The survey polls the opinion of ZEC holders about several proposals for improvement in the network. Some users complained about privacy risks, but the Zcash Foundation clarifies that it is not their initiative.
The Zcash Foundation surveyed to probe the community’s opinion on a group of proposals for project development, which was questioned for implying security and privacy risks to the participants. The information follows from the comments published by some users on the social network Twitter on Monday, November 25th.
The survey aims to collect the opinions of the interested parties of Zcash, a project focused on the privacy of transactions, on 13 proposals for active improvement that would involve financing from its development fund. The proposals have been submitted by members in the Zcash community collaboration forum, in an attempt to decentralize the development of the network, which has been concentrated in the Electric Coin Company (ECC) since its launch.
The procedure to participate in the survey is of the staking type, a model that grants the right to vote through a deposit in tokens, in this case ZEC, the native cryptocurrency of Zcash. Votes will be weighted according to the amount of ZEC sent to the established voting address. However, the process received criticism once organizers reported that participants should use traceable addresses (“transparent” or “t”) in the blockchain.
User Justin Ehrenhofer complained on Twitter that some members of the Zcash Foundation encouraged ZEC holders to place their funds in “transparent” addresses to vote on key issues such as block rewards. Ehrenhofer considers this a “privacy disaster” as they failed even to take additional measures to mitigate the risks.
Andrew Miller, a member of the Zcash Foundation, acknowledged that the ideal would for the survey to be secret, but the need to use “t” addresses would complicate the process. To reduce privacy risks, he recommended that participants use “t” addresses only during the voting process. Ehrenhofer responded through his Twitter account that this measure does not ensure the desired privacy.
Another user named Eran Tromer, also a member of the Zcash Foundation, expressed in the forum his concern about the voting methodology, since it involves sending coded preferences, which can lead to identifying the voters.
For its part, the Zcash Foundation clarified that the survey, weighted by stake (blocking of funds), is not an initiative of that entity but an unofficial survey. It also reported that it is not a formal part of the ZF community’s sentiments about the development proposal, which was opened on November 16th and will close on the 30th of the same month.
The official survey is conducted using a simple form published in the Zcash forum and the only requirement is to keep an account created before March 2019 in the forum. In the tweet thread it is clarified that the weighted survey initiative was driven by some Foundation members independently.
Ehrenhofer asked Zcash users to refrain from participating in the stake-weighted survey, since the Zcash Foundation said it will not use the vote at all. Besides, there are serious problems of privacy with the use of transparent addresses (even by passing it through armored addresses first).
The imminence of the end of the Founder’s Reward of the Zcash project in 2020 has brought a series of debates within the ecosystem since August 2019. It was reported that the community has been discussing whether funds should be distributed among miners or whether they should go to the development of the project. Additionally, in September the friction between the Zcash Foundation and the Electric Coin Company came to light, due to the management of the Zcash brand.
By Willmen Blanco
