You pretty much described early adopters. Those folks are it. They are what drives adoption at the stage of the product cycle we’re in. We’re not reinvetning the wheel. It’s how products get to markets.
These are the most active, enthusiastic members of our community, ready to go the extra mile for Zcash and participate in various initiatives and activities. So yes, they self-select into surveys and interviews. They invest their time. Curious and idealistic. In other words, “visionaries.” Finding/creating more of these people is the goal. We can’t get to mass adoption without them. Mass adoption is a process, not a goal. Can’t get to a billion without the first 100. A hundred super happy Zcashers is the first step.
Definitely not arguing for that use case. Zcashers that transact in ZEC also tend to give holding ZEC higher ratings, so they are actually better proponents of the SoV narrative than the SoV purists. With the exception of 2-3 people, all Zcash payment users that participated in ZURE also hold ZEC.
Payments and Defi aren’t mutually exclusive. And yes, I believe Defi is critical infrastructure. There is a path.
fwiw, I lived in India and have been engaged with the persecuted, un- and underbanked there for 20 years. My need for private uncensorable payments/remits was a key reason that I joined this project. It’s still an issue for those I work with because easy mobile tooling doesn’t exist, and on/off ramps are insufficient. These are part of my community.
We also ran Crypto in Context programs years ago. One of the target communities was Syrian refugees, who were brought together by a Zcasher who was forced to leave his country and found Zcash as a need for secure storage, censorship resistance, portability, and transfer. In the last event, we had hundreds of participants across Europe and the Middle East. Again, key issues were usability and access.
I met another Zcasher not too long ago who needed to securely send funds to their parents in a country under an authoritarian regime. They found Zcash.
A little over a year ago, I participated in a conference of “freedom fighters” from around the world who came together in Lithuania. Same story - how to safely move money to family and those in need. Same challenges: safe on/off ramps and ease of use. In that case, BTC was touted as the answer but it was clear they hadn’t considered risks to people who don’t understand how to use it safely.
In Bogata, I met someone who is working with local indigenous people to protect the rainforests from unethical and illegal mining. They need funding to buy drones to film activities more safely. Their need? Same as above.
All that said, this is, in part, why I think defi is critical. I don’t discount what you’re saying. I just believe these things go hand in hand.
To @peacemonger 's post above. Reminds me of a couple tweets that resonate:
Dismissing degens: It’s easy to look down on degens, but degens are the lifeblood of crypto and you win by embracing us. That’s not to say you shouldn’t aspire for more but helping the masses “degen” aka own something they believe in before it has social validation is key and combining that with a new behavior is optimal.
Unless you want to categorize people as investing in Zcash as degens (which is to be debatable, honestly, given the abhorrent price activity almost since inception), there are definitely not many “degens” in this “community” in the most mainstream sense. And I think his point is actually conflating what a true degenerate actually means. To me, a degen is someone who thinks in the moment and not planning for the future, which it seems the majority of this community is attempting to do by purchasing/using ZEC.
Overall, stable coins should be used for payment activity, full stop and the token is what has value (just like all other assets have value). Don’t turn ZEC into fiat.
Absolutely agree on this. Where the disagreement comes is in the vision we are funding and the use cases. Maybe i’m over simplifying. but i see that we have two main technologies
The wealth storage tech. this is the bitcoin code. 22m cap.
the privacy tech for processing payments.
Just because we made bitcoin private doesn’t change its underlying qualities as a gold like commodory and turn it into a fiat like currency. I would love to solve the under banked and un banked problem. But this target market is the 95% of the population i believe who don’t have the financial position to accept a commodity like ZEC for payments. So the privacey tech needs to be applied to another asset (like a stablecoin) for them.
zec could work in situations where the sender and receiver are not price sensitive. for example, i want to send money to a charity, or a person in need. Both parties don’t care about the zec price, they just want the privacy. I think that this use case isn’t zEC positive; even though the privacy is good for the receiver. EG they really don’t care about the wealth storage part. They will sell at any price because they need the money (our own orgs work like this as well).
so what i have been proposing is to use the privacy tech; and apply it to collaterized assets as part of a DeFi platform. its better for everyone.
the reason i dont think they go hand in hand is because we are not splitting the wealth storage tech from then privacy tech for the uses cases that need both stability and privacy. When ZEC is used for a use case where the reciever must sell at any price, it’s bad for the ecosystem. when a reciever must sell at any price, a stablecoin (or collateralized asset) the better asset to use. so we don’t need more wallets, we need more assets to better match with customer needs and DeFi to unlock devolopment.
I agree w/ point #2, and think that resonates with Zcash. On the last point, you can have all the engagement in the world, but if users aren’t spending money (or in this case, more users buying Zcash), then it’s meaningless.
The more I read this tweet the more I think this guy has his head so far up his ass because he was early to buy a jpeg. Like, sorry dude you didn’t build anything meaningful, you just throw Peter Thiel and Mark Cuban’s money at people that can actually build things and hope something sticks, all while engagement farming on Twitter.
i had a thought few days ago… i think that the strongest effect is when those who already hold the asset, want more of it and feel they do not have enough.
much stronger than new people coming
new people is good for selling the top
I understand you want to continue with the status quo. However, your reason for continuing (common founder mistakers) is related to a startup. So, those might be founder mistakes for a new project. Zcash is not new. Is ~8-10 years of telling people ZEC is fiat for day to day transactions still considered “too quickly” to reconsider as a vision? At some point, we have to ask ourselves if maybe the vision is what the problem is because I cant see how anyone can say we have found a market fit between ZEC and the ZEC is fiat for day to day transactions vision. The actual use case for real tokenized fiat for day to day transactions is exploding…Its a multi-trillion market. BTC has tapped the digital gold narrative and garnered a $1.4 trillion market cap. ETH has captured the DeFi market an garnered a $400 billion market cap. When people (the markets version of consensus) believe in the vision, they will buy; they will fund it. ZEC is kinda in no mans land when it tells people its a fiat alternative for spending and at the same time it wont hold its value. There is a major blind spot in the way we are understanding what users want because when you give them what they want, you will know it. You cant really change the attributes of ZEC, they have been fixed as they should be; so the solution is what? More marketing, more wallets, more education? Or alternatively the solution could be to follow BTC lead and let people know ZEC is private digital gold, its ultimately a collateral token and SOV meant for saving, and we are building out DeFi with privacy ZSAs and privacy stablecoins.
So why are you still here then? Go find another store of value that you are comfortable with because it clearly isn’t Zcash. Look at the history of this project. Many mistakes made over the years… and CEO’s that cared only about their own narrow-sided vision that resulted in scope creep and nothing actually getting done to drive adoption. Any good product uses independent user and market research to make strategic decisions… but you’re right, Zcash is in no man’s land.
Maybe it is time to let the dev fund expire. Don’t replace it with anything. Let the chips fall as they may, let the existing orgs fail and see what rises up out the ashes. Or go fork Zcash and make it what you want.
It’s amazing the amount of time and effort spent arguing over the same thing while that effort could be put driving Zcash (or Phoenixcash or whatever else it becomes) forward.
In other words, “visionaries.” Finding/creating more of these people is the goal. We can’t get to mass adoption without them. Mass adoption is a process, not a goal. Can’t get to a billion without the first 100. 
