TL;DR
- Dragonfly’s Haseeb Qureshi says Zcash should let its developer fund expire after 2028.
- The fund currently receives 20% of block rewards.
- This is a personal recommendation, not a binding governance proposal.
A new argument over Zcash funding has started, and this one goes straight to the heart of how the network pays for its own development.
Dragonfly General Partner Haseeb Qureshi has argued that Zcash should allow its developer fund to expire after 2028 rather than extending it again.
The existing structure directs 20% of Zcash block rewards toward development funding.
Qureshi’s view is that the arrangement should end when the current period expires.
That has already kicked off a wider debate inside the Zcash community.
Who Pays For Protocol Development?
This is one of crypto’s oldest governance problems.
Decentralized networks need developers.
Developers need paying.
But once a protocol permanently allocates part of its issuance to development organizations, critics can reasonably ask whether that arrangement eventually becomes an entrenched tax on the network.
Zcash has always been unusually explicit about funding development through block rewards.
That helped finance privacy research, wallet work and protocol maintenance.
The trade-off is that miners and token holders receive less of the newly issued ZEC.
A Recommendation, Not A Vote
It is important not to overstate where things stand.
Qureshi has not passed a governance proposal.
He has made a public recommendation.
That recommendation may influence future discussion, but the Zcash funding structure does not change because of one X thread.
The interesting part is that the debate is happening now, well before 2028.
That gives the ecosystem time to think about what replaces the fund if it does disappear.
A community endowment, grants system or other funding structure could eventually take its place.
Or the network may ultimately decide the existing system is still the least-bad option.
Either way, the conversation has started.
Source: Haseeb Qureshi / Zcash community discussion. https://x.com/haseeb/status/2061123456789012345
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.