Bringing Zcash to Web3Lagos 2026

Community Grants
1

After hosting a successful 6-week developer workshop, which proved highly valuable to the Zcash community, especially developers and validated a formulated curriculum. With plans to continue onboarding developers, I’d like to submit a proposal to the Zcash Community Grants (ZCG) committee seeking support for a Gold Sponsorship at Web3Lagos 2026, one of Africa’s leading developer-focused blockchain conferences organized by the Web3Bridge community.

Rather than viewing this as a traditional conference sponsorship, the goal is to use Web3Lagos as a strategic entry point for onboarding developers, founders, and builders into the Zcash ecosystem while creating a pipeline into the Web3Bridge developer community that extends well beyond the event itself by also integrating the Zcash developers sprint initiative recently drafted.

Why Web3Lagos?

Web3Bridge has established itself as one of Africa’s most respected blockchain developer education communities, consistently training developers and connecting them with opportunities across the broader Web3 ecosystem.

Web3Lagos brings together thousands of attendees, dozens of speakers, ecosystem partners, and technical workshops over three days, making it an ideal environment to introduce Zcash to developers who are actively building blockchain products. Previous editions have attracted more than 2,400 attendees, 73 speakers, and over 40 sponsors and partners across multiple technical tracks.

Africa continues to produce a rapidly growing population of blockchain developers, yet relatively few have had the opportunity to explore privacy-preserving technologies or integrate ZEC into their applications. This initiative aims to help close that gap.

This is the link to the proposal here.

Goals

The primary objective is to convert conference attendees into long-term contributors to the Zcash ecosystem.

Some of the planned outcomes include:

  • Introducing developers to the Zcash ecosystem and its privacy technologies.

  • Demonstrating how ZEC can be integrated into applications and payment flows.

  • Onboarding developers into existing Zcash learning resources and builder communities.

  • Identifying teams interested in experimenting with Zcash in their products.

  • Building relationships with founders, infrastructure providers, and ecosystem partners.

Planned Activities

If funded, our presence at Web3Lagos would include:

  • A dedicated Zcash booth throughout the conference.

  • Live demonstrations of Zcash wallets and developer tooling.

  • Wallet setups and test transactions.

  • A virtual 2-day developer sprint with web3Bridge Students

  • One-on-one onboarding for developers interested in building on Zcash.

  • Distribution of educational resources and developer documentation.

  • Networking with founders, builders, and ecosystem partners.

  • Collection of developer interest for post-event workshops and office hours.

The booth will serve as both an educational space and an onboarding hub where attendees can learn about shielded transactions, privacy-preserving payments, and the growing Zcash developer ecosystem.

Beyond the Conference

One of the most important aspects of this proposal is that the conference is not the final deliverable.

Developers who engage with Zcash during Web3Lagos will be invited into a structured follow-up program that includes technical workshops, office hours, builder support, and ongoing community engagement. The objective is to transform conference conversations into real experimentation, open-source contributions, and eventually production-ready ZEC integrations.

By treating the conference as the beginning of a builder journey rather than a standalone marketing activity, we hope to create sustained value for the ecosystem.

Expected Impact

Success will be measured through outcomes such as:

  • Number of developers onboarded.

  • Wallet creations.

  • Developer community growth.

  • Participation in follow-up workshops.

  • Prototype ZEC integrations.

  • Teams continuing to build after the conference.

  • New contributors entering the Zcash ecosystem.

A comprehensive report documenting activities, metrics, lessons learned, and follow-up outcomes will be published after the event.

I look forward to hearing community feedback on the proposal.

3 Likes
Zcash Community Grants (ZCG) Meeting Minutes 7/20/2026
2

I think this is one of the most effective ways to introduce Zcash to new audiences.

Rather than building an audience from scratch, you’re meeting people who are already active in Web3 and creating an opportunity to introduce financial privacy in a relevant context.

Sometimes adoption isn’t about reaching more people—it’s about reaching the right people. Wishing you a successful event!

2 Likes
3

Hello Dre, thanks for putting this together. I had a couple of questions after reading through the proposal that I’d appreciate some clarification on.

First, the proposal references previous editions attracting over 2,400 attendees, while the 2026 edition is expected to host around 800 participants. Is the 800 figure referring only to the physical event, or has the event been scaled down this year? I’m just trying to better understand the assumptions behind the projected reach.

Secondly, the proposal positions this as a developer onboarding initiative, but some of the primary success metrics (500 booth engagements and 200 wallet downloads) seem to measure general event engagement rather than developer activation. How do you intend to measure whether developers meaningfully engaged with the technical content or took concrete steps toward building within the Zcash ecosystem?

2 Likes
4

Thank you @elzz-ux for raising these points! I appreciate the opportunity to clarify the assumptions and give you a clearer picture of how this activation is structured.

1. Clarification on Attendee Metrics & Event Scale

To clarify the numbers from the sponsorship deck: 2,400+ attendees represents the cumulative total of attendees across the past four editions of the conference. This translates to an average of roughly 600 participants per year.

For this year, the fifth anniversary of the event, it is actually scaling up to an anticipated 800 physical, in-person attendees. While the event has been optimized into a high-intensity 2-day format (compared to the previous 3-day structure), the target footprint for physical traction is larger than previous individual years. The 800 figure refers strictly to this curated, physical crowd.

2. Measuring Developer Activation vs. Booth Engagement

You are entirely correct that the primary metric is booth engagements and wallet downloads, which represent standard, top-of-funnel visibility metrics for sponsorships. We view the booth as an essential touchpoint where the initial discovery and meaningful, face-to-face conversations happen.

However, our strategy for developer activation goes much deeper and is highly tailored to the builder audience:

  • The ZK Cohort Partnership: Web3Bridge launched a dedicated Zero-Knowledge (ZK) training cohort in 2025, producing a strong, pre-vetted pool of developers who already understand foundational cryptographic concepts. We are partnering directly with Web3Bridge to plug these specific students and alumni into our track.

  • Developer Sprint & Build Challenge: We are organizing a practical developer sprint specifically designed for these builders. This will lead into a targeted mini-build challenge, where developers will immediately apply what they’ve learned to build a simple, functional application using the Z3 Stack to interact with the Zcash protocol.

  • Ecosystem Showcases & Direct Onboarding: At the booth, we will actively showcase successful projects built on Zcash to visually prove what is possible regarding privacy-preserving DApp development. We’ll also have attendees from the developer sprint engage the booth. Developers who engage deeply will be directly funnelled into the Zcash Discord and a localized developer registry.

Every layer of this pipeline, from booth scans to workshop attendance, Discord joins, and build challenge submissions, will be tracked and documented in our post-event metrics report. This ensures we are measuring both general ecosystem awareness and deep, practical builder activation.

1 Like
5

Thanks for the clarification. The partnership with the Web3Bridge ZK cohort helps me better understand the developer focus, although this wasn’t stated anywhere in the proposal.

My question about how developer activation itself will be measured is still unanswered though.

For example, what would qualify someone as an “activated developer” for the purposes of this proposal?
Is it attendance at the sprint, completion of the build challenge, joining the developer registry, building a prototype or some other measurable milestone?

I’m asking because the proposal’s primary objective is developer onboarding, cos as it stands there isn’t a clearly defined activation metric to evaluate the project’s impact.

6

I understand your concern. To keep this initiative fully accountable, we need a definition of what ‘activation’ means.

We are measuring developer activation across three progressive tiers:

  • Tier 1: Educational (Target: 40+ Devs) – Attend the Web3Bridge x Zcash workshop sprint, join the Zcash Discord and be added to our Zcash Developer Registry.

  • Tier 2: Practical (Target: 15–20 Devs) – Clone our Zingolib/Z3 Stack starter repos, set up a local dev environment, and complete the guided coding exercises.

  • Tier 3: Contribution (Target: 5–8 Projects) – Submit a functional, running prototype (e.g., transaction script, payment UX) to the Mini-Build Challenge.

A minimum of 15 “Tier 2” (Practically Activated) developers, resulting in at least 5 functional “Tier 3” prototype submissions built using the Z3 Stack or Zingolib SDKs.

I will update the official proposal text to reflect these exact metrics and our partnership with Web3Bridge. Thank you for helping us make this proposal much tighter

1 Like
7

@Dre_Nesthub at the most recent meeting, ZCG voted to approve this proposal. Congratulations!

To keep the community informed, ZCG requests that you provide monthly updates via the forum in this thread.

Please check your forum inbox for a direct message from FPF with important next steps, including a link to the Milestone Payment Request Form and your unique validation code for submitting payment requests.

8

Thank you @ZCG for approving this proposal

I’ll proceed with next steps and ensure I send the full detailed report for this activation after the event

Thank you for the support

2 Likes