Latest news about Bitcoin and all cryptocurrencies. Your daily crypto news habit.
The Electric Coin Company, the developer of second-biggest anoncoin Zcash, has reneged on its declared intent to share its trademark with the non-profit Zcash Foundation.
The Electric Coin Company (ECC), the developer of second-biggest anoncoin Zcash (ZEC), has reneged on its declared intent to share its trademark with the non-profit Zcash Foundation.
The decision has â from the perspective of the Foundation â lowered the Zcash ecosystem to the level of âdecentralization theater,â according to an official blog post on Sept. 2.
âWe already have an agreement in principleâ
The Foundation notes that ECC has long-signalled its intent to share its trademark with the non-profit, which was created in March 2017 to help grow the altcoinâs community, educate the general public about the asset and âsteward the Zcash protocol and source code as a public good.âÂ
The blog post links to a presentation at the Zcon1 conference in Croatia in June 2019, at which ECC CEO Zooko Wilcox declared his commitment to a 2-of-2 controlling agreement with respect to the Zcash trademark.Â
As Wilcox outlined at the time, ECC (the company) and the Foundation were apparently working at the time:
âTo make control over the Zcash trademark be shared between the Foundation and the company. Weâre working on the legal implementation of that to make it legally enforceable. We already have an agreement in principle.â
The CEO had further anticipated that this 2-of-2 agreement â which would require both the Foundation and the ECC to unanimously agree that a certain thing counts as the bonafide Zcash and can be officially labelled as such â would have âdeep effects in the long-run, and good ones.â
Refusal to engage in âdecentralization theaterâ
Notably, early on in its history, the Foundationâs founders had conceded that while they had considered the option of asking ECC to donate its trademark and other assets:
âThereâs a good argument that the Zcash Co has the most incentive right to invest in and maintain their own property. Giving it away would reduce that incentive, harming the community overall.â
The Foundationâs position has since evidently evolved and its members note with dismay that the timing of ECCâs decision is already harming the development of new initiatives, such as the ECCâs proposed dev fund and community sentiment collection efforts on the matter. It states:
âIf ECC continues to hold the trademark, they can arbitrarily enforce a new dev fund by NU4. Therefore any sentiment we collect [...] regarding a new dev fund are ultimately meaningless. The Foundation was not established to engage in decentralization theater, and we will not lend our credibility to legitimize a hollow process.â
The Foundationâs members have also critiqued the ECCâs stated justification for reneging on the trademark sharing arrangement â that the company envisions the evolution of an alternative governance model â and dismissed it as a ânebulous promise to share control with âsome future hypothetical entity that may or may not come into beingâ.â
As reported, this summer a new blockchain network dubbed âYcash,â forked off of the main Zcash blockchain.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the views of Bitcoin Insider. Every investment and trading move involves risk - this is especially true for cryptocurrencies given their volatility. We strongly advise our readers to conduct their own research when making a decision.