Final edit: This forum thread is now deprecated! Please refer to the ZIP process website and the Zcash Foundation’s governance page for future information and updates. Forum discussion will continue in the protocol subcategory.

To see past edits of this post, click the equivalent of this icon:

(The number will be 53, not 35.)

Summary version: Future of Zcash dev funding — high signal, low noise

Meta

This thread is for comparing and contrasting proposals (e.g. which ones can be combined?), commenting on the general trends of proposals so far, discussing and defining the feedback process, and hopefully moving toward broad consensus or something close to it.

I will update this post with new information as needed. If you think I missed anything, or want to point me toward something to add, send me a message or tag @sonya in a comment.

On the threads (or GitHub issues) for specific proposals, discuss the pros and cons of those specific proposals, or suggest improvements.

ZIP Process

After forum discussion, the next step is creating and submitting a formal Zcash Improvement Proposal. The ZIP process is defined in ZIP 0.

Help

Event Date ZIP draft submission deadline Aug 31, 2019 Feature selection done October 31, 2019 Testnet beta code release March 31, 2020 Testnet activation May 31, 2020 Mainnet activation October 2020

Proposals for NU4 must be submitted as draft ZIPs by August 31.

The active ZIP editors are @daira, representing the Electric Coin Company, and @gtank, representing the Zcash Foundation.

ZIP editor context Who is George, and why isn’t @acityinohio the Foundation’s ZIP editor anymore? See the quote below. ZIP Proposal - 8-15% Opt-in or 4-7.5% Mandatory Dev Free |75% Zcash Foundation 25% ECC| Forum members, you’re getting this news first (although honestly it’s been in his Twitter bio for weeks): George Tankersley recently came on as our director of engineering, and he’s going to replace Josh as the Foundation ZIP editor. We haven’t announced yet because we want to include some technical roadmap information that’s still being fine-tuned.

Note: the merged ZIPs include some editorial changes. They supercede both the original pull requests, and the draft proposals on the forum threads. If you are a ZIP author and see a change that doesn’t reflect your intent, please contact @daira.

Draft ZIPs

Withdrawn Proposals

Zcash Foundation Statements

Executive director @acityinohio:

The future of Zcash in the year 2020 Thanks for tagging me @sonya; yes, I think any proposal that has the Foundation receiving all funds (even if there are contracts in place for development) could jeopardize broader decentralization, and as you suggested I wouldn’t want the Foundation to be a single gatekeeper. And thanks to @zooko for his post above and giving the community his perspective. 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) We could suggest a proposal within these guidelines, but like @zooko I would prefer to see proposals from others in the community first.

The future of Zcash in the year 2020 We would support proposals that change consensus rules if there’s overwhelming consensus to do so, but specifically in the case of opt-in we were imagining some flag for users (to enable in their transactions) and/or miners (in their coinbase transactions) that would determine whether funds are awarded to a potential future dev fund (and at what proportion to potential recipients). A scheme along these lines would definitely require a consensus change. I understand the concern about complexity, but in our view this would preserve user choice and provide important signaling for the ECC, Zcash Foundation, and any other recipient of a future fund. Note that others associated with the Foundation may have more detailed or nuanced personal views (see @amiller’s comment above), but this was the consensus reached by the Zcash Foundation Board of Directors on how we’d approach the possibility of a new dev fund.

Inactive/For reference only:: Dev fund proposal: modified 20% combination; 40/60 ECC/choice This implies that the foundation could possibly be the recipient of a mandatory development fee but not the ECC or any other for profit Yes. This is our request / requirement for any mandatory dev fund, where the opt-out is “don’t run the software / don’t use Zcash,” rather than “run the software and decide not to contribute to a dev fund.” By contrast, with a “miner’s choice” arrangement, the Zcash Foundation is comfortable with for-profit entities directly receiving protocol-based dev funding.

The Zcash Foundation Zcash Trademark Uncertainty Leads to Delay of NU4 Community Sentiment Collection The Zcash Foundation will delay its polling process until a revived 2-of-2 agreement with the ECC can be reached.

Electric Coin Company Statements

Electric Coin Company CEO @zooko: “State of Electric Coin Company” talk at Zcon1.

@zooko on Twitter:

A catalog of the major results that the Electric Coin Company has delivered to the Zcash community over the last three years: https://electriccoin.co/blog/animating-zcash/ This is in the context of the Zcash community deciding whether the “Strategic Reserve”/“Dev Fund” was a good use of funds.

PDF timeline

Medium – 4 Aug 19 A Personal Letter About The Possibility of a New Zcash Dev Fund It’s an exciting time for the Zcash community! The Zcash community is currently having a major conversation about what to do ahead of… Reading time: 13 min read

ECC published a statement on Zcash dev funding sustainability. In particular, please note these details:

ECC will release assessments of each proposal submitted to the Zcash Community site. We will first work with authors or champions on these proposals in order to formalize them into PreZips (pre Zcash Improvement Proposals) and ensure they reflect the author’s intent. Proposals might include non-funding mandates, such as Aristarchus’ mandate for a voting mechanism. Each PreZip must have a champion who is the author and/or someone willing to advocate for the proposal. The ECC will then draft assessments of each PreZip that will include how its adoption would impact ECC funding, how we believe it would impact the Zcash project, and how the company would likely respond if such proposal was adopted by the community. We are likely to advocate for proposals which would allow ECC (or another organization in its place) to continue the kind of ambitious, strategic and integrated operations that we’ve demonstrated in the first years of Zcash.

ECC Dev Fund Proposal Assessments protocol Hi all, It’s amazing to see the diverse Zcash community participating in the conversation about a potential Dev Fund with such zeal. Thank you all for participating! Within ECC we’ve been hard at work to clarify our general position with regard to development funding, and to that end we recently posted the Electric Coin Company Statement on Sustainability. My goal with this post is to highlight the timeline and next steps for how ECC plans to engage with the proposal advocates, which i…

Electric Coin Company – 26 Aug 19 ECC Initial Assessment of Community Proposals. - Electric Coin Company Introduction The Zcash community is making a decision about whether to create a new development fund and use it to …

Note about trademark strategy protocol Hey Folks: There is a disagreement on strategy about how to manage the Zcash trademark. This post is to make sure you know the current status of the trademark and draw your attention to the strategy questions about how to use it going forward. ECC is currently the owner of the trademark, having created the trademark along with creating Zcash, and registered it in many countries. ECC had previously publicly stated that we would sign the Zcash trademark into a novel legal agreement which effecti…