I think it would be great if we could keep these orgs going for brand recognition, but I agree with Josh’s proposal here that it would be beneficial to see new leadership in Zcash so I would like to see the next round of the dev fund implement some mechanisms that allow the community to vote in leadership and hold those leaders accountable for delivering. I am also hoping to see the creation of new organizations to pick up where ECC ceased its efforts.
For example, if all ECC is going to be focused on after “exiting emergency mode” is PoS research - it seems like we should pare back their funding allocation and reallocate it to other organizations that are actively building/marketing etc.
I agree with this. And since this is an area i help with part-time, please let me know if you have specific ideas for projects.
I appreciate this sentiment and your optimism. I agree that we should always be under development. From my observations, people’s frustrations have increased due to the speed at which things are completed and their overall net impact. There is a percentage of the community who feels that the dev fund recipients operate within a black box and do not take community feedback into account.
Zebra took three years to get out the door (I think, someone correct me if that is wrong), NU5 took around the same and then has had several issues negatively impacting users since (for over a year now). At that same time, multiple ZK-based protocols have entered the picture, many of which have extensibility that allows them to build ZK-based dApps in a way that we cannot with Zcash. Crypto has largely moved away from being ‘token-based’ and more about building entire ecosystems where tokens are the medium of exchange - I think the decision-makers have failed to keep up with this growing trend despite the writing being on the wall for some time now.**
*To be clear that doesn’t mean I don’t think there are valid use cases for payment projects still. I am simply acknowledging the changing face of the industry.
When you look at these things converging: opacity into the dev-fund organization’s decision-making, delays, and breakages that seem to drag on endlessly coming up against depressed coin prices - makes it challenging for folks to remain optimistic.
All that being said, I tend to be more of the “stay optimistic but also change the system to work more effectively.” school of thought here. If we continue the dev fund or decide to increase it we have to directly address the mounting concerns of the community within the governance/funding model that we choose.
I think ZCG would benefit from having a full-time dedicated employee or something to that effect. Right now, everyone working on it also has other things they are accountable for professionally so they don’t have the time (or the pay even) to dedicate significant portions of their time. (To be clear that is not a slight in any way, just a reality). Even the work that I do for ZCG, Outreach, really should have more time dedicated to it. For example, most protocols have whole global teams of folks dedicated to marketing and Business Development. I work 1 to 1 and 1/2 days a week on Zcash when we really should have several people full-time if we want significant traction.
However, it is all for not if we don’t have a more cohesive ecosystem growth strategy that includes meaningful product enhancements and feature additions, and even with that - if we cannot move faster we are going to fall further behind in adoption.