The proposal states that the allocation for both the DAO and Treasury is released in a vested 4 year unlocking schedule. Its our opinion that in order to compete in this space we will need ample investment. The current emission schedule leaves the community at a major disadvantage, with not enough capital to succeed.
Horizen’s platform and ultimate vision has evolved quite a bit from where it was. Not only is the current emission schedule insufficient, putting us at a major disadvantage, we also did not have a funding round as other projects in this space so commonly do. This is a practice used to support growth and development. Horizen is an existing token and had a fair market launch. The community stressed acute negativity for increasing the supply of ZEN, and for that reason we are trying to balance the need for investment while also preserving the supply.
While the proposal vests funds over four years, it gives power to the community and with that comes responsibility in spending. It’s expected that the community is cognizant and responsible with the treasury they hold, and do their due diligence to vigilantly invest in projects that bring a return and significantly increase the value of the network.
Note also, that the community could look for funding elsewhere if it needs, but raising funds is not an easy thing to do, and should not be our only avenue.
On your latter point about ratios for security, its keeping with the theme we are stressing here, which is that the community needs leverage. Giving network participants a nice return is all well and good, but how does that help a network that cannot compete!
We feel as though this is the optimal strategy for the Horizen community to take on, as it provides ample strength in a very competitive space, utilizing a token that actually has sufficient market value, while also preserving its supply.
Great questions and thought behind them. This was also a hot topic in putting together the proposal and I think @domenico paints the picture of why we thought it necessary. I’ll add my two zennies and some context.
Horizen/ZEN has a lot going for it, with its history, wide exchange support, and dedicated community and team that have stuck with it all these years. But we also have a lot working against us in that projects launched after it have had significantly more resources to gobble up huge market share, attention, use cases, communities, etc.
Horizen2 is our chance to rebaseline so that we can compete. With ~70% of ZEN already mined, we don’t have much dry powder left to reposition the project and secure a place in the current web3 landscape. If we fail to realign the project into something that matters wrt the rest of the industry, it’ll be hard to ever do it again.
This proposal balances the good stuff we want to preserve with unlocking that dry powder we do have to be able to focus it where it matters…and when it matters, which is now. @domenico voices support for the wisdom of the community in having the fortitude to make sure we don’t blow it all in the next four years, and I’ll double down on that sentiment and add that I think we need to turn our attention to long run sustainability beyond this proposal. We should look to how Zcash is thinking about sustainability, as well as others.
What we don’t want is a plan for the next 100 years when the project’s future will be decided in the next several years. We have to achieve that escape velocity now so that we can have the luxury of doing longer term planning later.
I was also concerned with the 25% unlock, thank you Rob and Domenico for your answers, it makes sense.
I think at the end of the day the success of Horizen 2.0 depends on how well the funds will be spent. I believe HL and the community is on the right track now, as we develop something that is needed by the market and not something that is only our future vision.
Thanks Rob and Domenico - that extra context is super helpful. I definitely understand why the earlier access to funds would be beneficial to the project as a whole.
My only remaining concern is that existing operators on the network (miners and super nodes) may choose to allocate their capital to other networks, since their current rewards would not be allocated to them if they were to run a forger. It is much cheaper to run a forger than miners or super nodes, so maybe that won’t really be an issue, but is still a minor concern of mine.
Thanks for your input. If miners would like to become collators, they would have the option to delegate their funds to their collator node for a reward. Understand the concern you have however, we can always followup with additional ZENIPs that improve upon incentives.
Happy to work with everyone in the community to come up with optimal strategies.