Call For Proposals: Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Grants Program Q3

Community Grants Retroactive Grants
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Call for proposals

The Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Grants Program is now accepting proposals for the Q3 2026 round. You can submit a proposal for your own completed work or nominate an individual, company, or project you believe should receive funding to apply for a grant. Retroactive grants provide funding for work that has already been completed and can be publicly verified. Coinholders will decide which proposals to fund through a coinholder vote scheduled for September.

Deadline to submit a proposal: August 14th at 20:00 UTC

After the submission deadline, there will be a mandatory 30-day review period from Monday, August 17 to Wednesday, September 16. The coinholder poll will then run from Thursday, September 17 through Tuesday September 29.

How to Submit:

  1. Complete the proposal template on GitHub.

  2. Copy and paste your completed proposal into a new separate thread in the Community Grants | Retroactive Grants section of the Zcash Community Forum so the community can provide feedback on each proposal.

If you already submitted a proposal for the canceled Q2 vote then no further action is needed, your proposal will be included for Q3. If adjustments are required for your proposal please update both GitHub and your forum post.

If you have any questions about the process or your submission, please post them in this thread. Thanks!

Current Q3 submissions:

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Retroactive Grant - Zecledger
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Hey there,

Is this program just for those projects that are completed? Or can someone with a “good enough” idea request a grant to start their work right away?

Thanks

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Retroactive grants are only for completed work and the community votes on it by using the finished product.

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Understanding the Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Grants Program (CDRGP)

The Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Grants Program (CDRGP) is one of three Zcash grant programs, alongside Zcash Community Grants (ZCG) and the ZecHub Bounty Program. It’s funded by 12% of block rewards (per ZIP 1016, in effect from November 2025 through Zcash’s third halving in 2028) plus initial capital from the Deferred Dev Fund Lockbox. Funds are held in a legally binding multisig wallet managed by Keyholder Organizations and FPF administers the program’s submission and reporting process.

Who can apply

  • Anyone can submit a proposal — for their own completed work, or to nominate another individual, company, or project.
  • Grants are retroactive only: the work must already be fully completed and publicly verifiable at the time of submission. This program does not fund proposed or in-progress work.
  • There’s no fixed cap on request size, but grants above $50,000 require FPF to perform KYC checks before disbursement.
  • If a proposal is rejected by coinholders, the applicant can still resubmit it for consideration through ZCG’s milestone-based model instead.

Process

  1. Call for Proposals — Announced each quarter via the forum, GitHub, and social channels.
  2. Submission — Complete the proposal template on GitHub, then mirror it as a new thread in the forum’s Retroactive Grants category so the community can give feedback.
  3. Mandatory 30-day Review Period — Proposals are discussed publicly; anyone can ask questions or raise concerns directly in the applicant’s thread.
  4. Proposal Summary — FPF publishes a summary of all proposals before polling opens (total requested funding, treasury impact, historical outcomes).
  5. Coinholder Poll — Each proposal is voted Yes/No individually. A minimum participation threshold of ~420,000 ZEC (~2% of supply) per proposal is required for the vote to count, and a simple majority passes.
  6. Funding & Disbursement — Proposals are approved by total “Yes” votes. Payments come directly from the multisig wallet in ZEC (requests are denominated in USD). Keyholders retain veto authority pre- and post-approval for legal, regulatory, or community-harm concerns.

Current cycle (Q3 2026):

  • Call for Proposals: through August 14 @ 20:00 UTC
  • Review Period: August 17 – September 16
  • Coinholder Poll: September 17 – September 29

(Proposals already submitted for the canceled Q2 round carry over automatically — no resubmission needed unless changes are required.)

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Thank you for allowing us (THORSwap/Metro) to qualify for this round of retroactive grants after Q2 round was cancelled.

We’re still hard at work expanding support for ZEC and features (looking at expanding integration for more hardware+software wallets at the moment).

Quick update:

We just launched THORSwap’s big V3 overhaul update which includes our native in-app Metro wallet (with Zcash support), on/off ramps for ZEC and portfolio view to management multichain assets including ZEC.

Our ZEC volume in July was ~$13M ($12,935,027) representing significant marketshare and usage amongst our users.

Thank you for this opportunity and we look forward to the results! :saluting_face:
Link to our application: Retroactive Grant Application: THORSwap/Metro

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Thanks for sharing this

I really like the idea of retroactive grants because it rewards people who have already proven their contribution to the ecosystem

Looking forward to seeing the Q3 submissions and the community discussion around them

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ZecBooks — Retroactive Grant Application (Q3 2026)

Ask: $32,000 USD
FPF GitHub issue: Financial-Privacy-Foundation/ZcashCoinholderGrantsProgram #38
Product: zecbooks.app
Download: zecbooks.app/download (notarized ZecBooks 0.1.1)
Source repo: GitHub - sane-apps/SaneBooks: Mac-native view-only Zcash books: import UFVK, classify notes, export scoped proof packs. Cannot spend. · GitHub (MIT)
Provenance: docs/ZecBooks-0.1.1-PROVENANCE.md on that repo
SHA-256: 25578ef64874705f2f73ca9f23193a6ddd873a33a05339b284b0af1bec243308

Why this exists

A lot of people assume privacy coins are about hiding from taxes. That is not why I built this, and it is not why most Zcash users care about shielded money. I believe people have a right to financial privacy and still want to keep clean books. ZecBooks is the Mac layer for that: import a view-only key, classify income and change honestly, then send your accountant a locked package of the rows they need — without giving them lasting access to your wallet.

Private money, kept with honest books.

CipherPay gets you paid privately. ZBooks runs team treasury. ZecBooks is the Mac bookkeeping layer after money arrives.

What shipped

  • Notarized ZecBooks 0.1.1 (Developer ID)
  • View-only UFVK/UIVK import; refuses seeds/spend keys
  • Live lightwalletd sync (ZcashLightClientKit 2.7.0-rc.4)
  • Classification + encrypted proof packs + Reader
  • Settings → About → Report Public Issue

Verify in five minutes

  1. Download ZecBooks-0.1.1.zip from zecbooks.app/download and check SHA-256 matches the provenance doc
  2. Unzip → spctl -a -vv -t exec ZecBooks.app (expect Notarized Developer ID)
  3. Read MIT LICENSE + CONTRIBUTING.md on the GitHub repo

Note: brand-new forum account (trust level 0) cannot create a category topic or post raw URLs yet. Full clickable links are in FPF issue #38. Happy to answer questions here or there during review.

Happy to answer questions in this thread during the review period.

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We appreciate the opportunity for proposals from the canceled Q2 round to be carried forward and considered in this round of retroactive grants.

We’ve updated our Unstoppable Wallet proposal to include the additional Zcash work completed since the original submission, including the successful NU6.3 / Ironwood migration, Zcash SDK updates, server selection and other improvements.

We’re especially glad that the Ironwood transition was completed successfully and that Unstoppable Wallet users were able to remain fully supported through this major Zcash network upgrade.

We’ve also updated the scope and requested amount to reflect the additional completed work.

Updated proposal:

Thank you, and we’re happy to be part of the Q3 round!

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Grant amendment update

Greetings, fellow Zcashers!

As our project grew, we built infrastructure needed to operate ZcashMe and ZcashNames and released components that can be useful outside our own applications.

So we’re updating our retrospective grant to include work that fell outside the original submission and was not covered by our recent Zcash Community Grant (still uncollected).

We did not increase the requested amount.

Here are the additions:

  1. We built seer-sync, a standalone Rust chain-sync engine for applications that need to observe Zcash activity without implementing a wallet stack. crates.io: Rust Package Registry

    Given a UIVK or UFVK, seer-sync streams compact blocks, trial-decrypts outputs, detects spends, recovers memos and outgoing notes, persists transaction state, tracks the chain tip, and recovers from reorgs. It supports Sapling, Orchard, and Ironwood and does not depend on zcash_client_backend or zcash_client_sqlite.

    This means a wallet, payment processor, accounting system, explorer, or backend service can add Zcash chain synchronization without rebuilding that infrastructure from scratch or taking custody of spending keys.

  2. We built a service that watches Zcash activity for multiple configured viewing keys and writes both mempool and confirmed transactions into Postgres automatically. GitHub - zcashme/zns-mempool · GitHub

    A project can maintain a master table containing its viewing keys and destination tables. Zns-mempool routes transaction data into the corresponding tables as activity appears on the network. It does not require the project to operate its own lightwalletd.

  3. We built zebra-indexer-proto, a Rust crate containing bindings for Zebra’s indexer gRPC interface. crates.io: Rust Package Registry

    The crate vendors Zebra’s indexer protocol definitions and ships the generated Rust bindings directly, so developers can add Zebra indexer support with a normal Cargo dependency instead of copying protobuf files, maintaining generated code, installing protoc, or adding a protobuf generation pipeline to their own project.

    Applications can now have an interface for building on Zebra’s indexer APIs while keeping their own build systems smaller. We actively maintain this

  4. We built a “Sign in with Zcash” flow using OAuth2/OpenID Connect. GitHub - zcashme/zns-login: Zcash-based authentication: pay to log in · GitHub

    Users can authenticate with a Zcash identity instead of relying on a conventional email-and-password account. Developers can integrate the same flow into web applications that already support OAuth!

    We’re also integrating ZcashMe login with @paulbrigner’s PGPZ platform: Add ZcashMe membership verification by craftsoldier · Pull Request #72 · paulbrigner/pgpz-sites · GitHub

Together, this work reduces several barriers to building on Zcash. So thank you to everyone who supports ZcashMe and ZcashNames. It is an honor to contribute to the ecosystem.

By the way, did you know: since the original application, our waitlist crossed 9,000 names, and Barry Silbert and WallStreetBets both mentioned the project!

Barry Silbert:

WallStreetBets:

Special thanks to everyone who tests ZcashMe and ZcashNames, shares them, contributes code and gives us feedback along the way. We’re making privacy as normal as names.

ZM ZN,
Julian & Team

Retroactive Grant Application - ZcashNames · Issue #34 · Financial-Privacy-Foundation/ZcashCoinholderGrantsProgram · GitHub!

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Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Grants Program Q2 2026 - Now Accepting Proposals
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Submitted a retroactive grant application for CipherScan, the Zcash block explorer and analytics platform. :saluting_face:

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Just submitted an application for the self-sovereign Zcash testnet faucet. Full write-up here: Retroactive Grant Application: Self-sovereign Zcash Testnet Faucet

Short version: it runs its own Zebra node, Zallet wallet, embedded Zaino indexer, and miner, and hands out shielded z-to-z TAZ so the payouts stay private. Live at https://zcashfaucet.jinolabs.xyz. Running the real stack also turned up two Crosslink node bugs I fixed and reported upstream. Happy to take questions in the thread.

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Just want to comment and say its awesome so many new builders are using this resource! Good luck to everyone :heart_eyes: :shield: :zebra: :heart_suit:

Open question to coinholders,

How much time will you invest in research and testing for all these wonderful builders? This is not a trival problem!!!

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FWIW, FPF will provide a summary post tomorrow once the deadline passes to help support the review process. Regardless, given the volume and technical breadth of the submissions a thorough review will be challenging!

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Hello,
I’m writing from the Coin Wallet team. Our wallet has been around for 11 years, and we plan to add Zcash support in the coming months. We only learned about the grants last week.

I have a short question:
Would it still be possible to submit an application today with a description of the planned work?

We already support 23 blockchains, including Monero, so this is mainly a matter of time - we have relevant experience. Our wallet is fully functional across platforms: we cover mobile apps, desktop, web app, and Tor .onion.

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This program is only for completed grants. For future work you can consider applying for a ZCG grant.

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