The thread is ten posts. Two of them carry the argument: Felstead’s opening case against the lockbox, and Zooko’s correction of how the 12% already flows. This page is a reading of those posts. It is not a second proposal.
His correction
Felstead’s first post says the Future Dev and Legal Defense Fund proposal turns off ZCG’s incoming 8%, pours it into a lockbox nobody has agreed how to spend, orders a 50,000 ZEC transfer from the ZCG treasury to the NSM, and leaves the 12% coinholder stream running. Zooko’s reply grants the first half of that list and rejects the last clause. On his account the bigger tap is already going into a lockbox. The ZIP would make the ZCG 8% do the same thing: keep a current treasury, and send new issuance somewhere it cannot be spent until a later ZIP.
He published three snapshots, all in dollars at $1,300 per ZEC. Today, the spendable ZCG treasury is the fund still receiving issuance, marked at $127 million, beside a $91 million spendable Coinholder-Controlled Fund treasury and a $98 million CCF lockbox. If nothing changes, he has the ZCG treasury at $267 million by November 2028 and the CCF lockbox at $308 million, with the spendable CCF treasury still $91 million. If his ZIP activates on 15 December 2026, the ZCG treasury falls to $69 million and stops growing, a new lockbox reaches $133 million by November 2028, the NSM rises from $0.5 million to $65 million, and the coinholder rows match the do-nothing path.
The $65 million NSM figure is 50,000 ZEC at the price he assumed. The ZCG treasury does not fall by that same $65 million on the table he printed. Treat the table as his exhibit, and the draft ZIP as the text that would actually move coins.
The plumbing Felstead added the next morning
After Zooko’s tables, Felstead wrote the pipes out in full. Today the 8% runs into the ZCG bucket and out as prospective grants. The 12% runs into a sealed lockbox, opened once so far by ZIP 271, and only then into the coinholder bucket for retroactive grants. Under the lockbox ZIP, the 8% would run into a new sealed box whose spending, purpose, and governance are undecided, the ZCG bucket would lose 50,000 ZEC to the NSM and then fund grants only until it runs down, and the 12% would stay as it is.
His point is that the two streams were different on purpose. In 2024, advisory polling settled on an 8% direct ZCG stream and a sealed 12%, rather than sealing all 20%. A coinholder poll, as he reports it, put about 64% of the ZEC cast on that split. ZCAP’s runoff came out at 67%. He argues that undoing one side of a split which both constituencies backed is itself a change, and that it needs the same kind of broad support the protocol has required for other contested changes. He also says a lockbox cannot admit that its treasury is too large. It has no one inside it to say so, and it creates a later fight over who holds the key.
Daira-Emma Hopwood’s post in the same thread is about a different draft, the Zcash Adoption Pool. She notes that ZAP keeps the ZCG stream until the 2028 halving. Felstead agreed on the expiry and kept his objection to ZAP’s eligibility rules. That exchange is not the lockbox mechanism, and this coin is not a comment on ZAP.
Five questions he put to the ZIP’s owners
The last post is addressed to Zooko, ebfull, and aquietinvestor. None of the ten posts is their answer. Abbreviated, the questions are:
- Why only ZCG, and why now, rather than at the scheduled expiry in 2028? On Zooko’s own table the coinholder side holds $189 million against ZCG’s $127 million, and the 12% keeps accruing.
- Why 50,000 ZEC regardless of price? He would rather both spendable treasuries be examined, commitments and reserves protected, and genuine surplus returned to the NSM.
- Who speaks for the new lockbox? Legal defence matters, and a sealed box does not pay a lawyer when one is needed.
- Why call the NSM transfer a donation when the draft says the committee shall make it?
- What was the trade? Josh Swihart had argued that ending one stream and not the other leaves half the problem, then endorsed this ZIP. Felstead asks whether sparing the 12% was the point.
A memecoin cannot answer any of those. They are questions about a consensus rule on Zcash. The people who can answer them are the authors of pull request 1428 and whoever shows up on the thread.
Where the coin sits
the zcg memecoin takes Zooko’s side of the naming problem and none of his authority. He asked for the ZCG stream to be locked the way he says the coinholder stream already is. We issued a coin whose subject is that ask. Buying it does not deposit ZEC into a lockbox, does not satisfy the “shall” in the draft, and does not register a coinholder vote. It is a meme about a governance fight, sold as a meme.
If you want the specification, read the ZIP. If you want the objection, read Felstead. If you want the correction in his own words, read post 4. The overview on this site is a summary of those three documents, with the figures labeled as his.
the zcg memecoin is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by Zooko Wilcox, the Zcash Foundation, Electric Coin Company, or ZCG. Nothing here is financial advice.