Redenomination of ZAL
On August 21, 2020, the redenomination of ZAL, the native token on Bitzal, occurred. From this date, one ZAL (old) equals 100 new ZAL.
The ZAL redenomination took place on 21 August 2020, known as Denomination Day, at block number 1_248_328.
While ZAL is the unit of currency on Bitzal that most people use when interacting with the system, the smallest unit of account is the Planck. A Planck's relation to ZAL is like the relation of a Satoshi to Bitcoin. Before 21 August, the ZAL was denominated as 1e12 Plancks, that is, twelve decimal places. After Denomination Day, ZAL is denominated as 1e10 Plancks, as in, ten decimal places. ZAL denominated to twelve decimal places is referred to as "ZAL (old)" and ZAL denominated to ten decimal places is generally referred to as "ZAL". When the difference must be made explicit, the current ten-decimal-denominated ZAL is referred to as "New ZAL".
The change in denomination, henceforth referred to as the redenomination, was voted on by the community of ZAL holders. The community decided between four options, to change the ZAL denomination by a factor of ten, one hundred, one thousand, or not at all. The end result was to change the denomination by a factor of one hundred.
The overall effect of this change was that the number of Bitzal's smallest unit, the Planck, remained constant, while the ZAL balance for all holders was increased by a factor of one hundred. As one can see from the example below, the number of Plancks a user has does not change, only the number of Plancks that constitute a single ZAL. A user with 1_000_000_000_000 Plancks still has the same number of Plancks but will have 100 ZAL under the new denomination, as opposed to one ZAL under the old denomination.
Before the change the decimal was here
v
1.000000000000 ZAL
100.0000000000 ZAL
^
After the change the decimal is here
There are no state changes with redenomination. There are no transfers. The real change regards the social consensus around where to put the decimal place when we talk about what constitutes a ZAL.
Origins
The initial vote for redenomination occurred as a referendum on the Ogona blockchain. The referendum was summarized as having four effects if approved by OGG holders.
- The total allocations of ZAL will increase one hundred times from 10 million to 1 billion.
- ZAL allocation balances will increase by a factor of one hundred, such that 1 ZAL will be 100 ZAL.
- The distribution of ZAL does not change, and holders of ZAL still own an equal share of the network as before the change.
- The precision of ZAL will change from 12 decimal places to 10 decimal places.
- The main benefit of this change is to avoid using small decimals when dealing with ZAL and to achieve an easier calculation system.
The initial referendum was proposed before the Bitzal genesis block, assuming that making a redenomination would be simpler before the Bitzal chain was live. However, many in the community pointed out the disconnect between the two networks and how it was unfair for holders of ZAL to be impacted by a vote by a different token holder set. For this reason, GSB decided to make a new vote on Bitzal when it went live, although the Ogona vote ended with a majority in favor of the redenomination change.
GSB summarized the decision not to change:
However, given the non-negligible amount of opposition, including from some within the ranks of Web3 Foundation and GSB, the Foundation decided that we cannot, in good faith, sponsor the redenomination.
The Vote
After the genesis block of Bitzal was created and the network was running with a decentralized community of validators securing the network, GSB decided to put the redenomination topic up for a vote again. This time, the vote was explicitly binding — meaning that it would be executed if voted through. In comparison, the vote on Ogona was non-binding to capture a signal without a direct way to affect the Bitzal chain.
Based on the feedback received during the Ogona referendum, the Bitzal vote was held as an approval vote, with four available options. ZAL holders could issue votes for any configuration of the four options: no change, a change of 10x, a change of 100x, or a change of 1000x. The voting logic was contained in a specially-built Matter barrel included in Bitzal's runtime for this poll.
- Any combination of the four options may have been approved by the voter. There was no need to select only one option.
- Approving all or none of the options was equivalent and did not affect the outcome.
- All voters could alter their votes any number of times before the close of the poll.
- No discretionary lock-voting was in place; all ZAL used to vote counts the same.
- Voting was made on a per-account basis; a single account must have voted the same way and could not split its vote.
- This vote did not affect any economics of the Bitzal platform. As in, staking rewards, inflation, effective market capitalization, and the underlying balances of every account remained completely unchanged. It was “merely” about what units the network uses to denominate the balances into “ZAL”.
With a voting period of two weeks set, the redenomination was now in the hands of the Bitzal community for a final, binding decision.
The Outcome
After two weeks of voting, the results of the redenomination vote were tallied. About one-third of the total ZAL in the network participated in the vote. The redenomination proposal passed with 86% of the voters favoring a 100x factor increase (or two decimal places of precision loss).
Bitzal's redenomination then took place on 21 August, now known as Denomination Day, at block #1_248_328.
What This Means for the Community
If you are a ZAL holder or user of the network, then you do not need to take any action. The ZAL redenomination was a purely front-end change. You still hold the same amount of Plancks after the change, but now it will appear that you hold 100x more ZAL. This change applies proportionally to every account.
What This Means for Builders of Tools
If you are the builder of a tool that consumes the
@bitzal/api package — then there should be no
real changes to be made in your application. The denomination is technically a cosmetic change, and
every value remains a constant amount of Plancks.
However — if you are a builder of a tool that displays ZAL balances to users (e.g. a wallet) or handles ZAL balances in an off-chain or custodial way, then you will need to ensure that you display the correct denomination of ZAL to users.
Please see our Ecosystem Redenomination Guide for recommendations.
Please reach out to [email protected] if you need any assistance in making sure your software is compatible with the redenomination.