Announcing my candidacy for a seat on the Major Grant Review Committee

Governance
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“How about a pseudonymous community member whose only qualification is that they’ve been a voice for Zcash all along?” -Zooko

Thats me folks!

Hello Zcash Zealots,

I am @decentralistdan & I am officially announcing my candidacy for a seat on the Major Grant Review Committee. I have been an engaged Zcash community member & ZEC accumulator since 2018. Recently I launched the #z2zchain experiment to create conversation around #z2z txs & z-address adoption & I also run the @zcashzeal account on twitter. Although I have no technical credentials in the space & my IRL career is completely unrelated to the cybercoin space, I do have some related experience that specifically qualifies me for this position.

I have 3 years governance experience as an elected official to my Local Labor Union’s Board of Trustees, where I am directly responsible for helping decide how our Union’s funds are allocated & doing quarterly audits. I also personally interact with other Union members to gage community sentiment around how funds should be distributed. Other responsibilities include fraud prevention, ensuring anyone who handles funds are properly bonded, & giving reports/presentations at our quarterly meetings.

Outside of that, I have spent most of my free time over the last couple years obsessively grokking Zcash & Bitcoin. Recently I have been trying to figure out how I can become a more formal contributor to the Zcash ecosystem in an official capacity & see this as the perfect opportunity. I realize I may not be considered a qualified candidate to some degree but feel that my IRL Trustee experience & my time spent in the cybercoin space make me a solid candidate to represent on behalf of other Zcash Zealots.

If elected I feel the most important part of my role will be to make MGRC reflective of the Zcash community’s vision not just the vision of the committee members. Because with only five positions on the committee it is imperative that they broadly represent the community at large. So I envision my role on MGRC to be similar to that of a representative for the Zcash community constituents not just a representative of my personal views. I will work to interact with with the community in order to gauge sentiment & crowdsource ideas that I can then bring to the overall vision of the MGRC.

With that said, I do have three main concepts that I personally hope the MGRC can focus on…

  1. Shielded Pool Growth

A focus on the encrypted memo field & mobile #z2z transactions will help increase shielded Zcash adoption. In my opinion one of the most important aspects to growing the Zcash ecosystem is to push for #z2z adoption & growth of the shielded pool. As well as pushing for adoption & education of the benefits & use cases involved with the using shielded Zcash. The emergence of shielded mobile wallets is the best thing for this concept, sending money & messages privately on your phone will be one of the biggest drivers of adoption in my opinion.

  1. Shielded & Transparant Multisig

Multisig on Zcash opens the doors to a whole cascade of possibilities & is one of the safest & most secure methods to custody assets. With multisig on Zcash, it would provide additional assurances, optionality & security to individuals, institutions, & businesses who are interested in participating in the Zcash economy. That is why I am crazy excited for FROST & will be keen to look for grant applications that plan on building projects & products that will increase the adoption of multisig on Zcash. Shielded multisig will enable increased security & usability for custody, spending, & saving of ZEC. This trend will only add to the growth of the shielded pool. (#1)

  1. Zcash & Bitcoin symbiosis

I will also say that one of the opinions that will shape my perspective on grant proposals is that Zcash & Bitcoin can be mutually symbiotic. Economic & technical interoperability between Zcash & Bitcoin is important to me. I believe that it completely benefits Zcash to find its niche alongside Bitcoin as cybercoin adoption continues to increase. Also I think that a lot of Zcash holders are Bitcoin holders & that it would benefit users of both cybercoin communities for the chains to be symbiotic both economically, technically, & socially. I truly believe that current Bitcoin users are one of the largest communities that are the most likely to start using Zcash & if we can educate them on the benefits of the shielded pool, we will have new Zcash adopters.

Additionally here are some ideas that interest me that are all related to my three main concepts from above & that I would be interested in seeing applications focused on…

-Cross chain stuff like building with Succinct Atomic Swaps by Ruben Somsen or with Summa’s Riemann tools.

-A BTCpayserver “fork” for Zcash merchants/users

-A “fork” of Coinkite’s Coldcard for a Zcash only hardware wallet

-Something along the lines of what Unchained Capital is doing with their open source Caravan & Hermit projects.

-Grants focused on building with Bolt Labs “zkchannels for Bitcoin” (interop)

-Grants focused on Agoric smart contracts on top of the Zcash protocol

I would also like to take the time to describe my availability & expectations for my role if elected. I am very excited to potentially be an MGRC member but will not be able to commit to full time work. I would love to be considered for a position as an MGRC part time role. Because of the nature of my regular job I have the option to take less hours if needed. I am open to doing this and being available for up to 20 hours per week for the MGRC. I feel that would allow me to be a valuable contributor to the committee while being able to keep my regular day job & financial security as well. If the community decides to compensate the MGRC, I feel it should be in ZEC.

I think everything I described above gives a good look at my vision for MGRC & I hope a look into my personal vision for the role as well.

Feel free to reach out on twitter @decentralistdan, or even better #z2z me an encrypted memo for discussion as well.

Thanks my fellow Zealots,

Dan

#z2z me, encrypted memos accepted
zs1tgflkegsj9tqaqfrh64uu348l77fa5l8fx5p9rrnxdux87ulunaglctnxga4d79gnreaj44r7xe

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Hi @decentralistdan ! I have seen your Twitter handle before welcome to the forums :slightly_smiling_face:

I have added a link to your thread in the top post on the Megathread, Good Luck!

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Happy to be here & look forward to contributing more to the ecosystem.

Thanks

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add BOLT to that list and you got my support

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BOLT is now zkchannels developed by Bolt Labs, which is mentioned in my post as I feel that grant applications planning to build with zkchannels should be very highly considered

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If the community would like to see a focus on the development of Zcash & Bitcoin interoperability & the overall sentiment of my post represented on the committee I would love everyone’s support! I plan to explain in more detail my thoughts both here & on twitter over the next few months.

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I’m against putting the question this way: using the Zcash development Fund to implement zkp in bitcoin. It looks like I, as an investor, miner and community member, should finance another project with my own funds. I chose Zcash over bitcoin precisely for its advantages over bitcoin. Many will say that I am wrong, but this is my view. Zcash is a direct competitor to Bitcoin. If bitcoin gets payment features, Zcash will always remain an altcoin. If Zcash becomes money, it that bitcoin can’t afford in its current form, Zcash will surpass bitcoin in capitalization by 2030.

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I am not advocating for the dev fund to implement zkp in Bitcoin whatsoever. & even if that was something proposed it would never happen as the BIP process for Bitcoin is completely separate from Zcash development & the Bitcoin community would never come to consensus on that. I also believe that Zcash is a competitor to Bitcoin but at the moment & for the foreseeable future Bitcoin is King. In my opinion Zcash can grow & succeed despite the fact that BTC marketcap & adoption reigns supreme. With that in my mind I believe that it completely benefits Zcash to find its niche & adoption regardless of Bitcoin payment features being implemented, including coinjoin/payjoin privacy developments. Also I think that a lot of Zcash holders are also Bitcoin holders & that it would benefit users of both cybercoins for them to be symbiotic both economically & technically.

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Thanks for letting me know about that, I have some catching up to do.

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Thank you for clarifying the position. Apparently I did not understand correctly. Translation difficulties. :relaxed:

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Hiya @decentralistdan! A new development is the dissolution of the ‘servo’ team at Mozilla, and the Rust community announcing their intent to form a foundation.

In many ways the Zcash community overlaps with the Rust community.

Do you see any role for the MGRC to play in this pivotal moment for the Rust community?

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I agree that there are many ways the Zcash community overlaps with the Rust community & I think it would be interesting if the MGRC could join the new foundation & or be a sponsor. Maybe MGRC could help get the Rust foundation to accept Zcash donations as well. Could the new Rust foundation apply for an MGRC grant? could the MGRC sponsor Rust core team members individually?

My only thought on having the MGRC not involved would be that with the ZF’s focus on Zebra in Rust, maybe it would be a better fit for the ZF as opposed to MGRC to be collaborating with the the new Rust Foundation.

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Hello @decentralistdan For my vote, please answer my questions frankly:

  1. Are you pro BTC? If yes, Why? If not, Why?
  2. What is the largest account size you’ve handled in USD? How many end users did it impact?
  3. MGRC will control 8640 ZEC per month or 25920 per quarter, how will this be roughly spent? (provide napkin calculation).
  4. MGRC announcement attracts 100s of applicants from all over the world with all random ideas, all matching your goals, how would you evaluate them?
  5. KPIs aren’t entirely possible on a privacy preserving payments protocol project’s level, it’s all z2z, how will you evaluate funded team’s impact?
  6. DeFi fever made ETH run 2x compared to every cryptocurrency this year, thoughts?
  7. What locals, regions, languages, ethnicities, educational backgrounds of people have you worked with? What are your preferences of assembling teams that deliver?
  8. We live in a remote world now, how do you evaluate applicants for grants?
  9. Projects in Zcash are going to go through a huge change beyond the handful, driven teams funded via Zcash Foundation, thoughts?
  10. Zcash is a protocol at its core, ZEC price is volatile. How will you handle a single digit ZEC? ($9 x 8640/month = $77,760) How will you handle a 5 digit ZEC? ($21,000 x 8640/month = $181.44MM) Thoughts…
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  1. Yes, I am pro BTC & bullish on it’s adoption & price appreciation longterm. Although as of this year I finally own significantly more ZEC than BTC & plan on keeping it that way. But I will say that the symbiosis of Bitcoin & Zcash is a major point of my candidacy. I think that Economic & technical interoperability between Zcash & Bitcoin is important. I believe that it completely benefits Zcash to find its niche alongside Bitcoin as cybercoin adoption continues to increase. Also I think that a lot of Zcash holders are Bitcoin holders & that it would benefit users of both cybercoin communities for the chains to be symbiotic both economically, technically, & socially. I truly believe that current Bitcoin users are one of the largest communities that are the most likely to start using Zcash & if we can educate them on the benefits of the shielded pool, we will have new Zcash adopters.

  2. The largest account size I have handled is my personal cybercoin portfolio of which ZEC is my largest holding. The only user it impacts is me. Without going into detail I will point out that I started my portfolio in 2016 & have lived through the ups & downs of this market for the last 4 years.

  3. I would like to frame this “napkin math” per quarter as it aligns more with how I think the MGRC grant process will end up looking at funds. 25920 ZEC at an average of $75 is $1,944,000 per quarter. I think that 10% of those funds should be put into a MGRC longterm savings pool no matter what the price. I also think that if we enter a severe bear market in this first year of MGRC & the USD price suffers that we need to be sparingly approving grants & shift more towards saving for future grant making as price recovers. & Generally I think that 10 small to medium grants in the $10k-$25k range & then less than 5 grants in the large $100k category is decent starting point napkin math thoughts.

  4. Which applicants already have skin in the game, are they already ZEC holders & community members? I feel that aligns incentives for success even before they receive funding. That would be the type of of team who would probably build the project they are requesting funds for anyway or eventually but with the help of MGRC can be more effective.

  5. Users-Users-Users. Shielded Pool growth, z2z tx increase, twitter sentiment around Zcash.

  6. I have been following DeFi for almost 2 years now without participating. I see it as a solid meme & narrative for ETH but I don’t think most DeFi projects have longevity. wrapped ZEC as collateral for DeFi on ETH could be cool. But ultimately I think that the Zcash itself is the ultimate form of DeFi. “Privacy Preserving Decentralized Digital Capital that can be used for saving, spending, & collateral”

  7. A would say I have worked with a pretty diverse group of individuals over the years from different regions, ethnicities, & educational backgrounds. No preference, just that the individuals can deliver in order to help the team deliver.

  8. There is no shortage of ways to collaborate remotely online. I like the idea of using Keybase teams, also something like Notion or Roam but am open to what other MGRC candidates are familiar with & that would help the MGRC be effective.

  9. ?

  10. At $9 or really anything up to $20 in my opinion should be very little to no disbursement of grant funds, but basically full on saving mode. At $21,000 or really anything down to $1000 in my opinion the MGRC should be converting some ZEC to USD for sound financial planning & to ensure the longevity of the ecosystem.

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"The MGRC should be a “driving actor” composed of “driven actors”.

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