The Zcash Foundation website is now up! You can read our first announcement here:
More notes to follow…
The values document - https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation/VALUES.md (linked in the post) throws a 404, perhaps you meant ZcashFoundation/VALUES.md at master · ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation · GitHub?
Good catch, made an issue and am fixing it 
404 in first blog post · Issue #1 · ZcashFoundation/archived-zfnd-website · GitHub
Great news. Good luck, it’s a hard job!
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I like the idea of a separate foundation as well and think it helps give Zcash a more credible standing in the greater crypto-community. Good luck and hoping it is a success.
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If you fund it, i will build it… t1XSC9S8GfQ8oT2yK1sUvFtT57RZwbrYJse
@james Fund what, are you a developer? Soliciting Zcash as your first post on the forums is not a good place start.
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Good News, I welcome the creation of the Zcash Foundation and seek to uphold the core Values - ZcashFoundation/VALUES.md at master · ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation · GitHub - most namely Privacy as an important Human Right !
Unfortunately, it appears that we might well be on the cusp of the Crypto Wars 2.0 - Crypto Wars - Wikipedia - in regards to crypto-currency - anonymity and privacy projects.
Will the foundation be adopting any formal application procedure or process for developing community funded projects ?
Thanks for the note! And very glad you like the values file, IMO that is the most important planing we’ve set up so far.
We’ll absolutely be adopting some kind of formal application procedure in the future, although the details of this have not been worked out yet. I personally like the idea of having a grant proposal system (the Bitcoin Foundation did this successfully for two seasons), as well as a “bounty” system. If you have input about what kind of structure would be effective, I’d love to hear it. The initial board have given ourselves a 9-month time goal to design and implement the first version of such processes.
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Some form of on-chain voting and/or bounty system would be a plus.
Herewith, links to review similar organisations structure and documentation etc., some of the team are undoubtedly already familiar with the following;
Quite a few others exist, but these seem to be quite relevant.
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I have been building and crashing Zcash Miners since October. Started Mining With Tromp on day one. Fact is that Zcash was the First Crypto that I ever fooled around with. My solicitation has a two fold question 1) will you fund young start-ups? 2) Will your funding encourage CPU or GPU purchasing. if my ignorance in this situation shows… it should.
@james Yes, I do believe one of the goals of the Zcash Foundation is to help support start-ups that have the goal of advancing Zcash technology and Adoption. @amiller is actually the Chairman of the foundation so he would be able to answer that question more in-depth.
As to your second question, No I do not believe that funding individual or large miners or investment in mining equipment is a goal of the Foundation.
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Here is a somewhat random set of thoughts on things that Foundation could work on.
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Setup a Google Summer of Code type program of sponsored students to work on FOSS Zcash tech.
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Setup a Zcash apparel store.
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Organize developer conference
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Without maker boards you just build back doors for GPU monopoly.
http://www.indabamusic.com/people/ArmonicaMediaJamesRimes
You seem to be very focused on mining hardware. This thread is for the Zcash Foundation and ways for it to advance its goals.
I would be happy to discuss the virtues of GPU (commodity) hardware vs ASIC (specialized) hardware in a seperate topic. And I don’t see what that link has to do with anything.
Hi James,
Something like a startup could be supported under a grant program: Grant program · Issue #2 · ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation · GitHub
I think you’re suggesting something like a maker board kit for a DIY mining rig. That sounds cool to me. Though startups are usually meant to be profit making, so wouldn’t it be easier to do a kick starter or angel/VC investment for this? IMO the Foundation will be best for fulfilling needs that aren’t met directly by a market.
I think the Foundation should definitely support the community of miners in several ways. I think it will be important to set up a hashpower-based polling system, so that we can poll miners and survey them (ad hoc ways of doing this are routinely used in cryptocurrencies for signalling support for forks, for example). Software development or running a web service of some kind, that benefits all miners could be a good candidate for the grant program too.
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That is a good point @amiller, perhaps I misunderstood what @james was asking. I know some were working on porting Zcash software to be able to run on an ARM 64 processor like those you find in the Raspberry Pi or many phones. This would be a good project to sponsor!
Although, with the limitations of such hardware it would allow wallets, JoinSplit (!) or even a full node to be run on a low power device but not necessarily make the device viable for mining. An army of low power nodes would be good for the security of the network.
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Yes, a full node runs just fine on arm64 systems, but you can’t run zcash on a raspberry pi, as it isn’t fully 64 bit 
I’ve got hardware to update my arm64 port now, and have an Android port on my todo list, but I don’t have the time/money to devote to it (we’re short on rent and server bills that’re due tomorrow!)
If anyone wants to contribute to that effort in the mean time, here’s my donation page:
zcash.mercerweiss.com/index.html#Donations
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Does The Zcash Foundation have a CFO, CFA, CPA, or some individual with the specific skillset for management of the financial aspects of the organization?
Do Alex or Danika function as that role currently?
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