Update to reflect the ECC/ZF trademark agreement

This commit is contained in:
Matt Luongo 2019-11-15 00:36:10 -05:00 committed by Daira Hopwood
parent 5db9d91870
commit 2d38080008
1 changed files with 13 additions and 17 deletions

View File

@ -135,32 +135,28 @@ privacy proponents who have driven this ecosystem forward and represent its
values. Nevertheless, their mode of operation today skews a healthy balance of
power in Zcash governance.
The mechanisms of that skew are the Zcash trademark, held by the ECC, and
primary client software development, now split between the ECC and the
Foundation.
The mechanisms of that skew are the Zcash trademark, held jointly by the
Foundation and the ECC, and primary client software development, now split
between the ECC and the Foundation.
In a disagreement between miners, users, and developers, the ECC has the
unilateral option of enforcing the Zcash trademark, effectively allowing them
to choose a winning fork against the will of users, miners, and other
developers.
In a disagreement between miners, users, and developers, the Foundation and ECC
have the option of enforcing the Zcash trademark, effectively allowing them to
choose a winning fork against the will of users, miners, and other developers.
While the Foundation's maintenance of the `zebrad` client would normally allow
them to "soft veto" a network upgrade, they don't have a similar veto on the
Zcash trademark enforcement.
In addition, the Foundation's sole maintenance of the `zebrad` client allows
them to "soft veto" a network upgrade.
Compounding these issues, the Foundation and the ECC aren't arms-length entities
as they're organized today.
Unfortunately, the Foundation and the ECC aren't organized as arms-length
entities today.
This situation poses a number of problems for new and existing Zcash users, as
well as both entities.
* The threat of a central entity overriding (or being forced to override) the
will of users undermines self-sovereignty.
* The threat of two entangled entities overriding (or being forced to override)
the will of users undermines self-sovereignty.
* The ECC and Foundation are both put at legal risk. As entangled entities,
they're remarkably similar to a single entity when trying to minimize
regulatory risk.
* Power between the two entites *hasn't* been decentralized. The ECC remains
a unilateral power, as well as a single point of failure.
The "crowding out" problem
--------------------------
@ -324,7 +320,7 @@ The principal developer shall make a number of guarantees.
the Foundation as assurance.
2. They shall maintain a well-run board and employ a qualified CFO.
3. In addition to the existing open-source requirements, they shall agree to
assign any trademarks or patents relevant to Zcash to the Foundation.
assign any patents relevant to Zcash to the Foundation.
In exchange, the principal developer is granted an indefinite minimum dev fee
allocation of 20%, with a maximum allocation of 35% of the total fee, as