Change of focus

Firo Improvement Proposals
1

Shouldn’t the main focus of Zcoin be the obvious one - the black markets? I currently see no momentum towards that whatsoever.
It kind of seems that the focus currently is normies and trying to play ball with the state and regulations.
To me it seems a pretty obvious dead-end because the state has no incentive to give away the power over its currency and normies always do what the state tells them to.
I think that only realistic scenario for Zcoin and cryptocurrencies in general to grow is to start with the black markets and then grow with the black markets as the state will keep making more harassing regulations.

Another idea I have is that Zcoin should sponsor some esports events to get attention as the crypto of gamers because of being ASIC-proof and etc so the network would grow among many individuals with single GPU-s instead of a handful of GPU farms.

Also what I thought Zcoin could be good at is anonymous crowdfunding. Since you support public and private transactions, the gathering of a fund could be public so people can see how much is left to reach the goal. At the same time the donations are private and after the goal is reached, you can mint the whole thing.

I’m happy that you keep making Zcoin more private and have plans to lose the trusted setup, but I feel there is something essential lacking in the adoption area. I know it’s tough trying to push cryptocurrencies while the world economy in somewhat fine and people have no incentives to look for alternatives to fiat, but this new ecosystem has to start from somewhere.

I hope this doesn’t come off as edgy rant, but I just really care about the project and would hate to see the development remain as a niche.

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The issue with focusing on black markets is that it can cause trouble in the eyes of regulators, which may hurt the network before it truly gains traction. I don’t think that having the public team pushing for dark net market adoption is a wise decision for this reason.

That said, it isn’t as if ZCoin couldn’t be used for dark-net markets right now. If an end user knows about ZCoin and the privacy guarantees afforded by the coin, then they could use it now. The reason Monero is gaining traction here is because the community has this stance and pushes it (for better or worse).

However, I think once Sigma and Lelantus are implemented, ZCoin will have stronger privacy guarantees (than current) to be used for this sort of market since the privacy set will be much higher (opt-out privacy versus opt-in.)

I’m definitely not saying that people should even interact w/ dark-net markets; this is purely hypothetical.

If ZCoin finds a way to mathematically prove supply auditability whilst simultaneously allowing for full privacy, then I think its a clear winner versus Monero’s decoy based privacy system. This combination of full privacy and audit-ability will lead to the growth you’re looking for, in my opinion. Supply guarantees and full privacy versus (w/ Monero) full privacy through decoys + supply audit-ability or (w/ ZCash) optional full privacy and lack of supply audit-ability
.

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@wellystock
Well thats not the case with bitcoin and that is the best example of a crypto that started with the blackmarkets.