Proposal to create a Zcash Ecosystem Fund directly funded by the Founder's Reward

General
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your are planning to eliminate miners that have granted themselves the right to distribution by hard work creating ASICs.

The Foundation has a financial interest in mining only to the extent that it increases the utility and viability of ZEC. Whether miners are using GPUs or ASICs, the Foundation will get the same amount of funding per the current arrangement. I suppose if literally everyone stopped mining then we’d be in trouble, but that seems exceedingly unlikely.

There is a significant portion of the community, and especially of the technical leadership, that believes that indefinite ASIC resistance is simply not possible. As to whether miners have a “right” to forever-viable GPU mining operations, that strikes me a significant overreach versus the formally codified Founders’ Reward.

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44

I think it could be done in a more voluntary manner. It’s not uncommon when a company goes public (or other major event) for the purchasers to stipulate requirements about outstanding shares (e.g., 95% must be subject

I want to clear up the record a bit. I’ve been reluctant do to this, since I’m sensitive to doing this in a way that does not come off as criticizing anyone.

Back in January, Eric approached a number of FR recipients and proposed (a voluntary form) of the ZEF to them. From what I can tell by canvassing various folks who had these discussions, the response to his proposal was extremely enthusiastic. Subsequently, Eric went silent for the next several months. Many people didn’t know whether the ZEF was happening, or what the status was.

Eric updated me on Twitter that this aborted launch was due to tax complications. I believe him. Taxes on cryptocurrency (let alone something as complex as a cryptocurrency fund) are a nightmare.

However – and let me be clear that I’m not holding this out as a criticism of Eric so much as an explanation for the surprise and unhappiness on the part of various FR recipients – I hope this flow of events helps to explain why the recent ZEF proposal has been so shocking to many people at the Company. From the perspective of FR recipients, the sequence is:

  1. January 2018: Receive proposal to create a (voluntary) ZEF
  2. Respond enthusiastically!
  3. Radio silence and lack of updates – is ZEF happening?
  4. June 2018: a proposal to involuntarily take a fraction of the FR away to fund ZEF

My guess is that Eric’s new proposal may have been formulated to help deal with tax issues. But this wasn’t communicated to any of the potential contributors before it was made (in this forum and at Zcon0), so the net effect is that people feel blindsided. That explains the posts about consent above. I think it also explains some of the concerns about whether ZEF is the right organization to contribute to.

Now, with that said: I think something like a ZEF is an incredibly good idea. I think a voluntary form of it is totally workable. But I also think that it should be tried in a voluntary way before people start arguing over changes to the FR that get everyone upset and threaten the Company’s ability to retain employees (during a critical period where everyone is working 110% on Sapling). This seems totally workable given how badly everyone wants Zcash to succeed.

A postscript: One major landscape change since January is that the Zcash Foundation has grown its capabilities substantially. In particular, Josh C., Antonie and Sonya have been working to build up a technical organization that should handle many of the priorities that ZEF was proposed to deal with, including wallets and alternative node implementations (which are underway). This doesn’t mean there’s no room for a third organization to aid in decentralization – I just wanted to communicate that the Foundation is a thing and is doing many of these things, which badly need to be done. (Disclosure: I’m on the Foundation board).

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45

The right to mine is acquired by having hashing power. GPU miners don’t have the right to mine forever at the moment a stronger competitor enters the market. My point is the logic of the blog post is not consistent. The PoW algo is set in stone pretty much like the founders reward yet, they/you seem to be ok dropping the former. PoW is part on an agreement too that you plan to change unilaterally and that is precisely the corollary and the flaw of the blog post, you defend a right can’t be revoked unilaterally.

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PoW Mining and ASIC discussion should be removed from this thread. It’s patently off-topic.

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I unhid the comments because I think @maesitos made a good point that was sufficiently relevant, but I agree that we should cut off discussion of mining and ASICs here and return to the main point of the thread.

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