What are your views on Crosslink? Do you have a preference for pure PoS or hybrid PoS/PoW (Crosslink).
ive been thinking about it a lot. while i was supportive of it before, i think now we need more time to do more reasearch and discussions in the community before rushing forward. if/wen Zcash updates to Crosslink then the hybrid would be better first as the transition has probably less risks. PoW works well for now as Zcash hashrate has seen growth to record levels and Tachyon could in next years help with scaling. i do think improving finality time is needed for Zcash in one way or another. staking is sth that is a nice bonus but i dont see it as necessary right now.
Assume for a moment Zcash goes for pure PoS and we therefore have to choose a new consensus algorithm. Do you think it is more important to support a high validator count so that home staking is possible, or is it more important to get automatic interoperability with other blockchains by choosing a standardized algorithm?
if it would go for pure PoS then algorithm that makes interoperability easier would make more sense. Near intents has shown there is demand for crosschain activity. validator count should be big and decentralized enough in that case but not every user should need to run their own node so delegating would be needed. a validator should be able to run from home and be run on a not state of the art computer. (depends a lot on the design choices tho). privacy and security should not be compromised by implementing this PoS.
What are your thoughts on ZSAs? More broadly what are your thoughts on making Zcash programmable by adding private smart contracts?
i would like to see ZSAs activate, but would also be fine if the wider community decides they are not needed right now. 1 thing i would ask everyone in that case: where would you feel safe holding your other assets other than ZEC? (digital assets onchain + offchain) for me right now there isnt a blockchain with good enough privacy and liquidity i would trust long term to hold my other assets. but ZSAs are also not only about monetary assets. think of tokens that help you to verify that you know something without revealing it. age verification in stores to buy not for kids stuff without leaking all your data would make sense and similar use cases that are there already today but leak and reveal too much information about people. (it should not be used to add verification to everything in the world).
programmability + smart contracts adds a lot of security problems as we have seen from many other chains with bugs and hacks - so its a double edged sword. i would like to see them one day, but the design would have to be bullet proof and each contract should have a provable(math) safety features in them if its possible to design them that way. a lot of research will be needed for this.
What are your views on layer 2s? Do you think Zcash needs a layer 2?
as long as most of the value moves and is stored on layer1 a layer2 can make sense for some specific use cases - but it needs to be as private and secure as possible. ofc there are some compromises with every layer2. Starkware people already are working on a proof of concept Zcash L2 so im interested to see how this experiment goes. https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/proposal-ztarknet-a-starknet-l2-for-zcash/52926 if devs, community and zodlers find it useful for new usecases and apps that are not feasible on current L1 then its worth to experiment. im open to L2s if no other way around.
Do you want to keep or get rid of the transparent pool?
for normal users and payments transparent pool makes less and less sense in 2025 unless you often send money between exchanges which dont support withdrawals and deposits with shielded addresses. some Zcash engineers have discussed that it would make chain simpler and free up time to improve shielded development. yes, transparent chain has some use cases for now but im not sure t2t transactions are needed in future when shielded adoption can replace it in most cases. but im open to change my views if there isnt a solution to some usecases that absolutely need 100% transparent payments. im happy most user facing wallets already are shielded by default and work quite well.
Do you think it is more important to focus on making ZEC a store-of-value or a means of payment?
thats a hard one. means of payment needs some kind of store of value and store of value is hard to achieve if theres no means of payment. both require each other. very little payments volume on Zcash would weaken the privacy. it has to be a fully working ecosystem with both. it aint perfect store of value yet also imo as value in last years has been very volatile over longer periods. its better to focus on means of payment atm as theres lots of work to do for merchant adoption.