At this point, the results of the poll and the method of questioning appear to have become somewhat polarizing, and (maybe it’s an irrational fear, but) I don’t want to be in a situation where Jason’s “ZEC with Optional Cap option” is used and people who would otherwise support the amendment vote to reject the amendment because they were unhappy with the questions ZCAP was presented with.
So let’s move forward with the “Complex” option. My only comment is that the first question should be changed to read:
Do you support amending ZIP 1014 to give ZOMG a discretionary budget?
In the future, we should all do our part to explicitly state any non-standard terms of a poll from the outset so there’s no disagreement regarding how to interpret the results.
The poll has been opened, and I think we’ve done a good job of incorporating the feedback we’ve received from the community, including the feedback provided here on this topic.
@aquietinvestor: I want to thank you for putting in the effort to bring this proposal to the point where it could be presented to ZCAP for approval. Over the past year, plenty of people have expressed strong opinions about ZOMG, ZF and ZIP 1014, and offered advice about how ZIP 1014 should be changed. You’re the first person to actually put the effort into drafting a clearly-articulated proposal, and incorporating feedback from the community to refine and improve it. So genuine kudos to you for doing that.
The results are in and the overwhelming majority of ZCAP voters support amending ZIP 1014 to provide ZOMG a discretionary budget.
Do you support amending ZIP 1014 to provide the ZOMG Committee with a discretionary budget?
Yes
78
No
8
Abstain
10
Based on the results, it looks like the budget will be denominated in ZEC. I’ll wait for @Dodger to interpret the remaining details of the budget, cap, and floor as I don’t want to risk misinterpreting them.
Thank you to everyone who supported this initiative. This is a big win for ZOMG and the Zcash Community.
The ZCAP voted overwhelmingly in favour of amending ZIP 1014 to provide the ZOMG Committee with a discretionary budget.
Congratulations to @aquietinvestor on successfully proposing the first amendment to ZIP 1014! ZF will seek advice on the final wording of the amendment before formally adopting it.
ZCAP recommended that the budget denominated in ZEC rather than USD, with both a floor and a cap.
Using the “majority approval” approach previously described, and using the number of votes cast (96) as the denominator, the ZCAP recommends a budget of 3% of the ZOMG slice of the Dev Fund (approximately 3,156 ZEC), with a floor of $250,000 and a cap of $1,000,000.
While I have no strong opinion on this, I would like to add my personal interpretation of the results. This is all based on a simple majority preference (vs option with most votes but not a majority preference):
For Q5, those who vote for a low budget would prefer a lower budget among other options. Meanwhile, those who vote for a high cap would prefer a higher budget among other options. For example, if I vote for 1% budget it means I would prefer 3% budget compared to 10% budget. The majority of voters prefer 3% budget (30 for 1% + 21 for 3%) compared to 1%. 51 v 30
Q6 is a clear Yes/No question. 42 Y v 35 N
For Q7, majority of voters prefer $100,000 floor. 35 v 28
Q8 is a clear Yes/No question. 42 Y v 40 N
For Q9, similar to Q5, those who vote for a low cap would prefer a lower option, and vice versa. For example, if I vote for $1,000,000 cap it means I would prefer $500,000 compared to $100,000. As such, the majority of voters prefer $500,000 cap as 35 voters (14 for 100k + 9 for 250k + 12 for 500k) compared to $1,000,000. 35 v 24
So, the majority voice in this poll is:
ZCAP recommends a budget of 3% of the ZOMG slice of the Dev Fund (approximately 3,156 ZEC), with a floor of $100,000 and a cap of $500,000.
Notes: I disregard all abstain votes in counting the majority preference. I also understand I have no say in how ZF decides to interpret the poll.
I interpreted the “Abstain” option as “I am not voting on this question”, rather than “I am voting to be okay with any option”. The latter interpretation could be equivalently expressed by voting on the largest option, but only the former interpretation enables avoidance of conflicts of interest (which is what I interpreted the “Abstain” option to be enabling). As such, I also personally think that the “Abstain” votes should not be counted within the denominator of each question (and that the meaning of “Abstain” should be made explicitly clear for future polls; in particular, it was not mentioned in the ZF blog post where majority approval was described).
Thanks for your comment @str4d. Based on what you say above, how would the results for the questions related to the cap be interpreted where the number of “abstain” votes is inconsistent between the two questions? “Should there be a cap?” only had 14 “abstain” votes and “What should the cap be?” had 37 “abstain” votes.
A way around this in the future would be to consolidate the two related questions to ask:
Question: Should there be a cap? If so, what should it be?
$100,000
$250,000
$500,000
$1,000,000
No cap
Abstain
I 100% agree with this. We don’t want to be in a situation where ZF needs to hold another ZCAP poll to determine how to interpret the results of a ZCAP poll.
The fact that in every case (including question 2) there are no fewer abstentions for a sliding-scale question than there are for its gating yes-no question, indicates that at least some people interpreted “Abstain” as “I am not voting on this question”.
The fact that there are more abstentions for the precise numeric cap than there are for the presence of a cap at all, implies one or both of:
Some people felt it was okay to vote on the existence of a cap, but that it would be a conflict of interest to vote on the precise amount.
Some people interpreted “abstain” to mean “I am voting to be okay with any option”.
We unfortunately can’t distinguish these two cases, which means that anyone who voted “abstain” under the belief that it was equivalent to voting for the highest option, would have their vote effectively discarded if abstentions were discarded from question 9. However, not discarding abstentions means that anyone who voted “abstain” in order to declare a conflict of interest, is having their conflict of interest discarded (either because their conflict means they otherwise might have voted for a lower cap, or because their conflict means they would have voted for a maximal cap and their conflict-of-interest is effectively being ignored). I personally feel the latter is more important to avoid, hence my feeling that “Abstain” votes should not be counted.
However, we can be confident in not counting abstentions for the boolean existence-of-cap question, because it does not affect the outcome of those questions. There is no “sort order” to the boolean questions, and there are only two non-abstention options, so “I vote for what the majority decides” (including them in the denominator) is equivalent to “I am not voting on this question” (excluding them). In the case of question 8, it’s \frac{42}{96} > \frac{40}{96} vs \frac{42}{82} > \frac{40}{82}; same outcome either way.
(Speaking for myself as a ZCAP voter, not the Foundation.)
I had also interpreted the results differently to @Dodger.
But I’m not too concerned about the difference, because we can change the floor and cap at the next ZOMG election in a year’s time. And the new ZOMG know there was some ambiguity in the vote, so they can act accordingly.
I suggest that future ZCAP polls do not use “Abstain” as an option, because it is ambiguous for some questions. Instead, we should name options based on what they do.
So for all the questions (other than the ZOMG election) there would be:
No Answer (let other voters decide)
There would also be an extra option for the floor:
$0 (no floor)
And an extra option for the cap:
Full ZEC Value (no cap)
I also quite liked the Re-Open Nominations option for the Foundation Board. I’d like to see that in all our elections, so that the Foundation isn’t deciding if there are enough candidates before the poll even starts.
