The Future of Zclassic

Many rumors have emerged suggesting that a new development team has taken over Zclassic. As of now, no development team has approached us to discuss further development of the project nor does the Bitcoin Private team intend to continue active development. Furthermore, we have no intention of handing the project over to a new team without significant experience or a comprehensive development plan.

So what does this mean in the short and long term for Zclassic? We will discuss the short term first. Currently, the Bitcoin Private Treasury’s sole responsibility is to help fund the Bitcoin Private project. Now that the fork has passed, the treasury will no longer support the Zclassic project as of April 1, 2018.

Short-term Implications for Zclassic

1. The Zclassic nodes will be shut down by the end of March. Because it is fairly low cost, the Zclassic DNS seeder will remain active. This will allow the community to set up Zclassic nodes which can act as DNS seeds and allow the network to be maintained. We will not be responsible for these nodes, their maintenance, or their integrity.
2. The current official Electrum wallet servers will be shut down by April 1, 2018. ElectrumX peer discovery will be enabled before that time and a set of dedicated community hosted ElectrumX servers will replace the current ones in an updated client release. We will not be responsible for these servers, their maintenance, or their integrity.

Long-term Implications for Zclassic

We have decided to open a Zclassic project proposal process in which teams can form and put together a proposal. All proposals must be sent to the following email address: zclassic.proposal@btcprivate.org

Mandatory Proposal Requirements

1. No longer than 10 pages.
2. Due on June 1, 2018.
3. Demonstrate comprehensive understanding of Zclassic code and zk-SNARKs.
4. Illustrate a 1-year (short term) and 5-year (long term) development plan which shows how you plan to differentiate Zclassic from other privacy coins, and in particular, other z-protocol coins. We want to read about your goals and how you plan to implement them. For instance, there is much talk about developing masternodes into Zclassic; we want to see how you might go about coding it and your plan to convince miners to hardfork this into implementation (not an easy task).
5. A 5-year funding plan/initiative. In no way, shape, or form should a Founder’s Fee be incorporated into this proposal. The core of Zclassic is that there is no Founder’s tax. An automatic rejection will be applied to anyone suggesting this. Regardless, to keep development active, a solid and legal funding plan must be in place.
6. Information on the proposed team in a separate document. This should include a short biography, resume, and linkedin profiles of all members.

Proposal Layout

1. Introduction to Zclassic and zk-SNARKs
2. Development plan
3. Funding plan
4. Conclusion
5. References

Any applications that do not meet our guidelines will be automatically rejected without notice. On June 2, 2018 the Bitcoin Private team will begin the review process and a winner will be announced by September 1, 2018. In the event that no proposal is selected, the proposal process will start over and applicants will have a chance to revise their proposals.

In the event that blockchain-breaking bugs have been discovered in Zclassic, the Bitcoin Private team will implement critical fixes, until the proposal process is completed or March 1, 2019, whichever comes first.