Background for why stuff is or isn't in 1014

[mistfpga]

@mgrc-candidates.

Hi All,

Sorry for tagging you all again. Here is a thread that hopefully clears up a lot of the current confusion as to the intent behind a lot of the zip, and to what was taken out and why.

I am keeping this post as neutral as possible, this is context conversations. Quite a lot of the stuff being talked about has been addressed, I am trying to show relevant parts.
I will probably respond to it myself. It is important you read the thread for context. Please read it. (@zancas puts some incentive structures together. - are these similar to your current vesting idea?)

(it is 300 odd posts) It can be found here. Below I have put some highlights - there is a lot more context that just this thread. I am trying my hardest to get this into summary threads asap.

I did also have a post from another thread covering MGRC as an entity profiting from clauses in grants. in a similar fashion to what @alchemydc is suggesting. It is activly encouraged. The idea is to try to get it self sufficient so in 4 years it no longer needs block rewards but can still function. I have lost the post now, but I will dig it out. I thought it important to mention here.

I am reawatching all the livestreams on 1.5x speed to find the surrounding discussions. My brain had supressed a lot of the trauma of this process, but it is coming back to me now. I will get summary threads that have relevant information to the topics we are discussing at the moment.

• Major Grants committee
  
  

Why compensation is not mentioned in the zip.

@daira

For compensating the Major Grant Review Committee members, I don’t understand why something like my original suggestion isn’t sufficient:

ZF SHOULD compensate Major Grant Review Committee members for their time and reasonable expenses.

Do we really not trust ZF to do something sensible with this? IMHO it is perfectly fine to leave it to ZF’s discretion exactly how to implement it.

Why the MGRC does not manage its own money

@acityinohio

this is something that was brought up in previous debates/discussions and the community sentiment clearly indicated that the Foundation should manage the slice

Who finances the MGRC

@tromer

I understand your rationale for wanting members of the MG committee to be compensated (both to retain them, and to give them an incentive-aligning stake).

Still, there’s the question of the amount of compensation. Setting it to a fixed amount of ZEC risks its being way too small or way too large in real value, depending on what happens to be the ZEC price when the member joins. Adjusting it by a community governance process (of the form that’s currently available) is very heavyweight. Putting it at the discretion of ZF solves that, but of course it raises questions about power and independence.

Next elections, who is responsible for implementing it, how and when.

@tromer

Great, then you’re welcome to propose a mechanism for the MG committee elections! Recall ZF’s phrasing:

the terms and election structure for members of the Major Grant Review Committee SHALL be decided in a new ZIP and ratified by the ZF Community Panel (or successor mechanism) no later than the end of 2021.

So that’s just the deadline. If you already have an implementation of the election mechanism and can convince the community that it’s good, then we can put it into place much earlier, perhaps from the very beginning of the Dev Fund!

Meanwhile, this shouldn’t block acceptance of the (modified) ZIP 1014, which needs to be implemented in code, tested and deployed. Those can be done in parallel to designing and deciding the MG elections mechanism.

@acityinohio

. To align with the Future Community Governance timeline (more on that below), the terms and election structure for members of the Major Grant Review Committee SHALL be decided in a new ZIP and ratified by the ZF Community Panel (or successor mechanism) no later than the end of 2021.

Making the MGRC a new legal entity/full autonomy

@str4d

and what option 3B of the Helios Vote said:

3. Do you believe the Foundation should have independent authority in determining Major Grants, or should there be a new Major Grant Review Committee as prescribed in this ZIP ?

…

B. There should be a new Major Grant Review Committee with near -complete authority

The intent of ZIP 1014 is not true independence. Instead, it’s up to the community to hold the Zcash Foundation to ZIP 1014, (including only exercising veto per the outlined limits, assuming that option 3B is taken).

mistfpga: Option 3B was taken.

@Shawn

I understand the voting results (of the most recent poll) were tied. My point is there is a vast difference between a committee having voting and decision making autonomy and the formation of a completely separate legal entity.

This is an important distinction, because one was proposed before (1006) and wasn’t supported by the community voting process and the proposal that won over it (1012) proposed the formation of a committee:

@tromer

@avichal, you raise valid concerns and interesting ideas, but the ship has sailed. As @Shawn says above, the previous sentiment collection round has clearly indicated a preference for not creating a new, completely independent third entity.

an idea of scope of the roles

@tromer

So my expectation is that the MG committee members will need enough expertise to take the lead on analyzing proposals. Of course they’ll draw on the community, and reach out for advice (as the old grant committee did), but even doing that effectively requites sufficient understanding.

Notably, this isn’t just about technical expertise. Knowledge in finances, marketing, regulation, etc. may also be called for, and ideally the committee will have some of these too. (Again, by example: ZF is lucky to count @valkenburgh among its board members, and ECC is fortunate to have Andrew McLaughlin on its board.)

On investments

@tromer

@defiwoof

we want a small group of experienced crypto thought-leaders to make investment decisions on behalf of the entire ZCash community

This sounds very much like the Major Grants committee of ZIP 1014.

With the important disambiguation that these are not “investments” meant to turn up profit for investors, but rather resources allocated to achieve the ecosystem’s broad goals and values. For example, improving Zcash’s privacy tech, or strengthening decentralization by creating an independent node implementation, may not have capturable monetary value. Such public goods may be terrible “investments” in the sense of making money. And yet, they would be high on the priority list. Zcash Foundation’s mission and values statements are good inspiration here.

@amiller

What if we offered performance incentives to the MG committee, where they get to “invest” individually by allocating a portion of their MG Slice portfolio, and where their portfolio gets evaluated for impact after the fact?

What incentives? If the MG Dragons are compensated for their time, then this amount could scale a bit with the post hoc evaluation as a bonus. The reputation effect of being able to take credit for their individual portfolios also acts like an additional incentive.

@tromer

@amiller, this is a fascinating idea! But is it suitable for Major Grants, of which we expect to be very few ongoing ones (initially: probably fewer than the number of MG committee members)?

@Zooko adding clarity - Major Grants committee - #117 by zooko

[zancas]

Wow @mistfpga thanks for doing this!

To be clear, I copied the phrase “vesting” with respect to Zcash from @alchemydc. Inasmuch as I understand it, it seems like the sensible format for compensation.

[mistfpga]

No problem. Anything I can do to help make this process work has to be worth doing. We all forget stuff, it seems like we did this a life time ago now. 2020 has been a hell of a year.

My responses to you have been based around your ideas you posted here - this is what i ws imagining when you were saying vesting. you later dismissed your own ideas for incentivising retirement, heh. I like this concept though. You were one of the few people bringing ideas that that time because we were all quite burnt out.

I will go check DC’s vesting definition and see if I need to adjust my responses. Ive checked and i think it is pretty much the same thing.

Major Grants committee

Good questions. Tip of the brain: Break the compensation into 2 pieces: (1) A living wage (e.g. time-average the value in USD over the payment period (e.g. preceding 15 days) and pay out a USD-pinned amount, e.g. $2500 worth of ZEC at that time-average price. (2) Take the sum of ZEC payouts to the committee member (e.g. the ~ 24 payments/year) from (1) payout that amount again, 2 years after retirement from the committee. Huh… I guess this incentivizes retirement…

[Souptacular]

This is incredibly helpful! Thank you! Even though I had previously read through all of the ZIPs during the election where 1014 was decided, I had forgotten a lot of the nuances around community sentiment for and against certain parts of proposals.