ZSA Stablecoins and Network Upgrades

I tweeted this:
https://twitter.com/\_aristarchus_/status/1425504747201699841

Stablecoin issuers could potentially have some serious influence in future network upgrades. There are pros and cons that we should think about here.

edit: The most important influencers in network upgrade decisions would then be ZEC holders, the ECC and Foundation (trademark holders), and the stablecoin issuers.

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Is that influence any different than that of exchanges or institutions or orher ecosystem players that could hold a lot of value if successful and threaten to go elsewhere or only support a fork?

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I would say it’s a similar type of influence, but potentially a much greater magnitude since it’s more baked into the protocol than an exchange listing.

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I think this falls into the category of “a good, though unlikely, problem to have.”
The stablecoin operator has no special power on Zcash. They aren’t miners and they have no leverage over Zcash. Now, the holders of the stablecoin — zcash users — do have a voice and yes, that voice can be manipulated by the stablecoin operator. But for that to work, there has to be a large influx of actively engaged users in Zcash. I count that as a win and a problem we can deal with at the time. Since, again, they aren’t miners: the rest of the community could ignore them and fork safely.

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Valid concern, though I haven’t come across any Stablecoin issuer who has opposed a network upgrade. Instead they have been proactive about being compatible with the next upgrade as they know that’s where the users will be going(like Stablecorp developing on Algorand through test-net & USDC working with Solana with network upgrades).

Stablecoin issuers would sure have a voice towards any adversarial change that might affect their business model.

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Assuming they haven’t destroyed they means to spend the backing Zec then they can migrate. Otherwise its the pool lifetime issue which we haven’t really figured out yet.