Thanks Holmes for your detailed response, a lot of this makes sense to me, I really like the idea of ZOMG being able to employ a security expert to review work that is being carried out (and to potentially help probe applications).
And I think giving ZOMG the flexibility to hire additional roles if needed would be a good thing too, especially to protect the function in the event of unforseen turmoil in ZF.
This has definitely helped me to see where this funding could be used effectively.
P.S. thanks for your efforts in year one of ZOMG, I hope we continue to see you around these parts!
I don’t think ZOMG comp should factor into the amount for now, if there is a decision in the future to pay ZOMG committee members directly from the budget I’d definitely be in favour of increasing the budget by the appropriate amount when that happens.
And thanks ML for your work this year too, the whitepaper was a work of art! I also hope we continue to see you participate in the community.
The poll results are in and Jason’s “ZEC option with optional cap” has the highest percentage of votes with 40%.
Despite the results, @Dodger indicated to me via email yesterday that if there is no “clear majority” (i.e. 50%+), he plans to present his “Complex” option to ZCAP when the Helios poll convenes on December 20. A couple points on the “clear majority” standard:
Dodger said nothing about the “clear majority” standard when we agreed to post the forum poll to decide the questions to ask ZCAP. He brought it up one day before the poll closed.
Presenting three options in a poll makes it difficult to achieve a clear majority (i.e. 50%+).
The “Complex” option only received 35% of votes. Jason’s “ZEC with Optional Cap option” received 40% of the votes, and the “Simple” option received 25% of votes. So, 65% of respondents prefer a method of questioning simpler than the “Complex” option. Therefore, presenting the “Complex” option to ZCAP is not supported by the results of the poll.
Thoughts?
If Dodger decides to disregard the results of the poll and go forward with the “Complex” option, I recommend he change the first question from:
Should ZOMG have a discretionary budget?
To:
Do you support amending ZIP 1014 to give ZOMG a discretionary budget?
His question currently does not mention “amending ZIP 1014,” and I believe it should be explicitly stated. If ZCAP votes in favor of the discretionary budget, I want to avoid a situation where an accidental omission leads to unnecessary delays.
Edit: I’m just posting this so everyone is aware of what transpired. If this is how polls work in the Zcash community, then I accept the results.
The difference between Jason’s option and the complex option is a mere 2 votes. Imo that’s too small a difference to decide to go with the simpler of the two options. Safer to poll the ZCAP with the more complex option to get a better picture of the community’s desires.
Plus the ZCAP constitutes competent individuals who can handle the more complex option, which imo isn’t complex at all, it just offers more questions to paint a clearer picture. (And I believe you were advocating for more transparency, right?)
I’m sorry, what? This has nothing to do with transparency. It’s a poll, the results are objective. I ran a transparent process throughout. Your comment is unnecessary and inappropriate.
I’m not making a big deal about this. Again, I’m just posting this so everyone is aware of what transpired. If this is how polls work in the Zcash community, then I accept the results.
I’m sorry if my post offends you, though I don’t understand how it would… I’m saying based on the results of the recent poll, asking more questions to the ZCAP would paint a clearer picture of the community’s desires - which in my view amounts to increased transparency on community’s wishes.
And to be clear, all comments I make on this forum are my own opinions, coming strictly from the place of being a years-long zodler.
I’m in support of polling the ZCAP for this but I have to say, agreeing to poll the community forums, not being clear about the requirements, and then making an arbitrary decision against the outcome of the community poll is not a good look on the ZF’s part as gatekeepers of ZCAP polling.
Also, thank you to Jason for being patient and navigating the murky waters of zip amendments. I certainly did not expect so much effort and debate would be necessary to present a question to the ZCAP in the beginning of this.
I want to apologize for calling @anon35140610’s comment unnecessary and inappropriate. Admittedly, I was being oversensitive.
I think that the process I ran over the past months has been very transparent, and if there’s any areas I can improve, please let me know. Regarding ZCAP, we had a 10-day comment period and a poll with results in my favor. I may be wrong about this, but in my opinion, there is nothing wrong with putting forward a (relatively) concrete plan to ZCAP to vote on. My personal belief is that’s not an issue of transparency, but maybe I’m thinking about it incorrectly.
As @wobbzz pointed out, this is the first time a ZIP Amendment is being proposed and there is no defined process, so I will do a better job reminding myself that things might not go as smoothly as I’d like.
No biggie. I can empathize with your sensitivity given all the work you’ve put into this
(Also, I’m not saying your process was not transparent. I’m saying based on the results of the recent poll, the “complex” option would render a clearer picture of the community’s wishes.)
This effort will definitely be looked back on as a reference for future amendments and will probably serve as a rough framework for someone in the future.
As an outsider, to me this looks like yet more heavy-handedness with little respect for the principles of decentralization. The future does not look bright. Somebody, fix this.
Here’s the thing, that poll isn’t complex at all. I find it fairly insulting actually, to the ZCAP, to call it a complex poll. It’s only complex relative to the other two options. The questions are straightforward and easy to answer. Through answering those questions, all the questions in the other poll options are also accommodated.
I also really want to emphasize that opinions in here are 100% my own. So any questions directed at ZF, I will refrain from answering as I’d like to limit my contribution in here to that of a community member who simply cares for the future of Zcash and financial privacy.
Just reversing the logic in one of your bullet points, I think it’s as persuasive as the original statement (quote below):
The “Simple” option only received 25% of votes. Jason’s “ZEC with Optional Cap option” received 40% of the votes, and the “Complex” option received 35% of votes. So, 75% of respondents prefer a method of questioning more complex than the “Simple” option. Therefore, presenting the “Simple” option to ZCAP is not supported by the results of the poll
For my opinion on this, it’s difficult to interpret the results of a poll with 40 responses and 3 questions. The results were:
Simple: 25% (10 votes)
Jason: 40% (16 votes)
Complex: 35% (14 votes)
It was very close, and I prefer the approach to err on the side of caution and present some more questions to the ZCAP to get their sentiment, more data is good right?
I think Dodger did mention something like this in advance, saying if there was no clear majority we may go for another close option if it made sense, and I think this does make sense (to me). I’m not sure if that was a post or on one of the recent streams.
Also I’d like to add that naming one of the options “Jason’s…” was unfortunate as it could have led to the impression that it was Jason’s preferred option and we could have had people selecting that option due more to wanting to support Jason. I know Jason made it clear in places that this wasn’t his preference but not everyone would have known that.
I get that this has been a drawn out process and I appreciate the effort everyone has put in, this will improve the Zcash governance processes going forward.
Where? I don’t see that in this thread, and I don’t believe there are any other threads. I don’t recall him saying that, but, sure, there’s always a chance that I missed something.
At the end of the day, I want ZCAP to be polled and I want the amendment approved because I genuinely believe this will help make ZOMG more effective. The exact method of questioning doesn’t matter; I generally just prefer more streamlined methods.
The more important issue is that in the “Complex” option the first question doesn’t mention “amending ZIP 1014.” I think that should be explicitly stated to ZCAP and hope @Dodger will change the question from:
Should ZOMG have a discretionary budget?
To:
Do you support amending ZIP 1014 to give ZOMG a discretionary budget?
Why are we debating which survey to send? Can’t we just send all 3?
Most surveys I participate in at my day job ask the same question about 3 times anyways all worded slightly differently to cater for different interpretations. If we end up with conflicting results we can debate which word(s) made the difference then.
First off, I want to express my appreciation to @aquietinvestor here for his hard work and persistence in moving forward with the proposed changes to ZIP 1014-1.
But I’m pretty concerned about how this has all played out, and I’m alarmed at the message that @Dodger is sending to the community by effectively overriding the results of the community poll.
For what its worth, I happen to agree with @Dodger and @anon35140610 that the more complex option is a better choice to send to ZCAP - gives more flexibility and discretion in the hands of ZCAP, who are (I hope) an intelligent and well intentioned group of people capable of weighing the full array of options and making reasoned choices.
I understand that this isn’t a democracy per se, but it strikes me as deeply unfair to effectively toss out the poll results after the desired/optimal result wasn’t obtained based on ex-post facto reasoning about “lacking a clear majority”. We had a slim, but nevertheless clear plurality in favor of a somewhat simplified array of choice. I’ve never heard of any functional system that defaults to the preferences of some other entity barring the selection of some kind of catastrophically bad or destructive outcome. And to be clear, while I believe that the simplified option is sub-optimal, it was what was selected by the terms of the poll, and it is a reasonable choice that reasonable people can disagree on. Yes, you can make the case that the implied preference of the poll is towards more complexity rather than less, but the poll was not designed to capture that and as such I don’t think that this necessarily is in fact what most voters intended to convey. For all we know, the second choice of people who voted for Jason’s modified version may have preferred the simple option over the most complex.
I just want to point out as someone who thinks highly of and favorably towards the motivations of everyone involved here, that this is not at all a good look. I think if polls like this are going to be constructed with the input/blessing of ZF, the results should be respected, even if they are not exactly what we want and are chosen by plurality rather than clear majority. If the majority of governance decisions were held to the standard of “decisive majority” very little would ever actually get done.
Ranked choice voted could potentially solve this problem. Not sure how practical that is going forward or what discussions there have been on this in the past.
