Howdy Zeal, It has been almost exactly 5 years since I ran for the inaugural ZOMG, and now I am again officially putting my name forward to serve on the next ZCG committee.
Although I was not elected to ZOMG in 2020, it ultimately led to me eventually being hired at the Zcash Foundation as the Ecosystem Relations Manager where I gained years of hands-on experience working with every ZCG committee starting with ZOMG until recently when I started at my new role at ECC in Q4 of last year.
My responsibilities w/ ZCG over the years at ZF included:
- proactively seeking out and evaluating high quality, grant applicants
- being a point of contact for grant applicants throughout the entire grant lifecycle
- acting as liaison between the ZOMG Committee and grant recipients
- monitoring grants’ progress (including assessing progress against milestones)
Also during my time working closely with ZCG, I contributed to several community initiatives including, multiple Zcons, ZconVoices with the ZcashBrazil team, participated in the launch of ZecHub, collaborated on the creation of the ZF A/V Club, & helped to steward the idea of ZCG moving under FPF.
I feel that I am in a unique position to contribute to ZCG in an impactful way by leaning on my direct experience with the ZCG program, my previous role at ZF, my current role at ECC working on Zashi, and my experience collaborating with multiple grantees, community members, & orgs within the Zcash ecosystem. I want to convert what I have learned in those experiences into helping ZCG to move the Zcash ecosystem forward, by shipping faster, learning together, accelerating adoption, and showcasing what we have to offer to the wider crypto ecosystem & world at large.
My vision for ZCG is to pursue a unified, collaborative front for Zcash, where builders, users, researchers, educators, and privacy advocates push Zcash forward together in the following ways:
- Protocol Advancement – supporting the things we are already building toward (Zebra, Zaino, Zallet, ZSAs, Tachyon, Crosslink, NSM), by coordinating with the teams & individuals working on these current initiatives, as well as other protocol devs at ECC, ZF, & SL by working to cultivate grantees and milestones that help to move these projects forward or help to build around & or on top of them. Ultimately accelerating on all fronts.
- Speculative Value Creation – nurturing ideas & teams that can increase ZEC utility and shielded pool growth. (DEXs, browser extensions, messaging, etc..)
- Community Stability & Growth – support for grantees that strengthen knowledge-sharing, education, documentation, and contributor on-boarding so we all scale together not just the protocol(Tachyon reference).
In addition to the above, some things I would like to try to get off the ground if elected to ZCG are:
- Reviving the old Gardening Calls but as a sort of open ecosystem grantee sync/show-and-tell for collaborative problem-solving, avoidance of duplicate work, sharing of resources, and general alignment. I think this would be beneficial to not only the ZCG committee & grantees but the community at large as well.
- A revamp of the RFP program: I would like to help revamp the ZCG RFP program and flesh it out into a sort of ecosystem-wide collaborative, actionable “wishlist” that is made in sync with the other organizations priorities, roadmaps, and the needs of the community. Essentially fill the gaps.
As @earthrise once said:
If this vision resonates with you, & you think my experience would be a valuable addition to ZCG advocating and working towards that vision, I would be honoured to represent you in this role.
Thank you for your consideration!
Onward.