zooko🛡🦓🦓🦓 ⓩ

Freedom maximalist. Good vibes only.

[zooko🛡🦓🦓🦓 ⓩ @zooko]

Zcash is winning.

https://t.co/NeDXowomgK ⤵️

[Alina Chan @Ayjchan]

A US-based investigation of Covid origins should at minimum:

📧 Access all communications and data shared between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and US/international partners including but not limited to the EcoHealth Alliance (now shut down) and University of North Carolina

🧪 Assemble a team of scientists to curate and re-analyze relevant data and methodology e.g. relating to early cases, SC2 and close relative sequences, market and other animal/human sampling efforts

🕵️‍♀️ Evaluate the full range of intel available to US and its allies e.g. Germany's BND assessed lab origin with 80-95% certainty, US doctors in Wuhan said they heard of novel respiratory disease in mid Dec 2019, US intel says military was engaged in coronavirus research at the WIV, pangolin virus samples were sent there, and WIV staff were ill with possibly Covid in Nov 2019

📒 Search funding agencies, journals, databases and even commercial suppliers in the US and its allies for relevant proposals, reports, manuscripts, data entries, purchases

And ideally be bipartisan and even international 🌏 in nature, appointing investigators and scientists with a wide range of starting points, so that its findings are not easily politicized.

All of this could've been started in 2020 but here we are almost 7 years later with no such investigation in sight for a pandemic that harmed billions of people, killed at least 15 million people, caused an estimated $16 trillion in economic loss to the US alone, and pushed tens of millions of people around the world back into poverty and debt.

Without a bipartisan or international consensus on how the pandemic most likely happened, little has been done to prevent it happening all over again. If Covid can be considered a "trigger event" to warn the world of worse bio-catastrophes, there hasn't been any meaningful course correction.

[ZcashKenyaCommunity @ZcashEastAfrica]

African builders are helping shape the next chapter of Zcash.

And it’s happening on the ground.

From developer residencies and education programs to node infrastructure and community onboarding, teams across Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and beyond are making privacy-focused digital money more accessible.

They’re teaching, building, onboarding, and creating the local communities that every strong ecosystem needs.

This is what real ecosystem growth looks like.

Who’s an African Zcash builder, educator, or project we should spotlight next?

[Jeremiah @jeremiahrogers]

Be wary of anyone who has black and white thinking. If they think things are excellent or terrible and rarely express an opinion in the middle: run away.

Be wary of anyone who comes on too strong. What starts fast ends fast. Often if they love you at first sight they are interacting with a hallucination of you. That hallucination can change from hot to cold without you doing anything.

Be wary of anyone where you feel bad about yourself after hanging out with them. This doesn't mean they challenge you, that's fine. It's more like don't actually see you and you are just a prop in their show.

[zooko🛡🦓🦓🦓 ⓩ @zooko]

Huh! This is an excellent essay by Venkatesh Rao. It is excellent in historical detail, analyses of the current social/business/intellectual/political structure, and in his clarion call for pluralism. https://t.co/x3VSRMCmiq HT Tracy Harms

[Nostalgia @NostalgiaFolder]

IT security in 1990s

[Tracy Harms @kaleidic]

@zooko Sorry, I must finish @vgr’s essay “EA Safety” first!

[Mineᙇ 🛡️ @taminevg]

An individual's manifesto

Zcash was not created to represent a country, a government, or an institution.

Its deeper purpose is different: to give individuals more control over their own money, privacy, and choices.

That is the kind of sovereignty that matters here.

Not the sovereignty of a state over a territory, but the sovereignty of a person over what belongs to them.

Zcash can be used by people in very different contexts, across borders, cultures, and political systems.

The point is not to reject governments or institutions.

It is to make sure they do not become the center of the network or the source of its legitimacy.

Zcash makes the most sense when it remains focused on the people who use it: people who want more control over their own money, more privacy, and more freedom to decide what they reveal.

When we talk about sovereignty, we usually think about states.

But individual sovereignty is much closer to everyday life.

It means having meaningful control over what is yours.

Your money.
Your data.
Your privacy.
Your choices.

As Zcash grows, one of the most important questions may be this:

how do we evolve without shifting power away from the individual?

Without a flag defining its purpose.

Without a single institution determining its direction.

And without losing the idea that makes Zcash different:

privacy and control in the hands of the people who use it.

Privacy is freedom.
Privacy is normal.

@Zcash
@zcashbrazil
@ZcashFoundation

[Michae2xl ᙇ @michael2xl]

Living on shielded ZEC alone is already possible in 13 countries, with no bank account, like any other asset listed on a DEX. What is missing is not technology; it is people, new merchants. Decentralization only advances on individual trust. Shielded alone will not win. Spend it, swap it, settle it p2p, and bring one person you trust.

Shielded + DEXs + P2P system are a powerful stack.

https://t.co/11oFzs805l Try it, verify it, and bring one person you trust. A freer, more sovereign future gets built one trusted trade at a time.

[zooko🛡🦓🦓🦓 ⓩ @zooko]

Vitalik’s essay “Galaxy-Brain resistance” may be an instant classic. It’s highly relevant to today’s headlines, and you should read it right now! But it may also be timeless. “Galaxy-Brain” is a disease. This is how to be resistant to that disease. https://t.co/cqmJ2itVEw

[Zerodartz🛡 @Zerodartz]

and by doing a custom workaround to mimic ZSAs the underlying system is likely very centralized and could be full of security and privacy issues

[mine Zcash ᙇ🛡 @mineZcash]

Two theories:

1. Same old oridinals grifters now on Zcash to ride the hype train.
2. They are adversaries harvesting your private addresses along with IP address, device info, etc... to use against you in the future.

Either way, don't give them your hard earned ZEC

[zooko🛡🦓🦓🦓 ⓩ @zooko]

@JackRhysider yes

[Alex Tabarrok @ATabarrok]

What Real Regulatory Capture Actually Looks Like https://t.co/nGt2a4QkAi

[zooko🛡🦓🦓🦓 ⓩ @zooko]

@oconnor663 @BarryPCotter @ByrneHobart @alexbronzini https://t.co/8tdCnXJp5q

[zooko🛡🦓🦓🦓 ⓩ @zooko]

@nate_zec Do a randomized controlled trial. Populate two otherwise identical universes with (A) people who feel greater moral obligation to those closer, or (B) people who feel equal moral obligation. I predict that as time passes, the first universe will be better than the second.

[zooko🛡🦓🦓🦓 ⓩ @zooko]

@clesaege @robinhanson @ATabarrok @maxdesalle @matthuang @seer_pm @ZcashLabs Exactly! Except for one critical detail: the first few iterations of this, at least, will be *non-binding*. So the part in the screenshot that says "->action taken" is wrong. Please read https://t.co/HgyJ6BRY7k for why. Other than that: Exactly! Let's do it!!

[Jason McGee 🛡 @aquietinvestor]

https://t.co/mzEotijGGF

[Newf @NoahNewfield]

@zooko Same. Not often you get to see the exact moment technology changes someone’s life

Emphasizes the importance of telling the stories of why what you’re building matters

[Jason McGee 🛡 @aquietinvestor]

Zcash governance is a superpower, and part of what gives ZEC value. It gives us a way to keep the bar for changing the protocol high, while still being able to coordinate major upgrades when they’re needed.

The process brings together stakeholders with different interests and incentives: coinholders, community panels, development orgs, and others. No single group can control the protocol or push through a major change on its own.

Coinholders and community panels are both inputs into rough consensus. If they disagree, the default is that nothing changes. That is what makes the process hard to capture and keeps the burden of proof on anyone proposing a major change.

We saw this firsthand with Zcash Shielded Assets. Every community panel supported ZSAs, but coinholders overwhelmingly opposed them. There wasn’t enough agreement across the different stakeholder groups, so ZSAs didn’t move forward. That’s the process working as intended.

The result is that Zcash can be conservative without becoming stuck, which makes the network more credible and ZEC more valuable. Bitcoin has struggled to coordinate major protocol changes. Zcash proved with Ironwood that we can. Quantum resistance and scalability are coming next.

Being resistant to capture while still being able to deliver important upgrades increases confidence in the network, drives demand for ZEC, and ultimately translates into a higher price.

[zooko🛡🦓🦓🦓 ⓩ @zooko]

I watched this whole thing and literally teared up.

[Justin Hart @justin_hart]

I'm not crying, you're crying. @neuralink for a man with ALS.

[Tim Sweeney @TimSweeneyEpic]

@paulg Haters tried killing X by making up stories of its impending collapse, hoping for a self-fulfilling prophesy. That failed, so they attacked X defenders hoping public ostracization would scare people into silence. Result: compliant folks departed and the confident folks stayed.