Describe issues with today's Zcash governance

zip-XXXX.rst

@@ -67,4 +67,78 @@ Bitcoin. For the rest of us, though, better is better. Zcash *should be better*.
 
 Zcash is known for having the best tech in the space, built by one of the best
 team's in the space. We should lean in to that reputation, nurturing the best
-research and engineering talent to take Zcash to the next level.
+research and engineering talent to take Zcash to the next level, leveraging a
+Zcash dev fee as a differentiator to build the world's best private medium of
+exchange.
+
+Evolving Zcash Governance
+=========================
+
+Principles of cryptocurrency governance
+---------------------------------------
+
+Most proof-of-work chains today have three major governing roles
+
+1. Miners validate and secure the chain. They do some work to earn a reward.
+   Miners are the first owners of newly minted coins, and are an integral part
+   of network upgrades.
+2. Users buy, hold, and spend the currency. In networks like Bitcoin, they also
+   run full nodes, strengthening network resilience by decentralizing
+   validation.
+3. Developers maintain clients to power and interact with the network. They
+   typically propose network upgrades.
+
+On a chain like Bitcoin, any of these roles can veto a network upgrade.
+
+1. Miners can veto activating a new fork by refusing to build off blocks using
+   new network rules, orphaning a minority effort. They can also attack any fork
+   attempt that doesn't change
+2. Users can veto a fork by refusing to update their full nodes, rejecting
+   blocks as invalid -- as demonstrated in the UASF fiasco resulting from the
+   SegWit2x attempt to force a Bitcoin hardfork. Users can also vote with their
+   dollars, acting as a fork resolution of last resort via market pressure.
+3. Developers can refuse to update client codebases to follow a fork. While this
+   might not seem like a strong veto, in practice that means any fork will need
+   at least one additional development team, or the agreement of existing client
+   software developers.
+
+These roles together form a balance of power that makes contentious forks
+difficult -- any change that a large swath of users disapproves of could split
+the chain.
+
+The state of play
+-----------------
+
+In Zcash, the addition of the Electic Coin Company (ECC) and the Zcash
+Foundation skew this balance.
+
+Both organizations are comprised of Zcash founders, developers, researchers, and
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Compounding these issues, the Foundation and the ECC aren't arms-length entities
+as they're organized 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 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.