Although I agree with these conclusions, I would prefer to keep at least the “Lockbox” if we see truly broad support for this solution within the ZCAP community and during the coinholder vote. After all, we simply don’t know what the future holds for Zcash.
Completely abandoning the option to has a reserve fund would be an overly confident decision that seems more like being carried away by success than stable management.
that horse has already left the barn
@maxdesalle are you really comfortable liking stupid things?
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Obviously, he is, as long as it is in support of his agenda. Anything definitely goes.
I’ve gotten used to speaking my mind openly on this forum over the years. I think I should speak frankly now as well, on my own behalf, not on behalf of ZCG. ZCG received a heads-up a few weeks ago that all this was about to start. Yes, it was pretty obvious. Just as it’s clear who the beneficiaries are here. And I respect them. I believe their opinion carries a lot of weight, and I understand why they don’t trust a group of five people who, to put it simply, are working against their interests. They’re spending their own resources to drive the price up, which is why they don’t like community funds. What’s so hard to understand about that? We could have avoided this whole theatre, but let’s just play the scene.
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Thanks for sharing, its great to hear from the other side. I truly want to learn more. Can you provide a brief counter argument to the idea that ZCG keeps funding things that coinholders do not vote for? Why does such a strong disparity exist?
It is perfectly okay to speak in support of ZCG while adding “of course, this is independent” even if ZCG is clearly benefitting, it’s precedent of this conversation. Seriously though, I don’t get why its taboo to speak in support of something you, well, support, just because you’re related. Only claiming not to do so is taboo.
The thing is, if the whole issue is just about control and inefficiency, then why are we not fixing the inefficiency and just gutting the whole thing? That’s ridiculous!
Oh. That explains it. Billionaires and shutting down things to further an agenda, a tale as old as time, and as old as USAID, apparently.
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To reiterate, I am speaking solely for myself. If I were a Bitcoin supporter, I would prefer to stick with the model that has already proven its effectiveness and resolve all remaining disagreements and contentious issues within Zcash that are preventing Bitcoiners from jumping on the new bandwagon. Of course, they interact within a circle of major players, and every criticism directed at Zcash is added to the roadmap: “this needs to be fixed.” That is my opinion.
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Artkor, what do you think about ZCG transitioning into a fiat trust? That way it retains its value and no longer needs to rely on Zcash to fund it. It can run for centuries on interest.
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Let the community decide; as a member, I would prefer not to express my opinion on the future of ZCG, since I am in a ZCG role and there will be people who accuse me of having a personal interest. I’ll just add that every single ZCG member, without exception, wants the best for the community and for Zcash to thrive. You can be sure of that.
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Back in September, when heated discussions were flaring up about ZCG, it was clear that nobody—not even the ZCG panelists themselves, by all appearances—were comfortable with the funding stream handing their treasury tens of millions of dollars of capital every month, given the sudden and unexpected rise in the ZEC price. Nobody at any org in Zcash was comfortable with this situation. It presented a risk to the panelists, invited tumultuous and harmful discourse, and was completely unnecessary given the existing spending rate of the grant program.
At the time, there was universal agreement (and legal confirmation) that ZCG could either stop receiving their funding stream and keep their existing treasury, or perhaps instead place a U.S. dollar cap on its treasury and return excess funds to the NSM. Various members of ZCG also appeared to agree with this. With NU7 upcoming, and a follow-up network upgrade several months away (in early 2027, most likely) it was important not just to do it quickly but also to get ZCG’s consent, since they appeared to agree with it as well, and it was in their own interests, and it was in the Zcash community’s interests. (Delays only allow ZCG’s treasury to accumulate more funds, which would make the problem worse for everyone.)
ZCG voted on the most limited version of this deal: voluntarily asking for their funding stream to be sent to a lockbox identical to the Coinholder grants lockbox, still earmarked for them, but placed out of their reach without explicit one-time payouts during network upgrades.
They voted no.
I heard two objections: one, that they felt pressured to do it before NU7 and couldn’t make an informed decision in time, and two, that they desired a public community discussion and debate about the future of the grants program rather than a “backroom deal.” I think the latter characterization is absurd; this was about ZCG voluntarily asking to have their funds placed in a lockbox just as the Coinholder grants funding currently is. It was not even about sending the funds to the NSM at the time.
But fair enough! Due to the nature of the discussions on social media and here on the forum, @GGuy told me that ZCG would deliberate and start a discussion in the community about what they thought should be done with the out-of-control treasury from their perspective. Sounds great! This would allow ZCG to seed the discussion positively, and avoid needless accusations of bad faith and malice on the part of people who honestly disagreed with the ZCG program but were afraid to begin community discussions because they feared being labeled biased or having their objections disregarded and dismissed for ulterior motives.
We depended on ZCG to do the right thing, for themselves, for Zcash, and for their own grants program, and they had all of October to do it. Instead, they sat on their hands and said nothing. They needlessly forced their opponents to advocate for something they claimed to agree with, and be subject to this predictable backlash.
Now, one of the members (@artkor) has the audacity to characterize this as campaign against them when they were given every bit of leverage and every chance to decide for themselves what to advocate for the benefit of Zcash. For an entire month.
IMO, this experience caused me to lose all faith in ZCG. I believe that, at best, they are paralyzed by indecision and typical committee BS. I am disappointed that they misled me and others into thinking they actually intended to publicly communicate about this. I have no reason to believe any of them are malicious, so I won’t engage in that kind of speculation, but we will not be given the same benefit of the doubt. And we have ZCG to thank for it.
Instead of being humiliated and ashamed of the situation they put everyone in, and the poor leadership they displayed, it appears some of them want to act like victims. I am now convinced ZCG is useless (at best) and Zcash needs to purge it from the protocol.
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Still looking forward to the details of your proposal.
I don’t see any signal that a dev fund is no longer needed. In fact we had important infrastructure, bug bounties and security initiatives funded fully by Coinholder Retroactive Grants.
Conversely the discussion around funding is primarily around accountability of ZCAP/ZCG and the questionable necessity of some of the grants given.
“Markets like certainty” a heuristic and not a fact, applies to any decision made, not the decision you frame.
Under your proposal:
- ZCAP still votes on the board of the Zcash Foundation and controls another set of funds besides ZCG.
- You will put forward some new mechanism for funding things you think are very critical to be funded.
I agree that there are some critical things to be funded, and that relying on private donations creates a coordination problem. Whatever mechanism you propose for this very critical funding, I will want to know how it is accountable to coinholders.
Overall, it seems that we are converging on a need to have a very high threshold, beyond reproach, when it comes to allocating dev funds, which seems like a good direction to take.
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The world isn’t using Zcash yet.
Our work is not done.
Now that we have significant budgets, it’s the time to deploy, not to retreat.
We should be aggressively scaling up our marketing spend, while bringing experienced nonprofit leadership into the ZCG organization to manage the larger treasury with mature oversight.
The Zcash ecosystem was desperate for funding for years.
Now that we finally have it, it’s shocking that anyone would want to throw it away.
Scale. Go to market. Set an annual budget and use it.
Polkadot has $140 million in treasury and spends $40 million per year. We’ve never had the opportunity to really get Zcash out into the world on a big scale. Why not try something new, now that we have capital?
I am firmly opposed to the notion that private investors will consistently fund Zcash projects. They won’t, not at the scale that a foundation can. Builders will relinquish equity in most cases. And good luck getting in touch with Zcash-aligned investors unless you are an insider. Zcash is still a very small investor pond. One year of success doesn’t mean we’re golden forever.
We don’t need to win Bitcoiners over. The world isn’t using Bitcoin. Crypto has not “eaten the world” yet. Our funding stream is our secret weapon. We do things our way. It allowed us to survive.
Maybe you haven’t noticed but Bitcoin has failed to achieve Satoshi’s goals. Practically nobody uses it for payments. The chain has no privacy. Its value was captured by Wall Street. Don’t let this happen to Zcash by allowing the small group of massive coinholders to further centralize Zcash by cancelling its community grants program, to their own mining/NSM benefit.
Sure, Bitcoin companies exist, are prosperous, and some donate. Zcash companies barely even exist yet. Bitcoin’s market cap is $1.62T today. Zcash is at 1.3% of that. Our ecosystem doesn’t have enough successful companies yet for us to completely rely on crowdfunding. Name one Zcash business success story.
Our work is not done.
Removing community funding is anti-competitive. Some of the same organizations who relied on grants for years are now opposing community funding, now that they are fine financially. This disgusts me.
Zcash finally made it to the big leagues. Hopefully we’re not too encumbered by wish-washy governance to capture our moment.
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Well, maybe I’d like to see what kind of new drama make out of this. Go ahead, it seems like everyone’s used to it by now.
UPD
You know what’s especially upsetting? The 10th anniversary of Zcash and Zcon shouldn’t have been chosen for this.
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You can’t beat the devil at his game. Lobbying is their game, and you can’t beat the Winklevii on that. We’ve spent years resisting precisely this, and I personally know their reach because I spent years building against it, arguing against it. It’s time for Zcash to succumb to the pressure, and there isn’t much you or I can do anyways.
What you’re seeing is one of their tactics at play: suppression due to weaponised morals, where you project yourself as the moral arbiter because you are doing something you project as good regardless of whether it benefits you or not, and then because the opponent’s supposed benefit is larger than yours but more visible, people will automatically take your side. We see this all the time used politically, most notably during presidential elections, so its usage here on a much smaller scale is so much more surprising. They’re acting like you personally own the fund.
How did people not see it coming before? The lack of UASF support, the same five organisations doing basically everything, inaccessible core devs, and more. Zcash reads more and more like someone’s pet project than a public utility day by day.
The funniest thing is, its worse than either Ethereum or Solana, and that’s saying something after this forum itself called PoS chains centralised scams.
You funded ZSA’s, PoS, and Exxxotica which all have about 2.7% combined coinholder community support and are now playing the victim
Let’s tone down the incendiary verbiage. We all want Zcash to succeed. There is no grand conspiracy. There are just actions and consequences. Let’s figure out a way to cordially move Zcash forward
You were given all of the leeway here, and plenty of time, suggested you would act, put your honest opponents in the worst position, then made yourselves to be the victims, and now you’re talking about drama.
@seernet ZSAs were community consensus I thought? Here are the receipts:
@daira and @str4d have their names on it. I have personally always opposed it, but community consensus.
Second, PoS (crosslink) are being developed by Shielded Labs and ZODL, and I don’t think either of them have ZCG funding. Asking @aquietinvestor to confirm.
Exxxotica (and related prostitute-based programs) is a debated program within ZCG itself, look the ZECsy program in the notes up. But that’s one failure.
Why gut the whole program over it?
It is not coin holder consensus, see OP’s post:
```ZCG spends against what coinholders want.
In February 2026, coinholders voted 98.6% against Zcash Shielded Assets. ZCAP voted 70.4% for. In June, ZCG approved another $455K for ZSAs.```
Some small bureaucratic group is not a true reflection of the community. Daira and other devs are perfectly entitled to opinions and each opinion is valuable but the coinholders spoke. Devs are free to work on whatever they want. It is not the only instance of ZCG repeatedly funding something that coinholders vote against, and frankly, a miss that big alone is grounds of dismissal.
The ZSA program is from 2022, so is the document. Look closely. You’re about four years too late.