Good blockchain governance is at least a decade away

zooko · March 26, 2018, 8:44pm

This is a really good blog post:

https://ristret.com/s/iuyio9/good_blockchain_governance_is_at_least

It makes me think: How can we make the Zcash blockchain and the Zcash coins be part of the future governance protocol a hundred years from now?

It also makes me think: what if I were talking to an “immutabilist” who thought that the consensus rules should never be changed after a coin launched? But I thought that new ideas learned after the initial launch of the coin should be used. Then I might say to that person, Okay, the consensus rules of the original coin are immutable. But, after four years, let’s make a new coin with mostly the same rules as the original coin, but some differences, and let’s begin its life by airdropping the new coin to the owners of the previous coin. And then we could do this every four years, integrating new ideas that we’ve learned since the last time.

Related: A Future Friendly Fork - Electric Coin Company

What if we did A Future Friendly Fork, not every four years, but every month? What if we did it every block?

thrill · April 2, 2018, 10:19pm

I’ve been thinking about this and I believe the best future path is to plan for obsolescence. Forking is not a cost-free endeavor, as participants have to begin using the two paths - or not. One possibility to reduce pain and risk is to intentionally fork annually, on New Coin, err, Year’s Day (at a designated block number, adjustable to try to hit a target timestamp), and call the new coin Zcash-NewYearNumber (ex. Zcash2018) , and per the trademark control of the Foundation, allow the current year to be aliased as Zcash. Insert the new technology into the new coin. Having a specified date lets people plan, and argue about maturity, and test, test, test. Most people will likely only use the most recent version, but anyone is still free to use the old version. Build into the protocol both chains for the coming year. If you use the coin on one chain, it disappears from the other chain. Any untouched coins remaining in, for example, Zcash2017, when Zcash2019 becomes live, will become Zcash2018 coins, and disappear from Zcash2017 - used coins in either blockchain remain there. This lets people have a year to choose, or their coins become the Foundation approved chain if they don’t.

Autotunafish · April 3, 2018, 12:01am

Good governance can only come from the self-governed, maybe a reason why the world’s in the state that it is! The idea of good governance coming from a group largely comprised of anarchist seems slightly oxymoronic. Once Zcash community members realize that there personal decisions to make the right choice carries more weight than they think, then they’ll be in a better position to make governing decisions that affect the rest of the community’s future. That comes with maturity, with time. You can’t fake it and you can only speed it up so much.
A decade sounds right. The slow way is the safe way. (Sorry no real help)

zooko · April 3, 2018, 11:05am

I love this proposal. Have you seen A Future Friendly Fork - Electric Coin Company ?

Autotunafish · April 3, 2018, 11:30am

Is this what you were talking about in the seminar about the non backwards compatibility/forward spending of older version coins?

Voluntary · April 3, 2018, 3:02pm

re: Apparent conflict of anarchy and governance - I had the same issue when I was introduced to Dash, which has its own solution to governance that results in achieving comparatively rapid consensus. What I came to realise is that there’s a subtle but significant difference between government and governance - that being the lack of coercion.

What’s more, being that this is all open source, it doesn’t even take an almost-majority to split off and do their own thing - even a single individual can fork the code and / or even the blockchain and go their own way to crypto utopia.

So, as small as that lack of coercion difference might be, it creates a night and day difference between government (do as we say or else) and governance (consensus decision making with no penalty for disassociation).

thrill · April 3, 2018, 3:36pm

I did read that - achieving that coveted “persistent-non-schism” is of course the challenge. It’s part of my thought about why, other than zero-day fixes, that forks should be regular and scheduled but not too often. For something as important as a cryptocurrency annual seems good. People need time to accept the awesomeness of the new, and forkers need time to see what received good reception and what didn’t.

Autotunafish · April 19, 2018, 9:56pm

This should probably go in “foundation” too

Autotunafish · April 20, 2018, 12:30am

And this

github.com

ZcashFoundation/Elections/blob/master/README.md

## This GitHub repo has been archived, and will no longer be maintained or updated. Future Zcash Foundation elections, voting processes, or other governance activities will organized through the [Governance section](ttps://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zfnd/tree/master/governance) of our new canonical GitHub repo, which publishes directly to a corresponding section of our [website](https://www.zfnd.org/governance/).

## Archival date: 1/17/2019

# The Zcash Foundation Community Governance Process

It’s time for the Zcash Foundation to conduct its first election. After the election, we’d like to continue in mostly the same way we’ve already been operating. (See our [2018 Vision document](https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation/blob/master/2018-VISION.md)).

## Objectives for the Election

We have two main objectives for the election:

- Providing a platform for new Board candidates and to elect new board members
- Measure and understand community sentiment to guide Foundation policy

The Board of Directors is important since they are officially the root authorities in control of the organization. Three of the existing Board members have all expressed a preference of remaining on the board. In the Zcash Foundation's [first public statement](https://z.cash.foundation//blog/hello-world/), they described themselves as a "bootstrap board," and so this election is meant to expand the Board beyond the initial bootstrap—and to broaden the Foundation's accountability.

A small board that is motivated and engaged is better than one with a diffuse sense of responsibility. However, we’d also like to be held publicly accountable in as a broad sense as we can. Thus we'd like to maintain a Board of five members; that leaves two open Board seats.

The second objective is more abstract, but just as important; the Foundation has many challenges ahead and understanding community sentiment is tantamount to serving our ever-expanding stakeholders in the Zcash and broader privacy-focused community.

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Autotunafish · April 20, 2018, 12:32am

github.com

ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation/blob/master/2018-VISION.md

## This document has been archived, and will no longer be maintained or updated. The current version can be found in the Zcash Foundation’s new canonical [GitHub repo](https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/zfnd/blob/master/about/2018-vision.md), which publishes directly to a corresponding section of our [website](https://www.zfnd.org/about/2018-vision/).

## Archival date: 1/17/2019

# Zcash Foundation Vision and Roadmap
## For 2018 and Beyond
*by Josh Cincinnati, Executive Director of the Zcash Foundation*

*Please note, this document has been updated after [Board approval from this meeting.](https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation/blob/master/board-documents/minutes/2018-06-22.md) Please view the [commit history to view the changes](https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation/commits/master/2018-VISION.md).*

2017 marked a year of formulation, of carefully testing waters, of measured growth for the Zcash Foundation. 2018 will be a year of rapid acceleration—in the Foundation’s scope, its goals, and its responsibility to the Zcash and broader cryptocurrency community.

My vision for the Foundation’s future is best summarized by the [Year in Review](https://z.cash.foundation//blog/year-in-review/) I published to the Foundation blog earlier in January:

*….the Foundation has a broad strategic mission that I hope to expand next year. To echo Peter’s sentiments, the Foundation is now a public charity* ***dedicated to building Internet payment and privacy infrastructure for the public good, and we need to execute on that vision...***

*Outside of direct Zcash development,* ***I’m also hopeful that the Foundation’s work can benefit other cryptocurrencies–whether by funding privacy research that can be applied to other public blockchains, or through others directly leveraging the Powers of Tau ceremony for their own applications.*** *The cryptocurrency community can be a divisive place, but I for one am optimistic at the possibility of broad collaboration with the cryptocurrency community, especially to further the cause of private, accessible finance for all...*

***...I hope the Foundation can become a conduit for the community and help architect and experiment with new methods of governance…*** *for software development, and our non-profit itself…*

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kek · May 2, 2018, 12:45pm

@zooko “Okay, the consensus rules of the original coin are immutable. But, after four years, let’s make a new coin“

believe the original zcash should be treated as money. think it might be cool to eventually have a new coin that’s more like a currency. be really neat if one day we could have stable ZEC currency units

Autotunafish · May 17, 2018, 4:41pm

This looks interesting, its a linux foundation webinar concerning governance of open source community driven projects @zooko
https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=reg20.jsp&partnerref=edxnews&eventid=1664500&sessionid=1&key=7896D53834EC4233EE7FDCEA88C644AE&regTag=&sourcepage=register
Scheduled for May 30, 10AM Pacific Daylight time
Edit- here’s the webinar
Its the Linux foundation’s sort of best practices or what they consider to be concerning open source Community projects with them but there are some use case scenarios, it was interesting anyways,
I’m sorry the links are so big and kind of sketchy looking! (You might like this @sonya) (though not limited to!)
https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/console/EventConsoleApollo.jsp?&eventid=1664500&sessionid=1&username=&partnerref=&format=fhvideo1&mobile=true&flashsupportedmobiledevice=true&helpcenter=false&key=7896D53834EC4233EE7FDCEA88C644AE&text_language_id=en&playerwidth=1000&playerheight=650&overwritelobby=y&eventuserid=203707435&contenttype=A&mediametricsessionid=167419390&mediametricid=2378884&usercd=203707435&mode=launch

Autotunafish · May 29, 2018, 2:47am

Here’s another one coming up about the gdpr and Blockchain security, the governance one is there too

sonya · June 1, 2018, 9:30pm

Ooh this looks interesting, thank you!