But it is harming the Zcash community, is it not? My friends at CMU and Courant rarely even acknowledge Zcash as a serious cryptocurrency, while at the same time they are reviewing papers from StarkNet about similar privacy technologies. Even Monero gets some attention, Zcash gets none. Many even still think that Zcash is a “corporate cryptocurrency” administered by the ECC.
When the academics don’t pay any attention, and conversely the other labs don’t either, then what is the purpose of ZCG? It’s a self-feeding loop where half the applications are useless or sometimes, genuine grifts outright.
It also explains why most of the innovation happens in this ecosystem only, with rare outside research.
If Zcash wants to get accepted by everyone, it has to fit in the norms of everyone. Perception matters. Isolation goes both ways.
Further, even if not the US, there are tens of good jurisdictions. You’ve got historic Allies, the EU, Soviet bloc if you want (Kazakhstan is where Balaji Srinivasan has his network school), historically NACs (like India)
Zcash was born from Academia. The most renowned cryptographers of this time have been involved in it. What do you mean by “academics don’t pay attention?” Who?
It’s a self-feeding loop where half the applications are useless or sometimes, genuine grifts outright.
Unfortunately this is a problem in every grant program regardless of whether the program is about crypto or non crypto.
Eran Tromer, one of the people who worked on Zerocash, he tried to do research on Oblivious topics, as such as grant was processed, and Columbia University returned the wire. Was that not an embarrassment?
You’ll have to ask them. For what is the worth people in academia tend to change fields or subjects every 10 years or so. In fact that is specifically what Adi Shamir said (and recommended) when he received the Levchin Prize in 2025.
Academic research is really different than engineering building and deploying systems. It really wouldn’t amaze me that people that do academic research won’t like it and viceversa.
I’m not familiar with this so I can’t say anything about that.
Cryptocurrency in general has a reputational problem. Not Zcash in particular.
Also, thank you for the nice and respectful debate.
Monero has a US non-profit called MAGIC Grants which has, on occasion, funded university research. Greyscale did an ETF, and now Winklevoss Capital is funding ZODL. Paradigm, the “crypto VC”, is one of the largest VCs in the United States and Silicon Valley.
Crypto HAD a reputational problem, but I do not think the problem exists anymore, and Zcash needs to adapt to the time. It seems contradictory to simutaneously want to lobby for more adoption of Zcash while acitvely trying to be isolationist, which is why I proposed that the ZCG be relocated to a neutral or allied country to seem in good faith.
It’s less “not like it” and more “not funded by it”.
I think we are talking across each other. I meant attracting academics who already know what Zcash is, academics who already work in zero-knowledge and privacy technologies, to ZCG. Most major universities have now established labs for this, which is why you see major innovation in zero knowledge proofs every day. Check ePrint out:
You’ll find dozens of papers published PER DAY from global academics who know crypto as a construct and not a scam.
I meant enticing these. A proper corporation or trust can easily distribute grants and sanction studies, PhD programs, aiming to improve Zcash in major universities like MIT, CMU, Berkeley, Stanford. To foster the next generation of the academics who designed Zerocash itself.
For these people, there isn’t a reputational problem, it’s a funding problem. A Cayman Islands corporation funding a student with ambiguous source of funds? The wire gets returned at JPMorgan Chase itself, let alone reaching the university.
@ZcashFoundation had a grants program that got shut down during privacy winter.
@ZCG being under US jurisdiction had a lot of other problems that I assume were more important than a university lab rejecting funds. @FPF can probably answer this better.
There’s no silver bullet for this.
Also I’ve worked in academia many years and I can’t blame FPF or any crypto NGO for not meeting their arbitrary requirements. Academia works in bleeding edge fields while holding up to 19th century bureaucratic standards. It sucks for scientists but that’s their mess to fix.
@ZCG could fund independent research teams with scientists that are willing to exit that system and create a new one like the “parallel polis” concept from the Czech pacific revolution
THIS IS THE EXACT MENTALITY I’M TALKING ABOUT. You can’t be a revolutionary and at the same time want the exact “19th century bureaucratic” world to “send ZEC to the moon”
Right now, what’s driving ZEC? The Greyscale ETF. A literal Web 0.0 securities asset, managed by the SEC. How much more 19th century do you get?
Don’t. Alienate. People. Who. Want. To. Help. You.
TL;DR The irony is Zcash pretends to be Bitcoin, but brings up that it is founded by researchers, refuses to fund that very researchers in favour of crypto-anarchism, while having all development control centralised in 5 organisations (ZODL, Shielded Labs, QEDIT, Valar Group and Sovright)
In June I stood for re-election on ZCG funding more security work, and said in my candidate video that if ZCG’s pool kept growing, advocating for ZCG to fund the NSM was “absolutely something I would do.” The pool has grown, so here I am, advocating, not deciding: whether these funds go to the NSM is the community’s call, and I’m committed to executing whatever it decides. Speaking for myself, not the committee:
I support this ZIP. It sends 50,000 ZEC to the NSM and keeps ZCG funding security work (35% of everything ZCG paid out in 2026), the two things I advocated for in June. I won’t be progressing the Dev Fund taper proposal.
@strahncryptography I’ve been looking into U.S. vs other jurisdictions like Switzerland for where ZCG and the LDF could each be housed.
Looking at the point @pacu raised, there’s good reason for wanting to set up an organization outside of the United States. I wasn’t able to watch the Zcon4 debate, but it sounds like part of the argument re: building with U.S. compliance, etc., baked in presupposes that everyone wants to build in the United States.
The U.S. and Switzerland are both good places for establishing these organizations. With respect to any U.S. enforcement-related issues, something to keep in mind is that the SEC under the previous administration sued Telegram despite a small number of U.S. investors participating in the ICO. Nothing necessarily stops another jurisdiction from pursuing enforcement as long as there’s a tie to that jurisdiction.
ZF, a U.S.-based nonprofit has been debanked by U.S. banks a few times over the past few years and was sued by the SEC in the previous administration. Unsure if debanking was as big an issue in Switzerland compared to the U.S., but the SEC case could have happened even if ZF was based in Switzerland.
A Swiss-based entity could make sense for ZCG while a U.S.-based entity could make sense for the LDF.
I understand why the LDF should be a non-profit or folded under a non-profit because the structure there matters. What I’m not clear on yet is why we need a legal entity for ZCG.
On the broader proposal, what if ZCG keeps $5 million for now for ecosystem development (hard to burn through that amount quickly given ZCG’s previous grants), we set aside a few million for legal defense if it’s needed (w/ legal stuff, you want to make sure you’re primed and ready to go so you can act quickly as opposed to trying to put together an organization after a case has been brought?
Selfishly, I want to move past this debate so we can get back to building and promoting Zcash, but there are a few items outstanding that I don’t feel comfortable rushing through. Not a comment on the ZIP authors btw–I think they’re trying their best to find a way to move forward–but I’m wary of moving all of the funds into a lockbox until we can figure out the rest of the ZIP because we do still need a mechanism for funding projects in the interim.
I believe the amount is around $50 million, as per the above proposal, not $5 million, but yes. However, it’s never too late, I believe?
Yes, but ZF actively administered many aspects of Zcash in general, while a potential ZCG trust entity would legitimately ONLY fund charity efforts, which is permissible for a non-profit, though? Several precedents have repeatedly ruled that nonprofits can distribute funds in support of any cause, as first amendment protections. The only real issue for a non-profit I see is failing the IRS exemption test, but nonprofits generally qualify if they only fund grants such that the ZCG already does.
I believe the main issue of the SEC against the Zcash Foundation was regarding crypto asset holdings, which can be mitigated by trading the ZEC ZCG holds for equivalent (minus fees) of Zcash ETF shares, and liquidating them to fiat over time. Since the proposal effectively puts the notion of the ZCG receiving future funding uncertain to the point of not being a thing, interest income is one of the only things the ZCG can rely on to survive given the ZCG’s funding terms never allow it to receive a license or a share for the works it funds, and conservative interest on a $50-$75M trust combined with conservative spending can sustain ZCG for decades, even centuries.
True, we all want to move past this debate, but I believe a sensible solution should always be established today so it causes no real headaches tomorrow.
Our team is also working on a ZIP related to this, but we have run into many head-walls lol. Do you have an email address I could contact you at in the future, or is this forum better?
For purposes of this discussion, the forum might work best so everything’s out in the open/there’s no accusations of conspiring/exclusive, private conversations. But, you can always reach me at div@pgpz.org.
I’m biased towards the United States as the legal home for any non-profit, but it’s because that’s the jurisdiction I know best and have gone through the process of setting up a non-profit. But I strongly would defer to counsel on what makes the most sense in this case. Hate to give that answer, but I don’t know what I don’t know to say that the U.S. would better than Switzerland or another jurisdiction.
Switzerland also has no recognised trust law, so fund management would be unbound and therefore much less trustworthy. It is very ironic, as institutions like Credit Suisse and UBS often act as trustees but not to trusts domiciled in the Switzerland/Swiss Confederation.
The Zcash Community needs more development funds and a truly independent Zcash Development Fund.
The last report submitted to the community on May 18 from @FPF recommended the savings of $70 000usd was worth not having an indepentent professionally staffed ZCG with a 45m balance on that date.
I disagree with this evaluation, I believe we need more development funds such as Zec regional reserves located in Brazel, Spain, Nigeria and Turkey to kick start Zec developers and projects. We should be investing in Zec development now not locking funds away for future network sustainability. Network sustainability will be better serviced by zec user adoption and usage, which requires building the tools for adoption now.
The vision of the NSM should be invested incrementally over time from small and medium size grants from the independent Zec Regional Reserves and the developers who have been funded.
Let’s create an independent ZCG and four new decentralized Zec Regional Reserves, who’s trained staff reports third-party audited reports on financials, user adoption, user growth from investments to sustain the zcash decentralized network.
I thank the authors for the time an effort in writing this proposal but I support using all ZCG funds for investing in developers and projects building now.
I second this and am thus in opposition to this proposal. A legal defense fund is already able to be funded by the existing protocol-defined ecosystem funding stream, which is much broader than just a defense fund. We should not be narrowing the scope of projects that can receive funding from this funding stream to support Zcash adoption and accelerate its uptake, especially in already underserved regions or communities where the need for Zcash will only grow with time. We should be expanding them.
Crucially, simply having a need does not guarantee it will be met. And we have the funds to meaningfully contribute to meeting that need and creating committed, empowered Zcash users as a result. What on god’s green earth are we waiting for?!?!
I appreciate the authors want to find a “compromise” in order to make as many possible people happy, but they are doing so at the extreme detriment of the network and are introducing a massive risk in the form of gutting a historically and still highly relevant piece of the ecosystem that both advances and secures the network from all kinds of threats, technical and otherwise.
I implore the authors and all other invested parties to withdraw all support for this ZIP.
