Terminology

The key words "MUST" and "MUST NOT" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 2 when, and only when, they appear in all capitals.

For clarity this ZIP defines these terms:

• Spirit is defined as what is the intended outcome of the ZIP. 1

Out of Scope for this Proposal

Everything except moving the development fund end date.

Abstract

The spirit of this proposal is to keep to the current structure of the Electric Coin Company (ECC) receiving funding from the block distribution for two years' worth of blocks after the first halving in October 2020.

Motivation

To give more time to work out the full ramifications of any potential pivot / slow down, yet keep "all in on ZEC" for two more years with as little disruption as possible.

Requirements

Nothing about distribution recipients changes.

The current distribution of the Founders’ Reward is dependent on arrangements between the participants that will, if not explicitly renewed, expire at the first halving. There are currently direct and indirect recipients other than the ECC and Zcash Foundation. It is unclear whether funding of the ECC and Foundation is intended to continue at the current absolute ZEC rate, or at the same rate relative to the block subsidy which halves in October 2020. Further specification would be needed in order to fulfil and clarify the spirit of the proposal.

Specification

• The ECC's portion of block subsidy MUST be 20%, until a block height corresponding to two years after the first halving, i.e. until October 2022.
• A to-be-specified fraction of ECC's portion SHOULD be used to fund the Zcash Foundation.

A previous version of this ZIP stated the following requirements: "The ECC's portion of block subsidy MUST be capped at their projected 1.1m USD costs a month." and "The ECC's portion of block subsidy MUST NOT be greater than 10% of total block subsidy of any one block." These requirements were mistakenly introduced in the process of ZIP editing; they do not reflect the intent of the original author @kek. They are also inconsistent with the summary that was posted in the Community Sentiment Collection Poll blog post at <https://www.zfnd.org/blog/community-sentiment-collection-poll/>, which stated an ECC percentage of 20%. Votes on the Community Sentiment Collection Poll, the Community Advisory Panel Helios poll, and/or the stake-weighted petition reported at <https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/staked-poll-on-zcash-dev-fund-debate/34846/71>, should be interpreted with care in light of this ambiguity. Also note that the 1.1m USD cap could not in any case be specified as a consensus rule since there is no on-chain oracle for the USD price.

Raised objections and issues so far

• This is just kicking the can down the road.
• The Zcash Foundation has raised objections to a single point of failure in the ECC.

Implications to other users

• The knock-on impact of this ZIP to exchanges and wallet developers may be nontrivial.
• The economics of doing this have not been calculated.

References