Hi everyone!!! On the call, I promised to give answers to all the questions asked in the thread to the candidates.
I will italicise my exact answers that I gave directly on the recording, and the plain text will be for additional questions and other comments.
Questions from @dismad
Yes, I have a GitHub account, largely thanks to my involvement with Zcash. I dedicated some time to learning Python, which led me to create and upload several projects to GitHub. So yes, I am familiar with the platform.
As for the move to GitHub, I believe it is an excellent and indispensable tool for publishing open-source projects that can be used and developed further by different contributors. It’s also valuable for preserving certain information publicly for historical purposes. However, I don’t think GitHub is the best platform for maximizing the dissemination of information beyond the relatively narrow community of developers.
For Zcash to reach beyond our community and ensure that useful information is accessible to a broader audience, ZCG should also utilize more popular channels for sharing information. The current resources and the ZCG website allow for this kind of outreach in the most efficient way possible.
Additionally, I heard from Jason and Amber’s responses that preparations have been made to implement capturing ZCG requests and grantee responses using GitHub. I heard that this could be much more convenient and transparent than just correspondence in the mail or elsewhere. From that perspective, of course I welcome these improvements. As for the general information needed for disclosure, I’m of the opinion that it should be the ZCG site that most people are used to.
Would you be open to hiring a ZCG note taker via a bounty, say from ZecHub or FPF?
This would accomplish a few things:
1. More decentralized
2. Shielded ZEC can be earned
3. New pathway for someone to learn the way of not only the ecosystem but also ZCG
4. Notes can be published much faster, say within a day or two
5. Translations to other languages!
I like the idea, but it’s hard for me to answer this question with anything specific until I review the committee’s internals and explore the possibilities. But I think we should involve as many people as possible in the management process, make it interesting and give them the opportunity to earn ZECs. That’s cool, that should be part of the community outreach.
At the same time, I can assure everyone that language support at the current stage of Zcash development is needed only for the simplest and most popular issues, and especially technical support is needed, which is what I do in my activity as a Zcash activist. I know this from analysing the popularity of various pages on my resource.
What should be ZCG’s priorities for 2025?
I believe that ZCG is currently operating with a very limited budget. In addition to the halving, which reduced the block reward, we now have the Lockbox receiving 60% of the entire Dev Fund.
While I am not fully familiar with all of ZCG’s obligations, I would prioritize supporting the areas that are already outlined in the community’s roadmap. We need to assess how we are managing the shortfall in revenue before setting new directions.
In terms of priorities, I would prefer for the community to see the timely delivery of all planned updates for 2025 without any delays or postponements.
I can only clarify my answer on the call by using the example of the key direction of ZSA for 2025. If we do not prepare our popular wallets and conduct interface research, even if we have real use cases for ZSA, we still won’t be able to fully utilize them. So, yes, the protocol will be updated, but ZCG will need to support the derivative areas of this update, and I consider this a priority.
I believe this question should be decided by the broader community through the voting mechanisms available to us. However, how I would personally vote would depend on the specific market situation and the nature of the request. I cannot provide a more detailed answer without additional context.
Questions from @pacu
In some brief sentences, what motivates you to (re-)run for ZCG?
So, what motivated me?
Let me start by saying that in the 7 years that I have been present in the Zcash community I have gone through every possible emotional stage. From admiration and interest, through frustration, anger, suspicion, enthusiasm, desire for justice. I think everyone who has been here long enough has experienced these phases. And today I find myself in absolute acceptance of the situation and with the realisation that it is time for maximum unity to move forward. Each of us can give what we can to the project. I believe that I have a good experience in crisis financial management. I am not joining ZCG to make a revolution, but to ensure that the activities planned by the community are prioritised and that the development fund is spent as efficiently as possible. And I believe that in making my decision, I should look after the interests of long-term investors and established development teams that have demonstrated a commitment to Zcash over a long period of time. But for myself, I have identified the main challenge is that we need to move from a quantitative development model in which we spend significant ZEC resources to a qualitative model in which ZEC grows in value and then we need a small amount of resources to support our lines of work.
I’ve been watching all the initiatives with great pleasure, and I could talk for a long time, but I personally like the direction of developing a voting mechanism that has already been implemented. I think this is an aspect that we lack a lot for decentralised decision-making. It is very important to continue to explore this area, to enhance the user experience based on what we have so that we can reach as many ZEC holders as possible. This will put to rest all possible speculation by Zcash haters.
What could have been done better?
I think that we should improve the management of the flow of finance and try to adjust the financial safety cushion mechanisms of the community. I would like to discuss these issues within the committee and understand what opportunities we have to ensure stable funding for projects. And so that we don’t have to lose developers and other good specialists during the bear market phase.
If it depended solely on me, my most urgent priority would be improving the user experience (UX) of Zcash. While Zcash’s core technology is incredibly powerful, it needs to be accessible and user-friendly for everyone—from privacy-conscious users to newcomers in cryptocurrency. I believe that Zcash has spent a long time refining its backend because these are extremely complex matters: zero-knowledge proofs are truly uncharted territory, and we will likely witness the implementation of many other exciting innovations. However, as a result of this long period of development, it may have seemed to the average user that Zcash has fallen far behind other projects. I, however, do not share that view.
I would like to use a sailing analogy to illustrate this idea. Imagine a yacht participating in a race. Instead of staying with the main group, it veers off to the side. At first glance, it may seem like the yacht is falling behind. But the experienced skipper knows that in the area where they are heading, a strong side wind is blowing, which will give the yacht a powerful boost, allowing it to overtake the others while they block each other’s wind within the group.
In the same way, we have stayed true to our course all this time, and now it is time to present all of this progress to the broader public. This can only be done by significantly improving the UX of all our wallets. While I personally prefer YWallet for its functionality, I believe that Zashi is a major step forward for mass adoption. However, I see this as just the first step, and I would like to see more initiatives aimed at enhancing the usability of Zcash on all fronts.
The second point I would like to focus on, if it depended solely on me, would be the transition to Proof Of Stake as soon as possible. Why? Most industrial miners are so accustomed to the increasing scarcity of Bitcoin that they sell all the altcoins they mine daily for BTC. During a bear market, they exchange coins for dollars, and during a bull market, they exchange coins for BTC. As a community, we are to some extent hostages of this situation. We need to increase the scarcity of Zcash through available means without compromising the network’s security. Transitioning to a POS-algorithm is one such way.
I don’t know if we can require ZCG members to work full-time. I know that Jason literally lives this. In this regard, he is a strength, and I’m glad that we have such people in our community. I assume that all ZCG members are doing tremendous work, which I cannot fully evaluate right now.
However, I started this discussion by stating that Zcash has become a big part of my life, and I am ready to dedicate a significant portion of my time to it.
As for compensation, I have given my answer here
What should be ZCG’s role in the NU6-Lockbox governance and the future post-lockbox governance?
I do not believe that ZCG should grant itself roles beyond the rights provided by the community. I see the role of the committee as filtering grant proposals submitted for review, seeking advice on the forum, and making final decisions. A unique privilege—or perhaps a burden—of the committee is that it must make decisions based on the conditions and resources available to us. Additionally, the committee’s task is to strive to improve these resources.
However, the question of how the funds accumulated through LockBox will be used is a matter for the broader Zcash community. I hope the community will be ready to handle this decision next year.
Should ZCG be it’s own independent organization?
Question from @kworks
SEVEN PROJECTS - 80 % ZCG INVESTMENTS
Total of all projects: $12 936 962
USER ADOPTION
How would you quantify zcash users generated for 10 million usd invested ?
I understand why this reasonable question arises. But I don’t want to evaluate the achieved results over a short period of time. All the grants mentioned have no strict time limits, and each of them either has been or could still become a potential growth point. A large number of users cannot be expected the day after some event occurs—unless it’s a direct recommendation from Elon Musk on his account. ZCG and other participants in the process will always be criticized by those expecting quick results. But quick results will not happen.
As for the amount of funds spent, it is indeed substantial. I appreciate when, for example, @hanh writes in a grant thread that the requested amount is too high and suggests completing the task for less. That’s great! I would love to see grants resemble reverse auctions, similar to public procurement systems. This could reduce costs significantly. However, our challenge is that these areas are often highly specialized and have low levels of competition. Additionally, the teams involved must be ones the community can trust.
So my answer is that long-term projects need time to evaluate their effectiveness. To reduce costs in more competitive areas, perhaps we should consider issuing requests in the style of auctions on popular platforms with a large pool of potential contractors.
Question from @Minevg
My answer once again depends on the context. I am confident that these efforts cannot be effectively imposed from the top down. However, I fully support encouraging individuals who independently take initiative because they share Zcash’s values. This is not the same as simply hiring people for money. Speaking about myself, I essentially became an ambassador for Zcash long before the Zcash Global Ambassadors program existed. I spent my personal savings to create high-quality dubbed versions of English videos before neural networks were available. I also spent money on purchasing domains and hosting, software licences. I wrote and translated articles in my free time, and nobody paid me for this.
Later, I was invited to join the Global Ambassadors program. It was an amazing experience that I thoroughly enjoyed, and it allowed me to focus on creating YouTube videos as a full-time activity. However, when the price of ZEC dropped to $25, I fully supported ZCG’s decision to scale down the program because expenses in ZEC had become significant. There were even people who accused the ambassadors of simply wasting the foundation’s funds. That was hurtful to hear, especially considering that I still haven’t spent the compensation amount I received (ZEC).
Therefore, I believe the committee should only support initiatives when there are corresponding communities behind them, such as the large Spanish-speaking or Portuguese-speaking community in Brazil, community of Nigeria, the ZecHub community, or a new activist from Turkey. All these people deserve ZCG’s support. Perhaps we should adjust the Global Ambassadors program and make a request for proposals from the broader community. For example, educational videos on how to run a Zcash node or something similar—so that it can have a long-term impact.
From my experience, I can also say that localized video content generates the greatest increase in local audiences. Reach is crucial because it significantly enhances the efficiency of allocated resources.
THANK YOU ALL FOR YOUR INTERESTING QUESTIONS!
It was interesting to organize some things in my head for my answers.
You can also leave other questions to me in this thread.