Is there a specific question you’d like me to address?
I think it’s good for the community to (independently) discuss the challenges that Zcash faces, and come up with ideas and solutions. I don’t think it’s necessary for me to participate in every discussion, and I think it could be somewhat counter-productive, as I might (inadvertently) skew the conversation in a direction that means we don’t get the full benefit of the diversity of thought and ideas that the community can come up with.
For the record, I agree with the statement “Zcash is stale”. I believe Zcash needs more that just the ability to send private payments if it’s to attract users from the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
That’s why I’ve been a long-time supporter of getting ZSAs rolled out ASAP (and rolling out atomic swaps functionality as soon as possible afterwards).
That’s also why I’m a major proponent of adding programmability to Zcash. FYI, earlier this year, ZF gave a grant to @therealyingtong and @LeCryptoMath to research what different paths exist to adding privacy-preserving programmability to Zcash. I recommend watching their Zcon4 presentation.
ZSAs will be the first significant enhancement to Zcash’s core functionality since the deployment of Sapling made it possible to use Zcash on mobile devices. Adding the ability to atomically swap those assets on-chain will turn Zcash into a settlement layer for DEXs. The next ingredient will be to make it easier to bridge assets from other chains onto Zcash, and moving to a consensus protocol that enables finality is an important factor there.
All of this requires a solid technical/infrastructural foundation, which is why we’re building Zebra.