Community Polling on Funding Model ZIPs

Governance
1

Dear Zcash Community,

We have important decisions ahead that will significantly impact Zcash’s governance and sustainability. After many months of calls for proposals and discussions, we are at a critical decision point.

Collaboration and cooperation among Zcash organizations and ecosystem partners is essential for determining the path forward. In this spirit, @Alex_ZF (interim Executive Director of the Zcash Foundation), @aquietinvestor (Executive Director of Shielded Labs), and I have been meeting to explore potential solutions. Together, we have agreed to poll the community to gather feedback and gauge sentiment on the proposals received prior to the deadline provided below.

The current funding mechanism, established under ZIP 1015, expires in November 2025. At that time, funding will no longer be available to ZCG or others doing critical work supporting the protocol and ecosystem. Without a proactive decision, the absence of funds for grants post-expiration poses a significant risk to the continuity of Zcash’s development efforts. This underscores the urgency for a long-term solution.

The community will be asked to decide whether to prioritize extending the Dev Fund and adopting a new funding model, which will further delay NU7. The length of the delay is uncertain and depends on the specific proposal, as different proposals would have varying impacts on the timeline and feasibility of implementation.

Polling will begin the first week of April and include coin holders, the Zcash Foundation ZCAP, and the ECC ZAC.

For inclusion in the poll, proposals must be formally specified in a draft Zcash Improvement Proposal (ZIP). A guide and template for drafting a ZIP are available here. If you would like help drafting a ZIP, please reach out to the team in the ZIP channel in the R&D Discord. If you draft a ZIP for consideration, please provide a link in this thread.

I, along with a few others, will submit two proposals for consideration: the zBloc and Community + Coinholder proposals. Please consider formalizing alternatives you think the community ought to consider.

Key Dates:

  • March 31st: All draft ZIPs for inclusion in polling are due
  • No later than April 7th: Polling begins
  • April 18th: Polling Ends
  • No later than April 21st: Results shared and next steps identified

While posted by me, as per above, this post was created in collaboration with Alex and Jason. We welcome your feedback! Please reply to this post or feel free to reach out to any of the three of us with any questions or concerns.

5 Likes
2

Like the “community” of people getting money out of the dev fund would elect not to keep the money flowing.

Another sham poll. I though you had the back of ZEC holders @aquietinvestor.

3

I do. I’m currently organizing a test poll using the new Coin Voting 2.0 application to help coinholders understand how it works so that it can be used to gauge coinholder sentiment in these governance discussions. I also support proposals that give coinholders a role in funding decisions through a coinholder-driven grantmaking process.

4

I may misunderstand something then, apologies if that’s the case.

Could you please tell me the weight of the tokenholders vote in this poll?

If anything less than 100%, can you tell me how that number was decided and what makes the people behind this decision legitimate?

Likewise, what makes the participants other than ZEC holders, not just legitimate, but just as importantly, free of conflict of interest?

As far as I can tell there’s only one way to fix the mess ZF and ECC got us into, and it’s not even a big ask. I’ll repeat it in case it’s not clear to anyone:

  • ZEC holders need to have control over the dev fund.
  • This does not imply that ZEC holders should decide specifically where the money should go.
  • This does imply that ZEC holders would have control over whether the proposal made by the “ZF/ECC community” is worth the expense for them.
5

There’s no formal weighting assigned to coinholder input or any other input. Coinholders, ZCAP (managed by ZF), and ZAC (managed by ECC) will each be polled separately. The results provide insight into sentiment across different groups, but there’s no predefined formula for how each input is weighted.

Some of the current proposals give ZEC holders control over a portion of the Dev Fund. For example, the Community + Coinholder proposal allocates 12% of block rewards for coinholders to decide how and when the funds are distributed. That said, there’s nothing stopping anyone from introducing a proposal that gives coinholders 100% control over the Dev Fund. If that’s something you’d like to pursue, I’d be happy to help you formalize it into a ZIP so it can be considered alongside the other proposals.

6

No. You see, it would be giving legitimacy to this sham poll.

No legitimate poll deciding of a critical aspect of the project would have “no formal weighting” that would lead a decision based on “sentiment” that undefined people would define once the vote is over, with participants that are deep in conflict of interest.