I would like to nominate @earthrise for a ZF board seat!
Taylor has been involved with the Zcash project since before it launched, and he has been outspoken on these forums over the years, bringing forward ideas for how we can better work together and make Zcash a better product.
Having worked as a security engineer for ECC and as the Ecosystem Security Lead, Taylor has deep knowledge of Zcash’s technical stack. He will be able to positively contribute to technical direction.
In addition to being unwaivering in his support for privacy rights, he is kind and empathetic - which I think will help with bridging relations among the organizations.
ZF would be in good hands with Taylor on the board!
In case this is the first time you’re hearing about me, a bit of background: I first got involved with Zcash while working at ECC for a year pre-launch. I returned to ECC as a security engineer in late 2018, and then in 2023 I started the Zcash Ecosystem Security Lead grant, where I audited most of Zcash’s community projects; that work is now being continued by Least Authority.
I believe I can contribute to Zcash by serving on the ZF board. In particular, I plan to focus on these key points:
I will strive to ensure that large, expensive engineering efforts are concretely tied to improving Zcash as a product and gaining more adoption. For example, protocol changes should be informed by adoption-blockers and scoped to include all of the “last mile” efforts needed to make the new features accessible to users and developers.
Public spats between Zcash community leaders have done damage to the community’s unity and optimism. A focus of mine within the ZF board will be on improving relations between Zcash community leaders, emphasizing constructive disagreement and solution-finding over winning arguments in the public’s eye. I think I’m in a good position to help with this because I personally trust everyone to be working in the best interest of Zcash.
Everyone working on Zcash is part of a movement to protect privacy rights; it’s more than a job. I will support a culture that finds the best path forward for Zcash through open discussion and blameless postmortems, encouraging ideation from everyone involved in the project, no matter their role.
You can get a sense for my views and the kinds of things I will advocate for from my posting history on these forums, e.g. user adoption (focusing protocol development on UX challenges), community priorities (community projects supporting each other while remaining decentralized), funding (shifting the focus from “who gets money” to planning and accountability), economics, etc. Note that I’ve likely changed my mind on a lot of things!
I second this nomination. If there’s anyone I want to be more closely involved in Zcash, its Taylor. A more suited candidate for ZF Board does not come to mind.
This message is a personal opinion and shall not be associated with my role as Developer Relations Engineer grantee.
Taylor is one of the people in this space that has put Zcash before his own interests many times. He has a true commitment with privacy for humankind as an ideal and guiding principle. His interactions and remarks on this forum are a proof of this. Moreover, as one of the authors of the Zcash Protocol, Taylor has always been “skin in the game” when it came to ensuring a high baseline of ecosystem security and his work has spun a high-standards culture on every aspect of the ecosystem he got involved with. I’m sure that his involvement in the ZF board will bring the same positive impact.
