Based on all of our historical information there is no possible way for your 10 item list to be delivered in 4 years.
Funding is not the blocker to creating deliverables in this ecosystem, it is primarily an issue of productivity against technical and social challenges. If funding were the blocker for productive crypto building then you would be explicitly arguing against the material success of Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Monero, Ethereum Classic, and countless other successful projects that have built better and created greater adoption than Zcash on notably less funding.
The main Zcash ecosystem teams have spent about $1,000,000 combined avg per month for the past 3-4 years and the results (poor) speak for themselves; the issue here is not a lack of funding. Attempting to introduce parallel deliverable workflows would only strain productivity worse at my estimation. The deliverables teams have all struggled on single focus deliveries in the past few years with the case studies being: Halo to mainnet, the recent wallet sync/ fee mechanism mitigation, ZF zebrad enhancements, and Zcash Media content suite v1.
A Suite of Native Apps - Steps for ZCG.
(1) Contract out work for wireframe designs.
(2) Continue to pressure ECC for better native APIs required for these applications to exist. Work already underway but we can do better by communicating developer requirements.
(3) Contract out the implementation of app. Short milestones. Contract risks cancellation and on failed delivery.
To clarify, I am not equating FROST with SSS. Rather, I am stating that understanding SSS would inherently enable one to comprehend FROST, considering that both techniques are fundamentally rooted in the principle of Lagrangian polynomials. In essence, these concepts are based on relatively straightforward mathematics.
Perhaps there is a misunderstanding regarding my perspective. I certainly do not advocate for the ZF to engage in legal action. Instead, I am expressing concerns regarding the duration it takes for the ZF to develop a functioning library, particularly when others have already put forward their own.
The behavior of the ZF might give the impression of intentionally withholding a technological advancement, potentially due to apprehensions about being perceived as having no other important tasks to perform.
@GGuy
I think it would be prudent to concentrate our efforts on resolving the present concerns before embarking on highly aspirational initiatives that may not come to fruition. As the adage goes, āOne must learn to crawl before attempting to run.ā
At this point, I would personally be satisfied by the successful realization of even one of these initiatives.
However, I do not believe them to be essential to the success of Zcash.
The library has been functionally ready for months. The reason itās not being advertised as so is that is hasnāt been audited yet (the audit will start soon) and that the RFC has not been published yet (it takes time due to CFRG bureaucracy that is outside ZF control).
Dev Fund 2024: Town Hall Meeting on Twitter Spaces
@David_Heisenberg and I are hosting a Twitter Spaces event Thursday, June 1 at 12:00pm PDT / 3:00pm EDT / 19:00 UTC to discuss Dev Fund 2024. Twitter link will be provided early next week. We will plan on recording the event for those who are unable to attend live. Community members are welcome to join to listen in, ask questions, and contribute thoughts and ideas.
Interesting thoughts in this piece. I will hold off my personal opinions for now but thinking critically as a community, do any of these ideas apply to Zcashās future?
Are any of the community moderators doing a count of topics and opinions in this giagantic thread? Asking the question because there is so much back and forth lot of ideas and criticism but the halving doesnt happen for another year and a half and its sad if all these opinions get lost. When is the whole ecosystem going to reach the conclusion about keeping the devtax or not, or modifying it for the next epoch? Maybe it would be smart to rerun the same original poll questions next May or June and see how many voters we get and what the results are again that would be a smart regression check to see how the community perception changes or keeps steadfast over another year but still before the halving.
The concerns about Electric Coin and Zcash Foundation voters in the polls was never resolved. We all know that the polls always going to result in favor of devtax if those companies and other ZCG grant receivers are allowed to vote. Obviously they must vote to protect their salaries.
The ECC development prioritization graph, which we use for all our internal prioritization and planning, is publicly visible here and our day-to-day work is all publicly visible on Github.
If web or mobile developers canāt easily add Zcash payment to their app like they can with Paypal or Stripe, then Zcash will only be used by a small number of people.
I believe we should work towards making the integration of Zcash even easier than Paypal or Stripe (since thereās no need for registration and KYC). One way to achieve this is by ensuring that setting up your own full node and lightwalletd is as simple as running a few docker commands plus release a few standard library for popular languages like JS and Python.
So, I listened to the recording of the spaces last night. I did not listen to Q&A. Some thoughts.
Key takeaways
Everyone agreed that the protocol development, and cryptographic advances, funded via the Dev Fund have been worthwhile
Next Zcash Dev Fund must make developing on Zcash on a better experience so people can build apps that solve their problems
Must decentralize dev fund money outside of US
Three camps were created to describe peopleās thoughts. 1) Keep the dev fund as is 2) reform the dev fund 3) abolish the dev fund
Some personal comments
I thought some of the conversation was in defence of recipientsā previous funding, which can be expected to be fair
I wouldāve liked @noamchom to have a bit more air time, but overall thought everyoneās participations was equal. Managing six speakers isnāt easy. Great job moderators!
I didnāt understand why only protocol development was the only consistent item voiced as a positive thing to come from the dev fund. Iām not sure if people donāt value other community contributions, or think theyāve fallen short. Explicit, constructive, clarity would be helpful here. (Josh did mention some community items, but not sure if anyone else did)
I disagree with the framing that itās either volunteers, dev fund, or VC funding. A balance can be struck, and should be considered for the next version of Zcash funding
Ideas worth discussing
Like the majority of the panel participants, Iām in the reform camp. Iād be interested in having some discussions around how we can ensure long-term sustainability and think past dev fund model for some community activities
Iād like to hear more from people who think we should abolish the dev fund, and what funding models theyād like to pursue
Iām very interested in redistribution models like ZecHubās bounty program and ZFās Minor Grants program. I think lowering the time commitment barrier to entry could help diversify our contributor community, and provide more opportunities for people to earn dev fund money. I think part-time contributors are undervalued
Iām interested in alternative funding models, like how Shielded Labs received its startup funding. I donāt know how they did it, but appreciate they went a different route for its bootstrapping funds
If anyone wants to discuss these things, letās do another spaces!
Potential suggestions for reform
I have potential suggestions for reform, but want to keep the conversation productive so will hold off on mentioning them here until more discussions are held publicly. If you want to hear them, ping me in the Zcash Global discord.
I believe conversations like last night are very good to have in helping us to get better. I think @noamchom makes some good points, especially concerning perhaps moving the funding model to rewards via POS. But I think I am leaning a little more towards reform right now, there is still a lot of work to do. Maybe a compromise of a 2 year commitment past 2024, to be reevaluated again in 2026?
I think perhaps some of the frustration from holders is that it can be easy to feel like maybe we didnt get the ābest bang for the buckā we were hoping for with some of devfund? And maybe it is just an issue of the things all the entities are doing not being communicated very well? Perhaps it is hard to evaluate āresultsā in a bear marketā¦ but for instance- Zcash marketing was part of the fund. Where was Zcash being marketed? How? To who? I donāt believe I saw any tangible efforts in marketing- but maybe I just missed it? At the least I would have expected some marketing presence on social media.
No one wants to feel micro-managed, but I think the case for the devfund would be easier if work being done was communicated well. I read the arborist call notes last night- that super helps- it was exciting to hear about all the progress on FROST and ZSAs- way to go devs! Is there a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly report/update required from ALL the entities who receive devfunds? Personally I would feel way better about devfund if every week I could read a summary of progress taking place in all the areas.
Weāll get this figured out. I believe Zcash has a bright future. Obtaining most anything of great value comes with a lot of hard work.
This is my personal opinion (It would be funny if everyone started their posts like this, all the time)
Appreciate the thoughts, Ian.
Iāll admit I was expecting the second question after we listed our dev fund Wās was going to be what we considered the dev fund Lās. Itās easy to overlook details in Twitter Spaces hubbub, so Iāll try to thoroughly list mine here.
Itās been many years of dev fund, so Iām surely forgetting things on both lists. But these things came to mind.
Dev fund spend I think is worthwhile
Protocol engineering
Apps (light wallets, Zgo, etc)
Cryptographic research that leads to new useful features or better performance for ZEC
New use cases (FUN would be a really great thing to introduce in our community) Tangent: I canāt stop thinking about how great it would be for Zcash (and for match quality) if it could be seamlessly integrated in an online game. You think ELO drives people? Microtransactional per-game wagers would drive people. Zcash LatAm has started doing regular poker tournaments and I think thatās super awesome, and Iām sad I missed the most recent one!
Dev fund spend Iām not into
Nebulous marketing
While I still am not convinced AAA-Quality video content is a worthwhile spend of the dev fund, at least Zcash Media has tangible deliverables.
I agree with @CruiseZodler. Other marketing efforts were basically invisible to me, and certainly donāt seem to have improved our position.
Regulatory outreach
Not at all saying itās whatās happening, but to me, regulatory outreach is indistinguishable from a Rainmaking con
I admit I donāt assume good intent from politicians (plz no ban)
I think Zcash should be so robust it canāt be destroyed, and so valuable that nations want it in their economies. I think we see this happening with BTC.
PGP For Crypto has 137 subscribers on Youtube and 178 followers on Twitter. I have more on both and, Iām basically nobody.
Charity to peripherally related causes ie Monero conference, Arti/Tor
I canāt speak for anyone else, but I didnāt buy Zcash to fund Tor. Or Monero. I can donate money to anyone any time I want. It shouldnāt be baked into my money of choice. If Arti is a game changer for us, Iāll eat crow on this one, and Iāll definitely still namedrop Arti as a ZCG flex, since we funded it, and Iāll try to foster its success, since we funded itā¦ but until itās a meaningful part of using Zcash, itās w/e to me
Maybe it seems small-minded, but I think the dev fund is here to support Zcash, not our leadershipsā (This includes me!) pet causes.
Itās great if people share my values, but thatās not enough to make me want to shoot over dev funds. In fact, when grant applicants focus on our shared values and pledging allegiance to privacy, it puts me on guard. I assume we all like privacy. I donāt care if our creeds match up. I care about positive results for Zcash.
High-Dollar Education Efforts
If itās so hard to understand how to use ZEC, the solution isnāt more education, itās making ZEC easy to use.
(Aside) I think our marketing opportunity will come when (and yes I mean when) transparent blockchain users get bitten. The IRS is amped up, and a bunch of clueless kids have racked up huge tax burdens clicking sexy DeFi UIās without understanding their implications. Darknet Market users too, will likely have their turn in the barrel. This will suck and be sad, but itāll also be the best advertisement for privacy crypto we could imagine.
(It would be funny if everyone started their posts like this, all the time)
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