Buterin argued that simple coin-weighted voting concentrates power among large holders and pushes protocols toward short-term, price-driven decisions.
Zcash News
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has weighed in on the debate around Zcash's committee-based governance model, warning that a token voting system could erode the privacy coin's core features. The discussion centers on whether Zcash should maintain its current committee structure or shift to direct tokenholder voting mechanisms.
Zcash co-founder Zooko Wilcox opened the discussions by urging support for Artkor, a longtime community member and sitting member of the Zcash Community Grants Committee seeking re-election. Zcash's off-chain governance operates through a curated advisory panel called ZCAP, which votes on major questions and elects the committee that allocates grants.
Wilcox describes the group as thoughtful and independent people who disagree with each other but remain committed to the same mission. By Saturday, AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant had entered the thread and challenged the model as obsolete, stating it should be deprecated.
Ravikant argued that trusted third parties are a security flaw regardless of whether they are thoughtful and independent. He stated all governance for decentralized protocols should be on-chain and private, directly contradicting the current Zcash structure.
Buterin then weighed in and urged the community not to adopt a coin-voting model. He stated he hopes Zcash “resists the dark hand of token voting,” arguing that the cryptocurrency's privacy focus could erode over time if left to the median token voter.
Buterin characterized token voting as “bad in all kinds of ways” and “worse than Zcash's status quo,” citing his 2021 blog post on governance. He wrote that coin voting appears credibly neutral because anyone can acquire governance tokens on exchanges, but in practice, it may only appear secure because of imperfections in its neutrality.
Buterin argued that simple coin-weighted voting concentrates power among large holders and pushes protocols toward short-term, price-driven decisions. Price has become a concern among the cryptocurrency community, with Artkor noting in his re-election post that the price context has changed significantly.
The surge in Zcash over the past month has undoubtedly created new opportunities for the community, Artkor noted, but it also creates dangerous challenges. The danger is not that more can be spent, but that spending becomes easier, representing a test of faith with money, according to his assessment.
Lucien Bourdon, analyst at Trezor, stated that token-based voting can expose protocols to governance capture if a well-funded actor accumulates a controlling share of tokens. While the likelihood depends on asset liquidity and distribution, the risk persists across all token-voting systems.
Token voting often correlates influence with wealth, which may not always align with long-term network sustainability or community values, Bourdon added. Well-chosen and trusted committees may provide more consistent governance but risk becoming detached from the broader user base, with neither model being perfect.
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