Announcing: a Crowd Funding Campaign for a Gitcoin + Zcash Pilot

Community Collaborations
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What?

A crowd funding campaign to raise a grant-matching pool to run the first Gitcoin Quadratic Funding pilot experiment.

  • Gitcoin Quadratic Funding is a way to raise funds for projects where more distinct people backing a project allocates more overall funds to that project.
  • This crowd funding campaign is to set up the “matching pool” to provide grant matching. If it’s successful, a Gitcoin Quadratic Funding iteration will commence which is a new and crowd-driven approach to grants.

You can see the full proposal for the pilot program in Gitcoin / Quadratic Funding (Introducing Kevin Owocki). This thread is just about getting that project started.

Why?

Gitcoin Grants are a crowd-driven funding allocation process which can complement the existing Zcash development funding landscape. It would add a new option for projects seeking funding, and it also engages general Zcash users in deciding which projects are valuable.

How?

To donate to the initial grant-matching pool, read @owocki’s comment on the ZF Grant application page. (Sorry I can’t link to specific comments there.) I’ll cut’n’paste here, but please double check that page to see that the address is correct:

I pledge to refund all contributions if the $15k threshold isnt met by June 15th 2020, based upon the spot pirce at June 15 2020.

You can contribute by sending $ZEC to t1ZDfyfwNkyhYzQiRF7iE3wiob1vMp2VR1D or to the shielded address zs17lcwdj7qlqs9wt04akhs4ytm7k8r65pns6jghh5cdp09qeem5wclvhxpy08ylrwq9ggw50rtkzl (pls make sure to put a refund address in the metadata or else I wont know where to return the funds).

How Else?

If you are more interested in donating to specific projects, that happens after this matching pool threshold is reached. You may want to decide how to split any funds you want to donate between this initial kick-start donation versus later project applications.

Who?

  • @owocki posted to Gitcoin / Quadratic Funding (Introducing Kevin Owocki) - #16 by owocki proposing the project in detail.
  • This experiment is separate from ZF Grants, and it is not an official part of the nascent Major Grants committee. People at ECC have had conversations with @owocki and we’re planning an event coming up.
  • However, this crowd funding idea is just my own individual idea. I thought it would fit the spirit of crowd-directed funding to see if we could get it off the ground outside of any official organization.

Anything Else?

Yes, I’m matching donations.

I donated 10 ZEC just now, and I will further match up to 100 ZEC worth of donations! In other words, I’ll send a total of up to 110 ZEC to this donation drive. For donations to the z-addr I’ll have to rely on @owocki’s reporting to do grant matching, unless he publishes a Viewing Key. (Caution: If he does so, everyone will be able to see the reply-to addresses!)

At current prices, I’d be contributing roughly 1/3 of the funds needed for the $15k threshold, and if my matching maxed out we’d be about 2/3 of the way there. (Hint: if another whale made the same offer, then we’d hit the threshold if we max out donation matching.)

I hope we see interest from across the board, from whales to humble little tardigrades. Bring on the zeal!

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I also tweeted about this, in case you’re into that twitter stuff.

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Thanks so much for the donation Nathan! It really means a lot that you believe in this initiative.

For donations to the z-addr I’ll have to rely on @owocki’s reporting to do grant matching, unless he publishes a Viewing Key

In general I like to lean towards transparency but

Caution: If he does so, everyone will be able to see the reply-to addresses

this gives me pause about doing so. I dont want to leak anyones information without their consent, so maybe I can post a periodic screenshot of my wallet? Not cryptographically secure, but at least a good faith representation of where we stand.

Also: does the community have any questions after reading the proposal? Happy to answer them here or in another venue.

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I just contributed! Thanks Nathan for kicking this off.

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Nathan,

I think this is a fabulous idea. Thanks for getting the ball rolling. I hardly consider myself a “whale”, but I love Gitcoin and Ethereum almost as much as I love Zcash. With that sentiment in mind, I’m happy to step up to the plate and support this.

I just donated 10 ZEC now, and like Nathan, I will further match up to 100 ZEC worth of donations, bringing my total contribution to this campaign up to 110 ZEC, assuming that the community matches me ZEC for ZEC.

I’m also publishing a Zcash Sapling Viewing Key, which will allow the community to track my (matching) contributions to the Gitcoin shielded address.

The viewing key is:

zxviews1qwjyellpqqqqpq90fhud4n8e9gyry9s4hgcxhxmmw3dsl5qnsglmykm262dekf3u5n4sllsu6vs92jw0c7rnv2nfret4ccemx5zf2jptqfqjtgp4kw53ndmlknmrqc9apu37pv3tkkre7y6nq78g0a3fry4g8yz54fxpwuxtjqx2jv900f4m8htpw2dvxtgmc3ch703rep0ww5znkl7yyu0slrn08quq3qt7dr7aazag6l4c7pmqx6e6zh66zjznwnc4dc3sy9sehjchjmz5m

This key can be imported into the latest release of zcashd by running the command:

zcash-cli z_importviewingkey “zxviews1qwjyellpqqqqpq90fhud4n8e9gyry9s4hgcxhxmmw3dsl5qnsglmykm262dekf3u5n4sllsu6vs92jw0c7rnv2nfret4ccemx5zf2jptqfqjtgp4kw53ndmlknmrqc9apu37pv3tkkre7y6nq78g0a3fry4g8yz54fxpwuxtjqx2jv900f4m8htpw2dvxtgmc3ch703rep0ww5znkl7yyu0slrn08quq3qt7dr7aazag6l4c7pmqx6e6zh66zjznwnc4dc3sy9sehjchjmz5m” yes 820000

Note that the rescan blockheight is set to 820000 because this address was not in use before that height, and this will make importing the viewing key quick and painless.

Once you’ve imported the viewing key, you can run

zcash-cli z_viewtransaction d380873980a298921b2ca910dba679a8b4a5c23986fdf8209c43b605ae34ae38

(using the TXID that I linked above), to see the details of the transaction, which proves that while the TX is opaque on the blockchain, I did indeed send the initial 10 ZEC to the Gitcoin z-addr for this crowdfunding campaign. (note, some fields omitted below in the interest of being concise).

zcash@zcashd:~$ zcash-cli z_viewtransaction d380873980a298921b2ca910dba679a8b4a5c23986fdf8209c43b605ae34ae38
{
“txid”: “d380873980a298921b2ca910dba679a8b4a5c23986fdf8209c43b605ae34ae38”,
“outputs”: [
{
“type”: “sapling”,
“output”: 0,
“outgoing”: true,
“address”: “zs17lcwdj7qlqs9wt04akhs4ytm7k8r65pns6jghh5cdp09qeem5wclvhxpy08ylrwq9ggw50rtkzl”,
“value”: 10.00000000,
“valueZat”: 1000000000,
“memo”:
“memoStr”: “Initial contribution from @alchemydc for the Gitcoin Zcash Crowdfunding campaign. DC pledges to match Nathan’s pledge and will match contributions up to a total of 110 ZEC. See Announcing: a Crowd Funding Campaign for a Gitcoin + Zcash Pilot for details. \nReply-To:\nzs15ks5tpar6r8eje5ht2kjrfnrw7k2p824qxkruwtxwxhfq0qn8xuwueactdk0269jed0n7y2q8pf”

In the future I’d love to see GUI support for view keys, both in wallets like Zecwallet/Zecwallet-lite, as well as various block explorers. This kind of work could indeed be funded by this campaign!

OK community, the stage has been set. Let’s leverage the power of the Gitcoin community to inject some fresh developer energy into the Zcash ecosystem. Let’s do this. I’m ready to match your donations! Go!

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Sounds like @adityapk00 should put together a proposal on the Gitcoin platform :wink: (assuming the 15k goal is met)

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Actually, this is a great idea. I’d love to build viewkey import into zecwallet lite. That would be awesome.

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I just contributed. I’m excited for Gitcoin and Zcash to team up to create more funding opportunities for the community.

It’s time to BUILD!

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How about some way for us to see how close we are to the 15K goal? I heard there’s this cool library called SimpleGraph.js… :wink:

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We are at about $3k/$15k right now

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Thanks! I think this podcast, which argues to “perturbing innovation funding models” is somewhat relevant to this thread:

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Right now I see 11.1949 ZEC in t1ZDfyfwNkyhYzQiRF7iE3wiob1vMp2VR1D. Are the rest of donations to zs17lcwdj7qlqs9wt04akhs4ytm7k8r65pns6jghh5cdp09qeem5wclvhxpy08ylrwq9ggw50rtkzl ?

Does that exclude or include matching from myself and/or @alchemydc, or is it the literal balance? (If it’s the literal balance, I haven’t sent in any matching contributions yet, and I don’t know if @alchemydc has or has not.)

Can you tell me the ZEC amount so I can track how much I owe due to matching? I think we’ll need to filter out any funds from myself or @alchemydc (otherwise we might get into an endless matching loop :joy:).

If you have an easy way to post that each week, that’d be a nice way to track progress.

If you want help scripting that up I can find some time evenings this weekend.

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Posted a twitter update:

@gitcoin + #zcash pilot community fundraising is at $3k / $15k after the first week: [link to here elided]

Four weeks left to the June 15th deadline. #z2z #zeal

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Right now my balance is ZEC 83.00493278 which is worth about $3.5k !

Here is a screencap from my ZECwallet Screen Shot 2020-05-16 at 9... that includes both the shielded balance and the transparent balance . I know its not cryptographic proof, but its the closest thing I can provide for now :slight_smile:

Thank you for the offer to code something up. The hacker in me is seriously delighted by that option. I’d be happy to commit to just posting a screencap or update here every few days if that’s easier and more lightweight.

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I haven’t made any matching transfers yet. Have you @alchemydc?

If you haven’t yet, and we wait until the end, it will be easier to track progress, because we can multiple the current amount (minus our initial two 10 ZEC donations) by 3. In other words: (83 - 20) * 3 ≈ 189 ZEC ≈ $8888 USD.

That would be over halfway!

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I like community involvement, but we should ditch the quadratic part of the voting mechanism. It is not meaningfully possible in Zcash. In a sense it’s antithetical and it certainly is misleading.

In quadratic voting, $1 is is one vote. But $1,000 from the same person is not 1,000 votes. Voting power diminishes quadratically with how many votes you buy. This is a nice idea in theory as it prevents a plutocracy where the wealthy rule. The problem of course, is a wealthy account/address could split up its funds into multiple sybil accounts/addresses and pretend to be a “grass roots” set of voters. There are various proposals to deal with this by tracking identities, coin age, etc. But none of them work in zcash where you are supposed to be able to be anonymous.

Bottom line, quadratic voting gives a false impression of the properties any money based voting system has in Zcash. So we should just be clear this can be manipulated by well funded individuals because Zcash lets you remain anonymous.

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There are various proposals to deal with this by tracking identities, coin age, etc. But none of them work in zcash where you are supposed to be able to be anonymous.

Hi there,

I think that your concerns are super valid - sybil attacks (and collusion attacks) are a major attack vector to quadratic funding.

Research is ongoing about how to mitigate these issues, and some solutions we all recognize are: MACI, DIDs, KYC, SMS verification, OAuth, verifiable credentials, etc.

In the Ethereum ecosystem, we’ve used Github Accounts (and privacy-preserving SMS verification via BUILD- As a user, I want Sybil resistance via new identity mechanism, and to remove the aged github requirement, so we can be more sybil resistent. · Issue #6549 · gitcoinco/web · GitHub ) to make the system sybil resistent. As a mechanism of preserving privacy, Gitcoin knows the txids of each contribution, but does not expose them anywhere to the outside world.

I haven’t thought far enough into this to know exactly what the anti-sybil mechanism in a Gitcoin-ZEC prototype should be. It’d certainly be one of the important considerations to design around, and I would be happy to transprently co-design this with the ZEC community. My perspective is that, the upside of having decentralized funding mechanisms for the ecosystem, is worth the effort of trying to mitigate the problem. But if you don’t want to contribute to the crowdfund, or participate in the round, then I respect that.

Thanks,
Kevin

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By my (admittedly, rather simplistic math), given @nathan-at-least and @alchemydc’s offers to contribute up to 100 ZEC (roughly $4700 each) in matching to the pot , the goal for the crowdfunded portion is about 15000-(4700*2) = 5600.

The wallet currently has 83 ZEC in it, of which 63 ($3000) is not from you two. So yes it seems we are halfway there.

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@owocki I like crowd sourced funding and am excited to see this in the community. Really, but I suggest we get rid of the quadratic part of the voting mechanism. Just do stake weighted voting with all the known issues.

Because it’s misleading to do otherwise in Zcash without some anti sybil mechanism. And given that Zcash is focused on privacy, I’m skeptical we can come up with an anti-sybil mechanism that doesn’t exclude people. I’m certainly willing to try. But I’d suggest we remove the quadratic version of voting until we find one. Because again, until we have one, the quadratic part will confuse people.

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Hey! Might’n’t this conflict with the Hackathon? I want to participate in both.