ECC Dev Fund Proposal Assessments

Community Collaborations protocol
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Hi all,

It’s amazing to see the diverse Zcash community participating in the conversation about a potential Dev Fund with such zeal. :drum:

Thank you all for participating!

Within ECC we’ve been hard at work to clarify our general position with regard to development funding, and to that end we recently posted the Electric Coin Company Statement on Sustainability. My goal with this post is to highlight the timeline and next steps for how ECC plans to engage with the proposal advocates, which is in the Next Steps section of that post:

August 6th: This week we expect a public statement from the Zcash Foundation, and we urge all proposal advocates to pay close attention to that.

August 16th: Meanwhile, ECC is committed to posting public assessments of all proposals submitted by August 16th.

August 26th: For those proposals which appear on this list of active proposals by the 16th, ECC is committed to publishing an assessment by August 26th.

The ECC will then draft assessments of each PreZip that, where possible, will include how its adoption would impact ECC, and how we believe it would impact the Zcash project.

August 29th: Deadline for Draft ZIPs. The funding proposals we are discussing here do not need to be in ZIP form; this assessment process by ECC is separate from the ZIP process and intended to give everyone an early indication of ECC’s assessment of proposals prior to the ZIP Feature Selection process (through September and October). The dates for ECC’s assessments were chosen to help proposal authors get feedback prior to this ZIP deadline.

The August 16th and 26th events are something ECC is doing to engage with proposal advocates that complements the ZIP process itself. It does not replace that process. Also, I wanted to remind any proposal advocate who’s uncertain or wary of the ZIP process itself to speak up, because I or others in the community are willing to proactively help you through that process.

Regards,
Nathan

Edits 2019-08-05: Removed a partially redundant sentence, leaving the focus of ECC assessments on their impact to ECC and Zcash at large. Also use “assessment” consistently to describe ECC’s goal in this process.

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Hey folks! I’ve posted ECC’s assessments of how each current Dev Fund proposal would impact ECC’s operations: ECC Initial Assessment of Community Proposals. - Electric Coin Company Please let me know what you think! (Here, or contact me privately if you prefer.) :heart:

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Hi Zooko,

EDIT: I started off on the wrong foot. My apologies. I would like to thank the ECC for their feedback so far, it has been invaluable. Over all I like the post and that you are stating how this impacts the ECC. I assume str4d and daira’s responses came out of those meetings.

I was wondering why my second proposal - [ZIP 1002] FINAL: ZIP Proposal - Genuine Protocol opt-in/out donation feature updated 02/sept

Got this response:

It does need some adjustments but the whole purpose of the zip is it specifies that funding needs to happen, but it cannot be mandatory. Does the ECC think only mandatory donations (is that even a donation?) is the only mechanism that will allow the company to survive?

It doesn’t say their cannot be 50% block distribution going to the ECC, just that is an unsustainable model and the “user” decides if they donate at all. (I have to clarify some terms still from str4d and daira’s feedback.)

but it does not disallow any funding for the ECC. It just does not provide what the mechanism should be, it says what it shouldn’t be. (with the intent that the funding can be worked out later or those better at finace stuff than me. I was assuming that this would be used as part of another zip or have another zip added to it that has a mechanism for polling and/or funding)

edit: on reflection, this is the only zip that doesn’t break the core values and allows for indefinite funding of the ECC.

Please note: I am asking this off the ECC not questioning the employees specifically. if that makes sense.

EDIT3: you could have shown some love on @Blocktown’s original proposal. They were late to the party, but they did come in, get a bit roasted then come back with something pretty solid. I know you have deadlines, etc. I personally would really like to have seen it included.

Thanks,
steve

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Hey, mistfpga! Thanks for the note. As far as I understand, your proposal does not specify a mechanism that would provide funding for our work. That’s all we were responding to there.

As for the Blocktown proposal, we had already written our assessments of the proposals that were posted at the time. We hope to have time do another round of assessments in September.

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Ah, gotcha. makes sense. the process is a bit confusing. I think though str4d and daira have really stepped up to the plate and made most if not all of my post invalid.

I appreciate you taking the time to respond.

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