Zcash is the most important project in the world, and it is winning.
Zcash allows anyone–anywhere–to send, receive, and hold private money without being subject to pressure or coercion from others. Zcash puts the control over your money solely in your own hands.
Zcash is the most important project in the world because all civil rights, businesses, and economies depend on private money. Non-violent social change needs private money. Civilization itself depends on private money.
Certain factions within the world’s national governments are attempting to take complete and permanent control over the economy. This means controlling every person’s business and personal life, and all possibility of political change. For the survival of our civilization, this must not be allowed to happen. Zcash is the alternative.
Zcash is winning. For the last eight years, Zcash has successfully outraced and outmanuevered those lumbering titans, the national governments. The Zcash technology has been published, scrutinized, replicated, honed, and battle-tested. It cannot be uninvented or banned. The Zcash coin, ZEC, has been distributed far and wide by a neutral Proof-of-Work mining algorithm into the hands of (likely) millions of holders and supporters.
Even more importantly, the idea of Zcash has spread: that it is possible for people to have control over their money and that this is good for society.
It’s time to upgrade Zcash to (hybrid) Proof-of-Stake
The creation and distribution of ZEC coins by the Proof-of-Work mining algorithm was a necessary first step. It allowed individuals to acquire ZEC when they didn’t have any and couldn’t acquire it any other way. It ensured that ZEC flowed far and wide, and invisibly, into the hands of the people who valued it most and were most committed to its long-term mission.
At the same time, the ongoing creation of new ZEC over these first eight years has put downward pressure on the price of ZEC. (A similar thing happened to Zcash’s predecessor, Bitcoin, during its first eight years.)
Zcash’s coin-creation schedule follows Bitcoin’s. Every four years the rate of new coin creation is halved, ensuring that only 21 million ZEC coins will eventually exist. When the second Zcash halving occurs, this November, three quarters of all ZEC will have been created.
Over the next several years, this downward price pressure is going to ease because the rate of new coin creation is going to reduce. This price effect is critical to our mission because the Zcash holders are the core supporters of that mission. Now is the time for the next stage!
Shielded Labs is a new Swiss non-profit dedicated to improving Zcash to be the best private money. Shielded Labs is funded solely by donations from Zcash holders.
The next steps to make Zcash even better
First we’re going to implement the “Zcash Sustainability Fund”, which provides long-term sustainability of the Zcash network and development without exceeding the 21 million ZEC supply cap.
Second, we’ll accelerate the upgrade of Zcash to “Crosslink”–a hybrid Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake protocol–with our friends at the Electric Coin Company. We want to deploy this as fast as possible while maintaining Zcash’s track record of excellent safety.
Crosslink will deliver many immediate benefits. It will allow people to stake their ZEC, thus increasing demand for ZEC. It will also reduce the supply of ZEC by locking up staked ZEC.
It will provide finality. Finality protects users against rollback attacks, reduces wait times for some kinds of transactions, and allows safer two-way bridges to other networks.
It will further strengthen security for Zcash users. The Proof-of-Stake mechanism and the Proof-of-Work mechanism provide two layers of defense, making it safer than a pure Proof-of-Stake network or pure Proof-of-Work network.
Crosslink will also be the foundation on which future scalability improvements can be built, so that everyone–everywhere–can use Zcash cheaply and efficiently.
This is the beginning of the next stage of Zcash. I’m thrilled and grateful that I have the opportunity to contribute. I’m joining Shielded Labs because I trust its founder, Jason McGee, and because Shielded Labs “Honors the hodlers”.
P.S. Please read my previous post in this series: Honor the Hodlers — why the price of Zcash matters.
Gratitude
I’m grateful to the Zcash holders and supporters who have made Shielded Labs possible with their financial and intellectual support: Vitalik Buterin, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the Anoma Foundation (Awa Sun Yin, Christopher Goes, and Adrian Brink), and anonymous donors. I’m also grateful to Jason McGee for doing this with me.
Thanks to Kevin Owocki, Kelcie Liddell, zerodartz, Jason McGee, Vitalik Buterin, Alan Fairless, and anonymous other hodlers for feedback on this post.
