[ZIP 1005] ZIP proposal: ZCFS (Zcash Community Funding System)

Hey @sgp do you have some time to comment on this proposal? Your input (and Sarang’s if he wishes to chip in) is greatly appreciated.

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Thanks for this proposal!

Can you spell out for me and others unfamiliar with both systems how this ZCFS would differ from the current ZF Grants system?

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it will only require minor tweaks in order to support the spec. For example, the ability for someone else taking over a milestone if the original proposer disappears.

Basically, the infrastructure is already there. That’s the beauty of it.

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I like large parts of the governance side of this as the way of managing a pool of funds. Particularly the loose consensus and flexibility. But I have some questions about getting the pool of funds in the first place.

What wealth concentration is necessary in Zcash for this to be effective? I.e. for there to be anyone who would donate money.

Certainly, community funding works for Bitcoin. But we know there are a number of whales, not to mention devs who have enough money they never need to work again, supporting Bitcoin. Moreover, there are investors with deep positions where it is profitable for them to fund development and increase the price.

Is the same thing true in Monero? From the outside, it seems Monero also has deep pocketed whales.
Monero has a vibrant online community. Do we know how widely distributed the community funding sources are in Monero?

I feel these questions are important. Because maybe we have the right wealth distribution for this to work. On the other hand, maybe we look more like Grin which keeps begging for money and barely getting by. How do we know in advance?

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I think there are enough investment companies & whales around that have large stakes of Zcash and a lot of interest that Zcash has success. Recent examples are Placeholder, Amentum and for sure many others.

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@anon16456014

repeating myself and as my proposal changed to a new one with “opt-in” dev fee + other funding sources i still think your proposals and mine could/would be perfectly combined.

The current level of community donations to ZF Grants campaigns is a source of data, albeit a tentative one. For now, it doesn’t look like the Zcash community wants to kick in much for ecosystem projects. OTOH, it’s a new platform so low levels of activity are normal, and we’ll have a better sense of the response in a few months.

Speculation: If the funding dynamics of Zcash changed, the community at large might be more interested in contributing funds for development work and other projects. I suspect that the current attitude is something like, “You have all this money from the block rewards, so use it! We’re already funding you, and it’s your responsibility to pay for these projects.” I think that perspective is understandable, especially when coming from miners.

As @boxalex suggested, it’s possible that VC firms with ZEC positions would become interested in contributing to work that would increase the utility (and thus value) of Zcash, if there’s no ongoing funding stream that already handles that. Or they might write off the investment, it’s hard to say.

I don’t think donations / pledges will be enough to replace ECC’s current burn rate, though. Which is not to say that anyone has an obligation to sustain ECC’s staffing and spending levels, but it’s worth noting since the team does crucial work.

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Placeholder and a number of VCs have amassed some ZEC. But I think they are unwilling to invest. There is a free rider problem that rational actors who can choose where to put there money are sensitive to. Why would placeholder fund development when they could just buy zec and play chicken until someone else funds dev? In contrast, I think for Bitcoin people have their heart in it and have money. And for Monero the wealth of the whales may be mostly locked up in Monero, so they don’t have other options.

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You named it allready, first of all it’s a new platform, not much too interesting grant proposals either. Let’s say you add some boomers there in case it’s the only funding source like 100x more scalability, Bolt++, and and and, this would change a lot very fast.

That’s not just speculation, it’s common sense and logic and let’s just name it as it is. It’s exactly that what happenes currently. Let’s be honest. Why should someone donate a ZEC here and there when there are indeed several millions available per month from the FR? Just logical that there is not much icentive.

Both are possibilities that are valid. So is the opt-in mechanism that foundation supports. There is no garantee miners will opt-in either. Actually, just in my opinion, the chance that VC firms opt-in here and there for real attractive proposals is way higher than maybe the miner opt-in option. We don’t know, but in a combined option, donations + opt-in we could get out a bit more.
And as said above, if there are boomers on the road-map i could bet the VC firms are the first who buy first stakes of ZEC and than push the realization of game changers, innovations, and such…

I agree, we don’t know. Hence there is nothing wrong in exploring additionally non-promise breaking funding sources, hence we i would love to see this proposal to be combined with my opt-in voluntary funding + some other possible sources.

Fair enough. But the same goes for the only possible option for the foundation “opt-in” dev fee. You have 0 garantee any miner will opt-in.

Actually there is always a scenario why firms like placeholder or even bigger ones should/could be interested in financing a given innovation/upgrade/whatever. It’s pure profit mathematics. Would you maybe invest 5% of your holdings into something if you have a big chance you make a 20% profit out of it? Of course we would do because that’s how crypto investing works. Why did the first VC’s invest into Zcash company? Because they had a good chance to make a profit, right? Did they make a good profit, they did of course. Do they regret it? No way. There is a lot of incentive for VCs to push grants.

Actually thinking about it, i would add some more competive factor to the whole developement process.

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Yeah, this is definitely a significant concern. The miners could also hold the development team(s) hostage by withholding funding, for example if significant funds were going to proof-of-stake research, which miners would plausibly oppose. Relying on miners’ benevolence more than we already do is risky, although we might be able to tinker with the incentives more and come up with a resilient system.

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Very valid point in my opinion. Hence an additionally founding system like the grant donation platform in @anon16456014 proposal would be a more than good balance that there is no such chance.

Edit: Community and/or VC firms easly could push grants & proposals without being dependet on the mercy of asic miners and/or mining pools. Like switching to POS for example which could otherwise being embargoed by only opt-in funding. With @anon16456014 proposals there are enough options to counter every possible hostage to miners scenario.

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Hi, thanks for taking the time to use the ZIP format for this proposal!

I haven’t read this new revision yet. If you haven’t seen my Proposal authors, please read: Help making ZIPs, I recommend reading over it.

I intend to review your post and recommend next steps for the ZIP process sometime next week.

PS- I think the Author metadata in the ZIP markup fulfills my posts requests for an Advocate, so no need to change that for bureacracy’s sake.

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@nathan-at-least I pinged Dimitris on the chat. He said: “Yes, as the author of the ZIP, I could advocate for it. I have very limited availability though, as I’m shooting a film till the end of September. The proposal is very straightforward and self-explanatory though. I don’t see much effort required to advocate for it. I could answer a few questions if they arise here and there.”

Thoughts?

@daira and I made an initial review pass over this PreZIP. This is not a formal part of the proposal process (in particular, @daira is not acting in hir role as ZIP editor); this is just a joint comment between @daira and myself on the current state of the PreZIP.


This should probably say “with the reward’s structure”.

This is the only statement in the proposal specification that touches the consensus rules. This statement should be removed, making this ZIP orthogonal to the dev-fund. It would then be possible to accept this ZIP alongside any of the other dev-fund ZIPs.

The above statement appears to be reflected in [ZIP 1001] Final: ZIP proposal Keep the block distribution as initally defined. 90% to miners. If that proposal does not adequately reflect the intention of this statement, then a separate ZIP should be written to cover the desired consensus rule changes.

The ZCFS is not a protocol change.

This only restricts the Zcash Foundation, not any subsequent owner of the ZCFS. The intent for how ZCFS operation in particular is funded needs to be clear. See also the comments below.

“the proposer” is unspecified.

  • If it refers to a proposer of a ZCFS operation grant, then this step is completely unspecified. The specification should include details of how the transferral process occurs (when do other operators propose their grants, how are multiple proposals that get funded tie-broken, etc.) The fallback is also not specified (what happens if no ZCFS operation grant, whether from ZF or otherwise, is adequately funded?)
  • If it refers to the proposer of this ZIP proposal, then this is unacceptable in a ZIP (as it is saying that the ZIP proposer would by default gain complete control over the grants process).
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This proposal is to NOT have a dev fund at all, so the specification is very accurate actually :slight_smile:

Please read the proposal carefully. Reading the whole paragraph makes it clear. Quoting just this part is not accurate. The Foundation (or anyone who is funded instead) follows the same rules. Noone is funded by default. Each proposer needs to follow the same rules. It’s extremely simple, no tricks here.

It does. This proposal is not over-specified by design to not get red taped into oblivion. There is no fallback. If noone is funded, it means the community decided it doesn’t want to fund them. Proposers can then file new proposals if they wish. In the meantime, no development is happening. For this proposal, change of mindset is required. Noone is funded by default. The community decides. Decentralization at its purest form :slight_smile:

Please read the proposal once again carefully and let me know if you still have questions. I have extremely limited availability due to work but will try to answer questions as soon as possible.

No need to over complicate things. Simple rules, effective results :slight_smile:

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@mistfpga has already made that proposal, and I would recommend that proponents of having no issuance-based dev fund focus on that one. The rest of this proposal is, as we said, orthogonal to whether there is an issuance-based dev fund.

If your contention is that having no issuance-based dev fund, and creating the described ZCFS only make sense together as a unified proposal, then please include specific arguments for that contention in the Motivation section. (Personally, I can’t see why that would be the case.)

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This ZIP proposal is to be taken as is.

The 3 bullet points in the Motivation section clearly describe the motives :slight_smile:

I trust the community’s judgement. No matter the outcome, I will stand behind the community’s decision.

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Alright, pull request created! [ZIP draft] Zcash Community Funding System by sonyamann · Pull Request #271 · zcash/zips · GitHub

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This proposal has been published as ZIP 1005.

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Maybe the 20% fund should be used for ZCFS (Zcash Community Funding System) and not voluntary donation