It's Only Carbon: Daira-Emma Hopwood, the Zcash Grants Vote, and Forks on Stage in Amsterdam

Eighteen years ago today, on 13 November 2008, Satoshi told a cryptography mailing list that a proof-of-work chain solves the Byzantine Generals' Problem. This week the Zcash generals stopped agreeing on block times and started arguing about money, and I have two hours of one of them on tape.

S17 E50: Daira-Emma Hopwood on Zcash at 10, Halo, ZSAs and the Fight Over Grants

We recorded in Mexico, at an undisclosed location, on the weekend Zcash turned ten. Somebody had booked a Halloween party into the same building, so Scooby-Doo costumes kept drifting past while we talked trusted setups. On the table sat the blowtorched motherboard from Peter Todd's 2016 ceremony laptop, which I own now. Daira-Emma Hopwood, who designed that ceremony's protocol and co-wrote the Halo paper, picked it up, came away with black fingertips, and said: "It's only carbon."

Then the corrections started. Daira disagreed with me at least four times and won most rounds. The ceremony did not break Sprout; the BCTV14 proof system did. Zcash did not catch its Orchard bug thanks to some secret frontier model; a person using a public model found it on 31 May, and it was switched off within 48 hours. The second hour is the one you will forward: Daira declares an interest as a founders reward recipient, defends the Dev Fund and the grants slice, talks about harassment on X without softening a word, and says plainly who needs private money most. "They can't win, because we need financial privacy."

THE HOUSE CRITIC REVIEWS

Not Vlad. Has never designed a ceremony, attends them anyway.

Two hours of Costea carrying theses into the room and carrying them out in pieces, which is the most honest thing a host can do with a microphone and a burnt motherboard. Hopwood argues grants like a union organizer who read the Zerocash paper twice and the room three times; the Scooby-Doo extras were the only people present who thought it was a costume party.

Grade: A

On stage in Amsterdam

Last week I was on the main stage at Bitcoin Amsterdam. I gave a 15-minute presentation called "Forks: from Bcash and Zcash to Bdash and eCash."

I also moderated a panel with Bitcoin Core developer Sjors Provoost, Paul Sztorc, Rob Hamilton and Oleg Andreev, about upgrading Bitcoin via forks at a time when we cannot reach consensus on anything. The video will go up soon. For now, two photos from the room.

Meanwhile in Bitcoin

• Zcash grants go to a vote: from 16 to 30 November, coinholders and community panels poll a draft ZIP by Sean Bowe, Zooko and Jason McGee that would pull 50,000 ZEC (about 55% of the grants treasury) out of circulation and redirect ZCG's 8% slice of new coins to a development and legal defense fund. Daira defended exactly that slice on my microphone a week earlier. Separately, developers already want 20-second blocks, three days after NU7 shipped 25. CoinDesk on the vote · CoinDesk on 20-second blocks
• Bitcoin under $70,000: it dipped below early Friday, the lowest since August. US spot ETFs bled about $1.44B over five straight sessions (Nov 5 to 11) and are now net negative for 2026, roughly $1.56B. Add Nvidia's CEO walking out, a 10-year yield above 5% and a December Fed hike priced near 90%. CoinDesk on ETFs · CoinDesk markets
• Strategy gets benched: MSCI now counts companies without substantial operating assets as "nonoperating," so Strategy leaves its global indexes on 30 November. Passive money has to sell. MSTR fell 6% on Thursday. MarketWatch
• Binance clawback: the Justice Department says it has court authority to seize or restrain more than $1.2B of the October heist, and Binance says it covered the full $6.34B in user losses from company funds. Bitcoin Magazine

Watch, listen, rate

S17 E50 is on the site (MP3), with the long read next to it. Skip to 05:32 for the destroyed laptop, 21:15 for Crosslink and finality, 55:35 for the grants fight, 1:46:47 for AI and the Orchard bug. If you vote in that poll, or just tweet about it, hear the case from someone who signed up eleven years ago. Then find the show on Spotify, Apple or Fountain, rate it, and leave a one-line comment. I read every one.

Thanks

373 episodes, 328 guests, 748 hours of airtime, which is 31 days of me not shutting up. 219,893 listens and views in 2026 through October across audio, YouTube and X. Receipts at bitcoin-takeover.com/stats. Still taking shielded notes at vlad.zec.

In Bitcoin Takeover History

• S16 E51: Sean Bowe on Bitcoin, Zcash & Tachyon: Halo co-author, now co-author of the plan to drain the grants treasury.
• S16 E29: Zooko on eCash, Bitcoin & Zcash: the other founder's name on that ZIP, in his own words.
• S17 E28: Josh Swihart on Zcash's Comeback & the Orchard Bug: the company side of the 48-hour fix Daira describes.
• Zcash: The Privacy Moon Math Bitcoin Was Afraid to Include: my essay on the upgrade Bitcoin passed on.

History capsule

Satoshi, 13 November 2008, Cryptography Mailing List ("Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper"), replying to James A. Donald:

"The proof-of-work chain is a solution to the Byzantine Generals' Problem. ... If anyone was working on a different attack time, they switch to this one, because its proof-of-work chain is now longer."

Source: Satoshi Nakamoto Institute, Metzdowd archive

Eighteen years to the day. At 21:15 in E50, Daira explains why Zcash wants a finality layer next to proof of work: during a network split, the longest chain cannot tell you which block is final. Satoshi's generals only had to agree on an attack time. Nobody promised they would agree on a budget.

Coming up

• 16 to 30 November · Zcash grants polls for coinholders and community panels.
• 30 November · Strategy exits MSCI's global indexes.
• 8 to 9 December · Fed meeting, hike priced in. More dates: pretyflaco/bitcoinCalendar

This week's sponsors

Thanks to Cake Wallet (private wallets for ZEC, XMR and BTC, NU7-ready), LayerTwo Labs (drivechains on a Bitcoin fork that already launched), Orange Rock (self-custodial trading without KYC), SideShift (no-account swaps across dozens of coins), and Braiins Hashpower (rent hash rate on demand).

Keep it alive

No paid guests, and no sponsor gets editorial approval. If that matters to you: bitcoin-takeover.com/donate

It's only carbon. The argument is the part that survives.

See you next week. We got to try.

Vlad