Late last month, I organized a poll for ZecHub that contained 10 multiple-choice questions about various topics related to the Dev Fund and was conducted through Helios. You can view a copy of the poll and the results here. I’ve also pasted the results below in a separate post.
Last week, I worked with the Brazilian, Korean, Russian, and Spanish communities to translate the poll into their respective languages to gather their communities’ perspectives on these issues. Polling in these communities is currently being conducted and we will release the results in the coming week. Thank you to @AidenZ, @artkor, @gordonesTV, @Michae2xl, and @vito for their help.
On Sunday, @paulbrigner distributed the poll to the Zcash Ad Hoc Caucus (ZAC) in order to reach a wider audience. Additionally, I am currently putting together a poll for core engineers and developers to assess their views on these issues.
While the poll isn’t perfect—no poll is—it’s a good first iteration that addresses many of the issues related to the Dev Fund discussions. After obtaining the results from these polls, we plan to conduct additional polls that drill down into more specific issues and get us closer to determining consensus. We also plan to incorporate questions and topics raised in the “Moving the Dev Fund Discussion Forward” thread by @peacemonger, @skyl, and others that did not make it into the current ZCAP poll.
The intention of these polls is to supplement the polls the Zcash Foundation circulates to ZCAP and offer a broader survey of the Dev Fund options and key issues surrounding these discussions. We chose to use Helios because the community is familiar with the platform, it protects the anonymity of respondents, and it is relatively Sybil-resistant. We want these community polls to be as collaborative as possible, so if you have any feedback on the current poll or any topics or questions you’d like to see in future polls, please use this thread to share your views. I will also use this thread to share the results of the polls we conduct.
Additionally, I conducted a survey among the Russian-speaking community. I wanted to reach as many people as possible, so I released an article for those who know what talking about and a detailed video on the evolution of Dev Fund to support the survey for newbies on YouTube channel here
The video received 17 likes, but participation in the poll failed to reach a large number of votes. It’s hard for me to pinpoint the main reason why people aren’t very active. Probably because people trust the current governance model and it’s tacit acceptance. They probably aren’t interested in the topic. Or maybe because Google registration for Helios was required.
As @artkor mentioned above, the results of the Russian poll have been released. There were 6 participants in total. You can view the results here: Опрос ZecHub о судьбе Фонда разработки (Фонда развития). I’ve also provided the translated results below.
Question #1: Which of the following statements best reflects your opinion?
The Dev Fund should be renewed after the next halving in late 2024. [5]
The Dev Fund should end, and 100% of the block reward should go to miners. [1]
Question #2: If the Dev Fund is renewed, it:
Should remain 20% of the block reward [4]
Should be less than 20% of the block reward [1]
Should be more than 20% of the block reward [1]
Question #3: If the Dev Fund is renewed, how long should it last for before having to be renewed again?
1 year [3]
2 years [1]
3 years [0]
4 years [2]
Question #4: Which Dev Fund model do you support most?
A direct funding model where a portion of the block rewards goes directly to organizations (e.g. ECC, ZF, ZCG) similar to the current version of the Dev Fund. [1]
A non-direct funding model like or similar to the Zcash Funding Bloc, where, for example, funds locked in a multi-signature wallet are allocated by trusted community participants through major and minor grants. [4]
An alternative model or option not listed above. [0]
The Dev Fund should not be renewed. [1]
Question #5: Do you support extending the current Dev Fund for one year to give the community more time to explore and implement a non-direct funding model, like the Zcash Funding Bloc? See link to draft ZIP below.
Yes [3]
No [3]
Question #6: If the current direct Dev Fund model is renewed, would you support more independent entities (in addition to the existing three) receiving a slice of the Dev Fund even if that means giving less % to the existing recipients?
Yes [5]
No [1]
Question #7: Which Dev Fund recipient has had the MOST positive impact on the Zcash ecosystem?
Electric Coin Company [4]
Zcash Foundation [1]
Zcash Community Grants [1]
Question #8: Which Dev Fund recipient has had the LEAST positive impact on the Zcash ecosystem?
Electric Coin Company [1]
Zcash Foundation [3]
Zcash Community Grants [2]
Question #9: Zcash Community Grants is a committee under the Zcash Foundation, and not a separate organization. Would you support Zcash Community Grants becoming a fully-independent entity capable of managing its own operations and organizational structure?
Yes [5]
No [1]
Question #10: The Zcash Trademark Agreement is a bilateral agreement between ECC and ZF that ultimately determines what is called “Zcash”. Among other things, the Agreement requires both entities to sign off on any network upgrade before it can be implemented. In addition, neither party is permitted to take actions that violate “the clear consensus of the Zcash community.” Earlier this year, ECC announced its intention to terminate the Agreement. If ECC unilaterally terminates the Agreement without concession from ZF, then ZF will gain sole ownership of the trademark. Which of the following statements best reflects your opinion on the trademark?
The Zcash Foundation should maintain unilateral control over the trademark, including governing network upgrades, soliciting community sentiment through ZCAP and other methods. [0]
The trademark should be limited to addressing violations of misuse and abuse only, and should not be used to govern network upgrades. [4]
The trademark should be completely invalidated. [2]
Feedback about the questions themselves: the way questions 7 and 8 are phrased make it difficult to interpret the results. When you are forced to rank options it does not necessarily means that you consider that the last ranked is bad (or it does mean that, but there is no way to tell). I’d prefer some way to evaluate each recipient on its own. (To be clear, of course I’m asking this because ZF is performing poorly in those polls, and I’m interested in knowing why!)
Hi @conradoplg. Thank you for the feedback. First, I agree that force-ranking options doesn’t necessarily mean the lowest-ranked option is bad. These two questions are variations of the ones I asked in Questions #5-#7 of the May 2023 Dev Fund Community Poll. I found the responses difficult to interpret and wanted to see if the results would be clearer if participants were asked to choose the entity that had the most and least positive impact.
I’m planning to circulate the poll to core engineers in the next few days and hope you’ll participate. Since many respondents are members of the organizations in question, it might make sense to remove these two questions from the poll. Alternatively, do you think it would be better to ask participants to evaluate each entity individually?
Thanks for starting this thread! I sent out ZURE’s dev fund survey yesterday. The plan is to poll ZURE contacts first, then make the survey public next Monday. So if you’ve received an email from ZURE, please make sure to submit your responses before Monday.
Next week, I will post the results of the private survey here along with a link to the public survey.
The results of the Spanish language poll are now available. There were 19 participants in total. You can view the results here: Encuesta Sobre el Fondo de Desarrollo de Zcash. I’ve also included the translated results below. Thank you to @GordonesTV for all the help!
Question #1: Which of the following statements best reflects your opinion?
The Dev Fund should be renewed after the next halving in late 2024. [14]
The Dev Fund should end, and 100% of the block reward should go to miners. [5]
Question #2: If the Dev Fund is renewed, it:
Should remain 20% of the block reward [8]
Should be less than 20% of the block reward [8]
Should be more than 20% of the block reward [3]
Question #3: If the Dev Fund is renewed, how long should it last for before having to be renewed again?
1 year [9]
2 years [8]
3 years [1]
4 years [1]
Question #4: Which Dev Fund model do you support most?
A direct funding model where a portion of the block rewards goes directly to organizations (e.g. ECC, ZF, ZCG) similar to the current version of the Dev Fund. [5]
A non-direct funding model like or similar to the Zcash Funding Bloc, where, for example, funds locked in a multi-signature wallet are allocated by trusted community participants through major and minor grants. [7]
An alternative model or option not listed above. [3]
The Dev Fund should not be renewed. [4]
Question #5: Do you support extending the current Dev Fund for one year to give the community more time to explore and implement a non-direct funding model, like the Zcash Funding Bloc? See link to draft ZIP below.
Yes [10]
No [9]
Question #6: If the current direct Dev Fund model is renewed, would you support more independent entities (in addition to the existing three) receiving a slice of the Dev Fund even if that means giving less % to the existing recipients?
Yes [13]
No [6]
Question #7: Which Dev Fund recipient has had the MOST positive impact on the Zcash ecosystem?
Electric Coin Company [5]
Zcash Foundation [3]
Zcash Community Grants [11]
Question #8: Which Dev Fund recipient has had the LEAST positive impact on the Zcash ecosystem?
Electric Coin Company [11]
Zcash Foundation [6]
Zcash Community Grants [2]
Question #9: Zcash Community Grants is a committee under the Zcash Foundation, and not a separate organization. Would you support Zcash Community Grants becoming a fully-independent entity capable of managing its own operations and organizational structure?
Yes [16]
No [3]
Question #10: The Zcash Trademark Agreement is a bilateral agreement between ECC and ZF that ultimately determines what is called “Zcash”. Among other things, the Agreement requires both entities to sign off on any network upgrade before it can be implemented. In addition, neither party is permitted to take actions that violate “the clear consensus of the Zcash community.” Earlier this year, ECC announced its intention to terminate the Agreement. If ECC unilaterally terminates the Agreement without concession from ZF, then ZF will gain sole ownership of the trademark. Which of the following statements best reflects your opinion on the trademark?
The Zcash Foundation should maintain unilateral control over the trademark, including governing network upgrades, soliciting community sentiment through ZCAP and other methods. [6]
The trademark should be limited to addressing violations of misuse and abuse only, and should not be used to govern network upgrades. [7]
The trademark should be completely invalidated. [5]
The results of the Brazilian (Portuguese) Community poll are now available. There were 25 participants in total. You can view the results here: Pesquisa Para O Dev Fund. I’ve also included the translated results below. Thank you to @vito for all the help!
Question #1: Which of the following statements best reflects your opinion?
The Dev Fund should be renewed after the next halving in late 2024. [23]
The Dev Fund should end, and 100% of the block reward should go to miners. [2]
Question #2: If the Dev Fund is renewed, it:
Should remain 20% of the block reward [15]
Should be less than 20% of the block reward [6]
Should be more than 20% of the block reward [4]
Question #3: If the Dev Fund is renewed, how long should it last for before having to be renewed again?
1 year [8]
2 years [12]
3 years [1]
4 years [4]
Question #4: Which Dev Fund model do you support most?
A direct funding model where a portion of the block rewards goes directly to organizations (e.g. ECC, ZF, ZCG) similar to the current version of the Dev Fund. [9]
A non-direct funding model like or similar to the Zcash Funding Bloc, where, for example, funds locked in a multi-signature wallet are allocated by trusted community participants through major and minor grants. [13]
An alternative model or option not listed above. [3]
The Dev Fund should not be renewed. [0]
Question #5: Do you support extending the current Dev Fund for one year to give the community more time to explore and implement a non-direct funding model, like the Zcash Funding Bloc? See link to draft ZIP below.
Yes [24]
No [1]
Question #6: If the current direct Dev Fund model is renewed, would you support more independent entities (in addition to the existing three) receiving a slice of the Dev Fund even if that means giving less % to the existing recipients?
Yes [22]
No [3]
Question #7: Which Dev Fund recipient has had the MOST positive impact on the Zcash ecosystem?
Electric Coin Company [10]
Zcash Foundation [8]
Zcash Community Grants [6]
Question #8: Which Dev Fund recipient has had the LEAST positive impact on the Zcash ecosystem?
Electric Coin Company [12]
Zcash Foundation [2]
Zcash Community Grants [9]
Question #9: Zcash Community Grants is a committee under the Zcash Foundation, and not a separate organization. Would you support Zcash Community Grants becoming a fully-independent entity capable of managing its own operations and organizational structure?
Yes [22]
No [3]
Question #10: The Zcash Trademark Agreement is a bilateral agreement between ECC and ZF that ultimately determines what is called “Zcash”. Among other things, the Agreement requires both entities to sign off on any network upgrade before it can be implemented. In addition, neither party is permitted to take actions that violate “the clear consensus of the Zcash community.” Earlier this year, ECC announced its intention to terminate the Agreement. If ECC unilaterally terminates the Agreement without concession from ZF, then ZF will gain sole ownership of the trademark. Which of the following statements best reflects your opinion on the trademark?
The Zcash Foundation should maintain unilateral control over the trademark, including governing network upgrades, soliciting community sentiment through ZCAP and other methods. [13]
The trademark should be limited to addressing violations of misuse and abuse only, and should not be used to govern network upgrades. [4]
The Trademark Agreement should be completely invalidated. [8]
Up until 2 minutes ago, access to this survey was limited to verified Zcashers and was distributed to roughly 200 people. My plan is to share a complete report next week.
Thanks to everyone for hanging in there and filling these out!
The direct / non-direct funding split is misleading. ZCG could be considered non-direct funding, but is funded directly in a single address. Multisig is a mechanism and we can have non-direct funding with or without it.
Q5 is confusing and kinda of backwards, since the prevalent sentiment I see is that removing the devfund would reduce sell pressure. It would be better to spell out each scenario instead of presenting one and asking Agree/Disagree
All of the Agree/Disagree questions need a “I don’t know / I’m not sure” option
Q6 is weird and super leading. Of course if ZCG doesn’t have runway, it would be disproportionally be affected. So what is the point of the question?
Q7 is basically, “Here are all the reasons why we need an 1-year extension. Do you support it?” which is extremely leading. There are many ways to have a non-direct funding model without a 1-year extension. On the other hand, it could also be argued that the proper mechanism could take less or more than that.
I’ll echo this comment. The more that I’ve reflected on this topic, the more that it has become clear that building the DAO Fund system needs to be a joint initiative, with funding, with a detailed/ agreed design/ implementation plan, and with upfront commitments by all of the stakeholders/ contributors that the Zcash ecosystem would consider reasonable. Otherwise it runs the huge risk of becoming all talk, but little enforceable action.
Yes, this also applies to my proposal. Which in its revised form is recommending two direct block subsidy recipients (ZF and FPF), but also accommodates ECC, ZCG, and Qedit indirectly as receivers of funds distributed by either ZF or FPF.
The existing polls don’t make distinctions that can accurately gauge sentiment for my proposal/ anything similar to it.
A nice means of Manufacturing Consent
Overall its a productive set of polling questions, but taking these responses as an example:
It feels a bit dissociated that here is how I try to express that 1. I don’t support a 1-year extension, 2. I could support a new 4-year direct Dev Fund, 3. I support the building of a DAO fund, 4. I also would support the Do Nothing scenario
Here are the aggregate results of the alternate polls conducted so far (with the results of the Korean community poll still to come). The spreadsheet I created to tally these results can be found here.
The results of questions 7 and 8 are obviously of interest to me personally. I plan to open a forum poll to delve more deeply into the question of whether the community thinks that ZF’s activities deliver value to the Zcash mission and ecosystem but, for now, I’m curious about one thing.
All else being equal, you would expect that the impact an organisation has on the Zcash ecosystem would be broadly proportional to the resources at its disposal, in which case the ranking should be ZCG top, ECC second and ZF bottom. The net scores reflect that ranking (ZCG +4; ECC +1; ZF -4), so I’m curious…
If you were a respondent in these polls, did you take the disparity in funding between the three Dev Fund organisations into account when considering their impact on the Zcash ecosystem?
I disagree that the results “make no sense”. The initial responses indicate that opinions about the ECC are very polarized, with respondents having strong feelings both in favor and against the organization.
hopefully everyone is, familiar with all the teams and the contributions they have made.
