Beth for ZCG (June 2023) [Withdrawn]

Hi Zcash Community,

With this post I am officially announcing my candiancy for Zcash Community Grants. Below are some of the primary reasons I am running for the committee and why I believe that my skill set is uniquely piositioned to help the commitee and thus the larger Zcash community increase the global footprint of Zcash.

  1. I was recently laid off from ECC and would like to stay active in the community to continue to help Zcash adoption however I can, I am still a firm believer in the mission and technology behind Zcash whether or not I am at ECC.

  2. Having spent that last two years working on partnerships for Zcash, I have a very strong understanding of Zcash’s position in the broader crypto ecosystem as well as what different platforms and users are looking for from protocols that they work with/adopt. My knowledge here could be invaluable in helping provide input on the grants committee on how specific grants are likely to translate into actual adoption of the technology and result in growth of the Zcash ecosystem.

  3. As I said, I believe in the mission of Zcash and believe that the technology is unparalleled - BUT - unless the community acts quickly to increase the number of developers working on the project and thus features that attract new users to the project, Zcash could end up being eclipsed by newer, more nimble protocols with larger treasuries. I do not want to see that happen and want to help make sure it doesn’t. I believe that I can help do that by working on the grants committee.

  4. I have spent most of my career negotiating contracts, reviewing and drafting proposals and managing partnerships. I have a great deal of experience structuring deals and proposals to ensure they are mutually beneficial and there is sufficient accountability within the proposal and that the business case is irrefutable. Again, I think that this experience, when coupled with the already stellar technical review of grants, could be invaluable for the Zcash community.

  5. Finally, ideation and strategy are a strength for me. One area I excel most in is thinking outside of the box in order to attract new partnerships. I would hope to be able to leverage this skill in identifying ways the grant committee can attract new grant recipients from untapped resources.

Looking forward to this election cycle and hopefully being able to help continue to support Zcash in whatever way possible! I welcome any and all questions from the community.

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This is really exciting! As someone who worked with Beth at ECC, I was always impressed with her ability to connect with our various partners and create personal relationships with many key industry players.

I also think her business development experience would complement the current ZCG team.

I’m excited to watch her share ideas on attracting external talent to our ecosystem.

Voicing my personal support!

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Hi,

What happened to the Protonmail integration ? A Partnership with ProtonMail

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That’s a good question!

Unfortunately when the FTX collapse happened alot of companys, both crypto-native and non-native, paused their plans to expand within the industry. Proton was one such company. Shortly after the FTX news broke, they decided to halt any work in the space effective immediately and laid off the team (including our contact) who had been hired to work on the initiative. It was shared with me that they are unlikely to proceed working within the crypto industry anytime in the forseeable future given the regulatory uncertainty and some of the more negative news that has dominated the space recently.

I sitll believe there is a natural partnership between privacy-centric organizations and ZEC and that given enough time, history will prove that what happened with folks like FTX and LUNA, etc were the action of bad actors and not the ethos of an entire industry.

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Hi @beth :smiling_face:,

I’m sad we haven’t been able to interact more but I feel like we’d get along. ZCG should want a @Beth that works full time on this stuff. Maybe Beth can be first step into increasing ZCG’s capabilities and responsibilities. But not at 15hours a month. @ZcashGrants is there anyway a (or “the”) @Beth can be brought on as a full time resource for ZCG?

If I had my way ZCG would have a full time gig bringing in more and more “outsiders” into Zcash and funding them through ZCG’s funds.

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Hi Beth,

Thanks for placing yourself forward for the ZCG election.
Two Themes:

What is the general state of Buying Zec with Fiat currency and withdrawing ZEC?
I’m interested in how many main stream exchanges/brokers are servicing withdrawals of ZEC to only sapling taddresses? The slow adoption of withdrawing ZEC to orchard addresses, can you share your thoughts?

What are your thoughts of Zcash Community Voting? What is the state of Zcash governance, how can ZCG help expand and design a ZEC Voting System?

Thanks, good luck!

Hi @Beth,

Sorry to hear about the layoffs, and I hope you’ve been doing ok.

Also, I’m glad to see your willingness to stay involved in Zcash!

I wanted to point out this RFP that I thought you may be interested in: RFP - ZCG Outreach Coordinator. IMO, ZCG could really benefit from someone filling out the role described in the RFP and it may be a natural fit given your background and work at ECC. Also, it would likely offer an opportunity for more substantial compensation than ZCG, which is pretty limited.

Best,

David

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Thank you for asking these questions! Thanks for your patience on a response as well, I wanted to make sure that I had a sufficent amount of time to sit down and provide a thorough response. Brace yourself, this is a long one, haha. :joy:

Fiat Coverage
Coverage buying ZEC with fiat varies quite significantly across the globe depending on a variety of factors such as local regulations (can you buy crypto in the juristiction at all?), platform availability (what platforms in the juristiction support ZEC), market/technology maturation of the region as a whole. It might be easier to answer your question, if you were curious about a specific region.

I think ZEC is readily available is for purchase across Europe, North America and the LATAM region on both centralized and decentralized exchanges. One of the problems that I have seen across some exchanges is that there is a lack of liquidity available for ZEC on the exchange which is likely the bigger issue vs fiat on and offing capability. The recent delisting of ZEC is several EU countries is concerning because it demonstates

Sapling vs Orchard Adoption
Regarding your question on sapling addresses. While at ECC, I always pushed the latest technology adoption on partners, however there are usually significant roadblacks to non-mandatory upgrades. For example, one of the first questions any partner will ask me is if an upgrade is required (a break-upgrade) they do this because they have prioritize upgrades/updates/features across hundreds of assets so if the request is not going to fundementally fracture the integration it is less likely to be prioritzed. I think we all fee that sapling is legacy technology and prchard is the future, but to push that adoption, I think we need to find a way to make the move mandatory.

Another issue I have noted in the market adoption of ZEC is related to over all demand for the token (usually associated with market cap by potential partners.) Think about it this way, most partners make a portion of their money from transaction associated fees which means they need tono demand means no revenue which against usually translates into lower priority. Zcash has seen some liquidity issues across many channels of acquisition due to slowed adoption.

Finally, the market downturn has significantly reduced teams across the board. Companies are short staffed which is hindering the addition of new features that will not immediately net more revenue. High-turn over also means a loss of institutional knowledge and advocacy with organizations which can translate into an uphill battle with finding new contacts and restarting relationship.

Governance
I am a big believer in the importance of community feedback and engagement. In my opinion, any organization that recieves funding via the dev fund should be directly accountable to the community whether that be to a community board of directors or decisions made via polling. I think the questions that Jack asked recently in the forum are a great start in collecting sentiment, but I would love to see some additional follow-up based on the results that drilled into more specifics for why folks scored the way they did (anonymously obviously). Data is useful but without additional context solving issues can be like stabbing in the dark.

Along the same lines… with the recent ECC lay-offs we lost a lot of people employed specifically to focus on community, growth and adoption. The ramifications of that will likely be felt less immediately and more in the mid to long term which makes it really important for a well funded entity to pick up the reigns where possible.

We have an active community but no one focused on collecting and interpreting community feedback across the globe. Different regions will require different features, have different pain points, etc - for Zcash to expand it is really important for the larger research and development arms to be focused on meeting the needs of global users. To do that we have to talk to them!

I know this was super long, but let me know if you have follow up questions! Happy to chat further about anything.

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Thank you! The sentiment is defintely mutual and it is never too late!

I think it is really important to have active roles for growth and adoption within protocols, especially during market downturns like this. 3,000 platforms could add Zcash but it won’t help the protocol expand significantly unless we have folks farming relationships for growth. IE: looking for co-marketing, education opportunities, new developers etc.

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Thank you so much - I will check it out and see if I can get more information from the team!
:smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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  1. Having spent that last two years working on partnerships for Zcash, I have a very strong understanding of Zcash’s position in the broader crypto ecosystem as well as what different platforms and users are looking for from protocols that they work with/adopt. My knowledge here could be invaluable in helping provide input on the grants committee on how specific grants are likely to translate into actual adoption of the technology and result in growth of the Zcash ecosystem.

After having spent 2 years, what fruitful partnerships arose from your work there? It doesn’t take 2 years for someone to understand Zcash’s role in the greater crypto ecosystem (hint: it’s minuscule).

Zcash could end up being eclipsed by newer, more nimble protocols with larger treasuries. I do not want to see that happen and want to help make sure it doesn’t. I believe that I can help do that by working on the grants committee.

What would be different with this opportunity vs. actually working for the company bankrolled directly from the devfund?

I have spent most of my career negotiating contracts, reviewing and drafting proposals and managing partnerships. I have a great deal of experience structuring deals and proposals to ensure they are mutually beneficial and there is sufficient accountability within the proposal and that the business case is irrefutable.

What were the most impactful?

Finally, ideation and strategy are a strength for me. One area I excel most in is thinking outside of the box in order to attract new partnerships.

Do you have specific examples of this during your tenure at the ECC?

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Thank you so much for asking these thoughtful questions! I tried to provide thoughtful answers, so apologies - it is long (again). Let me know if you have follow up’s and I will do my best to answer.

It definitely didn’t take 2 years for me to assess where Zcash was in the market, although I will say that as markets continue to evolve, especially as rapidly as the crypto market does, it is really important to constantly be evaluating your project’s position in the market. That being said, I think your comment about the current Zcash position being minuscule is really important to address.

I both agree and disagree with the statement you made. I think that Zcash’s cryptographic breakthroughs have landed it solidly in the annuls of crypto history as an important contributor to the space. In my experience, Zcash is respected by many long-term projects and platforms in the space for having solid technology and a strong moral compass. However, relative to the innovation that flooded the market in recent years, Zcash has struggled to keep up with meaningful utility and extensibility for its users and developers. The Zcash market cap has declined such that many in the space do not pay attention to it any longer. This has been a notable hindrance in forging new partnerships, particularly partnerships outside of the crypto-native space where market cap is seen as a strong indicator of success.

To more directly answer your questions about partnerships - some successes off the top of my head were Edge Wallet, ChangeNOW. Ripio Wallet, BTCPay, OKcoin, Arctic Wallet, Bybit, and new Coinbase products like their commerce platform. There are also a few larger items that are still in the ECC pipeline that I am under NDA for and cannot mention, but hopefully, they can provide updates on and will continue moving forward in my absence.

I believe that ZCG is funded by the dev fund but the key difference is that I would not be a full-time salaried employee, I would be an elected committee member with a stipend. I, along with others on the committee, am directly accountable to the community in appropriately allocating funding to projects with the most positive net impact on the community.

As a side note - I like this question a lot because it touches specifically on one of the major challenges I faced working on partnerships at ECC, which was funding. There was absolutely no money available to offset costs of partners to add Zcash to their platforms and very little (if any) to promote partnerships. Most partners will make their revenue on a per-transaction fee basis, this means that they are specifically looking for projects with built-in users where it is likely for them to generate meaningful revenue. They use market cap and transaction volumes as barometers for this. In lieu of these numbers, they will take listing fees which is how many newer projects with large treasuries are generally added to prominent players.

ECC lacked the funding available to pay listing fees and the token’s current market cap made it difficult to move a lot of potential partners forward. I see working on the committee as a way of potentially allocating community resources to expanding Zcash accessibility and functionality. Very candidly, if I am elected, I will advocate funding projects that will directly attract new developers and new users - unless Zcash focuses on these two critical things, we will sink further behind in innovation.

This is a challenging question to answer because most deals I have worked on in my career have NDAs associated with them and I cannot discuss them in public forums. Zcash is the first open-source project I have ever worked on and was still under NDA in several instances. What I can do is share some of the things that make partnerships fruitful that I would look for while serving on ZCG.

  1. Does the partner have strong value- alignment? This will determine if a partnership will last. In particular, when it comes to Zcash we need to fund projects and ideas with longevity. I don’t want to fund projects that aren’t going to have legs to stick around and continue to build, continue to innovate. Anything less is of ZERO benefit to the community in the long term.

  2. What accountability mechanism do we have available to us? If you receive funding from the community, you are accountable to the community. Holding recipients accountable is part of the job of the committee. This will be easier if we do the item above correctly but also making sure expectations are clearly outlined, understood, and followed through with is something I am really passionate about and focus on in partnerships. Also, it is not simply enough to know HOW people are accountable, we also need to know what happens if they are not - what recourse does that community have if a recipient does not uphold their end of the bargain?

  3. What is the network effect of this partnership? This one is critical and goes beyond just understanding the business case for the deal (although that is important!). We must also understand the ancillary benefits to the community/users and future partnerships. IE: does funding this proposal give a cool feature that 5% of the community wants? OR does it unlock new users? This feature is expensive - what other potential partnerships or added value does it unlock for the community?

I know that might be a disappointing response, but I can’t break NDAs with companies I previously worked for.

(Regarding Ideation and Strategy)

I am not going to lie, this question gave me pause and took me some time to consider. I think that at ECC, strategy, and vision are tightly controlled by the executive team and most of what the individual contributors strategize about is specific to their function. For me, that is most related to deal structures, who to target, and why. When I first started at ECC, I outlined a partnership strategy but was required to pivot it several times as I learned more about Zcash’s position in the market, the market turned down, and regulatory uncertainty gripped a lot of the industry.

All that being said, I think it is important to note that there are many decisions that the leadership team at ECC made that I did not/do not agree with.

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Thanks for your candid answers. I appreciate the transparency.

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Do you have any insight about how many people at ECC are regarded as the leadership, and of those how many are in regular contact with Bootstrap? How much influence does Boostrap affect on ECC leadership direction and action?

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The ECC leadership team is comprised of 5 people:

Zooko(CEO), Nate (Research), Andy (CFO), Josh (Marketing/Growth/Regulatory/Policy), and Nick (Engineering).

As far as Bootstrap goes, I know that they have quarterly meetings to review progress on various items ECC manages/managed. That is the extent of my interaction with them, unfortunately. Sorry, I couldn’t be more helpful!

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Just popping into say I think @Beth would be awesome for ZCG. We didn’t overlap at ECC but she seems uniquely fit and talented for this role.

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Update on this:

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