Now, this is optional for the user. But, mainstream people will need it. Or even a card that can connected to existing infrastructure to spend the money or move it around freely. If there was a stablecoin, a user could even convert ZEC to a stablecoin inside the wallet and vice versa.

  4. Move to POS where ZEC holders can stake to earn income from L2 asset transactions.

  5. ZEC holders have a voice in how block rewards are used; but not direct gas fees generated by transactions. Reallocate funding to slow down marketing and speed up blockchain development. Slow transaction speeds, slow wallet syncing, unreliable wallets, high volatility of ZEC make it very unlikely to attract and retain users. So these are the things to focus on. Not education, marketing, or advertising.

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