ZIP Proposal - 8-15% Opt-in or 4-7.5% Mandatory Protocol development donation option for 75% Zcash Foundation 25% ECC
The idea behind this proposal is to ensure continued funding for developement of Zcash and creating a more efficient, fair, transparent way how fund are used.
Introduction:
In 2020, when the Founders Reward of current 20% of the Blockreward expires Zcash won’t be fully developed and continued funding to ensure further development is needed.
My personal opinion is that just and only agreeing to a given % is not enough but some fundamental changes in the dev fee compared to the current founders reward should take place to ensure a way better distribution toward developement, more transpareny, more community agreement on what funds are used, more efficient way of fund distribution as well as enforcing the Zcash Foundation strength.
Proposed Changes compared with the current founders reward:
- The Zcash Foundation will be the main recepient of the Opt-in Protocol developement fee donation option with 75%, the ECC should receive 25% .
- The development fee should be Opt-in and no longer mandatory.
- The dev fee should be 8-15% Opt-in or 4-7.5% Mandatory instead of the current 20% founders reward.
- The Zcash foundation, as the community representative should than distribute funds upon needs.
- The Zcash foundation should continue to implent a system designed to include the community into taking important decisions, be it prioritizing given development targets or other associated with the distribution of the funds generated through the opt-in development fee.
Rational why the Zash Foundation should be the recepient for the new dev fee:
-
The foundation is a non-profit organization, while the ECC is a for-profit company.
-
The foundation does not have the pressure to generate a profit and/or associated with this costs for management, bonuses, etc…
-
With the foundation in charge of the funds distribution the community itself should have more influence on how much for what should be spent while at the current founders reward this option is more than limited. Having in mind that we talk in general (in most other proposals as well of fees, no matter they are mandatory/opt-in) about funds from the community, here from the miner community, it should be just fair that the community has some influence and hearing.
-
In my opinion the ECC and the current founders reward are too much compromised allready to make it a thrustworthy solution if the ECC is the direct recepient of the dev fee for the following reasons:
a.) Allready a very unfair designed founders reward which last priority is development. Hence we got allready into periods with a deficit.
b.) The founders reward is not handled transparent enough. Making the Zcash Foundation the recepient i think we can await way more transparency.
c.) The foundation is not compromised with an ongoing law suite which again refers to the distibution of the founders reward, or part of it.
d.) The foundation can concentrate ONLY on Zcash as it has no other duties than that, while the ECC, management, advisors, whoever are or could be involved in other projects as well.
e.) With a huge founders reward in place the product Zcash isn’t even nearly finished neither enough funds have reserved to ensure this (or we wouldn’t all write proposals!). This seems to be the result to a wrong designed founders reward distribution and/or internal company burdens/restrictions/design/whatever. Whatever it is, funding from the dev fee should not directly directed to the company but channeled through the foundation with an hopefully more responsible and developement oriented distribution.
Rational why the new dev fee should be 8-15% Opt-in or 4-7.5% Mandatory:
-
Currently the founders reward is 20%, but not the whole is going to development, actually only a small part of it seems to be directly used for development.
-
The initial founders reward has/had to reward early investors, investors, advisors and who knows who else. Early investors have been paid-off allready and with he foundation in charge there is no more need for several “side expense” which take a bigger part of the current founders reward, for example but not limited to advisors…
-
The Foundation, if in charge of 75% of the dev fund, could outsource lower level tech tasks and doesn’t have to use high paid and high qualified tech personal to due lower tech tasks. The ECC would receive 25% of the new dev fund, no matter if the final decision is to be mandatory or opt-in.
-
With a bit less funds efficiency should be motivated which doesn’t seem to be currently really a priority. I’am even not sure if a 8-15% Opt-in or 4-7.5% Mandatory dev fund to the foundation would result in less funds at all, there is a good chance there will be more funds available
Rational behind opt-in instead of mandatory:
- Simple just not breaking the initial setup of 90% go to miners. With Opt-in thrust is build and no promise broken while leaving the door open to have the community with this proposal and other funding stream generating proposals outside block reward distribution/fees having enough funds to to keep Zcash an ongoing developed project.
Rational behind Mandatory instead of Opt-in:
- Again simple and it’s a trade-off. A promise versus ensured development. An opt-in Dev fee does not 100% garantee enough funds may be raised/donated by the miners, hence an optional variant of this proposal with Mandatory dev fee but lower percentage.
Zcash development:
My personal opinion is that there is little to no doubt that at the ECC is a great team of developers, engineers and other very talented staff.
Just because the proposal here targets the Zcash Foundation as the recepient doesn’t mean the ECC shouldn’t continue to develop features for Zcash. The Foundation can still asign work & task to ECC and/or make grants in which the ECC can apply, just as an example.
Means there is a more than big chance that the ECC is to continue most of the work that has or should be done, just the money flow, transparency and expenses are changing.
This should naturally even lead to a more competive & efficient development for Zcash in the long run.
Sidenote:
As i personally have no idea how to create a ZIP. I as well lack the full technical understanding how what exactly could and should be modified i leave these parts to other community members or the foundation to make it a valid ZIP proposal in time.
These are the base ideas i have towards a possible dev fee.
Edit: This proposals has been updated after i got aware that the foundation does NOT want to be the sole recepient. The change consists of 75% opt-in or mandatory dev fee go directly to the foundation, 25% go to the ECC.
With these changes ALL 3 main points of the Foundations "to be supported requrements are meat!
The Foundation would only support proposals that:
a) don’t rely on the Foundation being a single gatekeeper of funds
b) don’t change the upper bound of ZEC supply
and
c) have some kind of opt in mechanism for choosing to disburse funds (from miners and/or users)
