Future of Zcash dev funding — high signal, low noise

Community Collaborations protocol
1

Final edit: This forum thread is now deprecated! Please refer to the ZIP process website and the Zcash Foundation’s governance page for future information and updates. Forum discussion will continue in the protocol subcategory.

To see past edits of this post:

Screen Shot 2019-12-16 at 9.33.26 PM
Screen Shot 2019-12-16 at 9.33.26 PM1550×161 24 KB

This thread will remain locked. It’s intended as a reference, not a discussion venue. It will be updated whenever we (the Zcash community) move the ball forward.

For details and discussion, consult the megathread.

Note: the merged ZIPs include some editorial changes. They supercede both the original pull requests, and the draft proposals on the forum threads. If you are a ZIP author and see a change that doesn’t reflect your intent, please contact @daira.

Draft ZIPs

ZIP Process

ZIP = Zcash Improvement Proposal

Writing and submitting a ZIP is how you formally suggest changes to the Zcash protocol, or a decision about Zcash’s future that you want to be recognized and recorded.

5 Likes
4

Megathread Summary

We collectively discussed ECC and ZF public statements on various proposals, addressing concerns about possible favoritism.

  • ECC employee responses: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
  • ZF employee responses: 1, 2, 3

Please note that statements by individual employees of ECC or ZF are not necessarily the official positions of either organization.

My suggestions for combining several sets of similar proposals into single ZIPs.

ZIP guidance from @nathan-at-least: Proposal authors, please read: Help making ZIPs

@sgp is organizing a livestream discussion: [Livestream Discussion] Future of Zcash block reward

Sarang Noether raised questions about the different financial scenarios:

(Sarang’s post is a separate thread, outside of the megathread, but highly relevant.)

I sorted the 13 proposals into Active, Pending, and Inactive categories, based on whether each proposal has an advocate to champion it through the ZIP process.

@zooko on Twitter:

A catalog of the major results that the Electric Coin Company has delivered to the Zcash community over the last three years: Animating Zcash - Electric Coin Company

This is in the context of the Zcash community deciding whether the “Strategic Reserve”/“Dev Fund” was a good use of funds.

PDF timeline

People have started using the hashtag #ZcashDevFund on Twitter to discuss the future of Zcash.

ECC published a statement on Zcash dev funding sustainability. In particular, please note these details:

ECC will release assessments of each proposal submitted to the Zcash Community site. We will first work with authors or champions on these proposals in order to formalize them into PreZips (pre Zcash Improvement Proposals) and ensure they reflect the author’s intent. Proposals might include non-funding mandates, such as Aristarchus’ mandate for a voting mechanism.

Each PreZip must have a champion who is the author and/or someone willing to advocate for the proposal. The ECC will then draft assessments of each PreZip that will include how its adoption would impact ECC funding, how we believe it would impact the Zcash project, and how the company would likely respond if such proposal was adopted by the community. We are likely to advocate for proposals which would allow ECC (or another organization in its place) to continue the kind of ambitious, strategic and integrated operations that we’ve demonstrated in the first years of Zcash.

You can watch the livestream discussion hosted by @sgp on YouTube:

5 Likes