I don’t think these huge Chinese farms will be in a hurry to donate money. I will probably not still be mining next October.
I don’t think miners should fully control funding streams, but they are important stakeholders so should have influence.
Careful thought on the minimum & maximum amount they can send to each stream may address that.
Further idea - could some of the streams be multisig (not sure if thats even a thing) ? They could collect funds which can only be spent if parties (Zfnd + ???) agree. Maybe as a default address where remaining reward goes after the miners have made their choices, or perhaps have several & split the remainder between them.
(Edit: Fixed spolling mistakes :-))
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I’ve started a new thread pertaining to the modified version of this proposal to keep the topics easier to follow
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Depends on whether they’re thinking short-term or long-term. Their ability to profit from mining Zcash is contingent on Zcash being a going concern, which is contingent on ongoing research and development.
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I second the concerns of @ChileBob. This proposal gives 100% of the power over funding streams to the miners, and zec holders would have no say at all over what happens with the funding streams.
In my opinion both zec holders and miners should have some influence.
I think this is a significant flaw especially because miners’ incentives may not be the same as the long term term best interest of the whole zec community.
I really like the structure of this proposal, and would favor a similar proposal that gave miners control over a percentage of the funding but definitely not all of the funding. I would support this proposal 100% if Zcash were a proof of stake coin, but the way things are now there are a lot of zec holders who don’t mine, but ought to have some say in the zec development funding.
@amiller would you consider modifying this proposal so that miners control some percentage of the funding stream and the rest of the funding is fixed?
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In principle the more successful we are at getting clear signals from coin holders via coinholder petition or other mechanisms, the more that sounds appealing. Even then, coinholders are not necessarily representative of users making z payments but not holding a large balance, or activist volunteers who’ve contributed time. Also, coinholders who are able to sell quickly are the least affected by bad decisions that lead to lower price anyway. 
Also, regardless, coinholders still get a say due to the ease of exiting or threatening to exit and the ability to hard fork later if necessary. What’s at stake is whether they get access to the low friction fine grained mechanism here
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Ideally coin holders who vote would time lock their coins in order to ensure that their incentives are long term aligned with the rest of the zec community. In reality of course this adds complexity and would take time to carefully implement.
I really like the way your proposal is fine grained and allows dynamical governance decisions, but what about organizations needing to make plans months and years in advance?
Also I agree it would be ideal if users (who are not large zec holders) and activist volunteers had some say in this, not sure the best way to do that…
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My initial response to this approach was positive, except for the issue about miners getting an effective veto over proof-of-stake or anything else that devalues their ASICs.
But on second thought: what do we know about current miners’ outlook on other matters? On any matter at all?
Is anyone here a large ASIC miner? Has anyone here ever talked to one? What do we know of their appreciation of our technology, our values, or Zcash’s success on a timescale beyond the depreciation of their equipment? Are we really going to entrust Zcash’s long-term future to a group of people who have never expressed their opinion on any of our public channels?
Yes, there are severe culture and language barriers. Some here have tried to cross these, and failed. None the less:
For all I know, the large ASIC miners may be secretly admiring Zcash’s values and technical excellence, or they may secretly think that it’s a waste of money to work on improved usability, security and functionality that will bear fruit in the long term, when the money could have been spent on short-sighted publicity stunts. Blindly entrusting Zcash’s future to a secret cabal may not be the best idea.
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This is a good point. We have far less contact with miners than we do with other parts fo the community. That said, there is at least one ASIC miner at Zcon1 (I had lunch with him), and Nishant Sharma from Bitmain is here too. It’d be good to get his thoughts on the lay of the land and miners’ mentality.
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Not to mention that switching to proof of stake may be the best option for the future of ZEC (and the environment). I can’t imagine miners liking that. Any option that allows miners to effectively hold protocol designers to ransom, seems like a bad idea to me.
Disclosure of interest: I am a Founders’ Reward recipient (and protocol designer).
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What do you mean by miners holding protocol designers for ransom? If the software allows them to do it, that should be fine, right?
Agreed that miners may not like proof-of-stake but while we are on proof-of-work, it makes sense for us (community) to think about these dev fund proposals for now.
I think ‘may not like’ is an understatement, it’d be a huge threat to their business & there are some huge pools out there.
They’re important players (right now) so should have influence, but not total control - the top three pools could effectively de-fund anything they saw as a threat.
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They don’t have total control because they are not writing software 
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True - but the pools would be the ones choosing what percentage to send to which fund (within whatever the consensus limits are)… hence, power & control.
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Just ouf of curiousity, currently the 20% of the Founders Reward at current exchange rate generates nearly $5,000,000 per month.
On Zcon it’s stated that the ECC needs about $1,000,000, mainly for saleries/wages.
What’s the rational behind a proposal offering about 5x more than what’s needed?
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Keep in mind any extension would be implemented after the Halving, so the number of ZEC per month would be 50% less.
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The number of ZEC would indeed be 50% less, but many think the halving will lead to a price increase which could balance the “halving-funding-effect”…
Still doesn’t answer my question even if we count in the halving and take $2.5M at current exchange rate why someone would make a proposal after $1M are actually needed.
Just looking/asking for a rational explaination for this, nothing more, nothing less…
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No. The purpose of mining is to get transactions into blocks. Any political power that miners have is a side effect of that, and shouldn’t enable any veto over protocol changes (including alternative ways of getting transactions into blocks).
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When Dev Funding ends October 2020, the ASIC miners will drive a centralized influence on Zcash. With only ASIC mining and No Dev fund coming off the top, Zcash will experience a more centralized nature than any time before.
Daniel Feher taught us at Zcon1 GPU mining encourages decentralization of wealth. ASIC Mining We learnt will increase resistance against a 51% attack. GPU.
I like the consensus idea for development funding in this proposal, but if I am not able to justify the Low Return of Investment on ASIC miners I will not be able to participate in that consensus for development.
Flaws I see here are the investor not having any say in the development funding first and foremost. 2nd is the current miners turning off their mining rigs if the profitability gets any lower and that will slow down mass adoption.
Thanks for the information