Hi everyone,
I hope some of you are following me on X and have been watching my videos. This application is to apply for a 3 month, 24 video PoC.
Github link: Grant Application - 24 Videos @zkMarketer · Issue #420 · ZcashCommunityGrants/zcashcommunitygrants · GitHub
Organization Name
Connaugh
How did you learn about Zcash Community Grants
Through a conversation with the Cypherpunk Technologies team, who directed me to ZCG.
Requested Grant Amount (USD)
$60,000
Category
Education
Project Lead
Connaugh. Creator and sole producer: research, editorial, scripting, voiceover, editing, design and distribution.
6 years in tech marketing across biotech, AI and crypto, the last 2 and a half in zero-knowledge cryptography at Mina Foundation and o1Labs. There I built the ecosystem content programme and ran it at a consistent cadence for over a year, the first time that had been sustained in that ecosystem. It held because of process rather than effort, built around the constraints of the crypto industry. The formats included thought leadership, ecosystem highlights, protocol upgrades, whiteboard sessions, fundraising announcements and whitepaper launches.
Since 28 July 2026 I have published 13 films on Zcash at @zkmarketerzkmarketer, at 2 a week.
Additional Team Members
None.
Project Summary
I turn the ecosystem’s existing footage into short documentary-style films that make one argument each, so that speakers recorded months apart end up corroborating one another. 13 films published since 28 July have taken 35,508 views. This proposal funds 24 more over 12 weeks.
Project Description
What this is
24 short documentary-style films about Zcash, published 2 a week for 12 weeks, assembled from footage the ecosystem has already produced.
Why this work exists
Zcash has an unusual number of credible people on record talking about it. Protocol engineers, co-founders, builders across the ecosystem organisations, commentators from outside the community with no reason to flatter it, and the institutional voices that arrived this year. That range cannot be manufactured. It comes from years of people choosing to talk about you, and it is worth more than any amount of production budget because the credibility sits with the speaker.
Almost none of it is in a form most people will watch. It exists as hour-long podcast appearances, conference talks and interviews. The argument someone needs is in there, 4 minutes deep, and often only complete when set against something a different person said on a different show months earlier.
I do the assembly. Each film pulls clips from across the ecosystem and threads them into one argument, so that people recorded months apart, with no knowledge of each other, corroborate one another on camera. The technical claims stay with the people who made them. My job is the through-line.
Where it started
The work began with Ironwood. The upgrade mattered and the explanation was scattered across different people in different places, with nothing pulling it together. I built the first film to do that and shipped it within a week.
Since 28 July I have published 13 films at 2 a week, at my own cost. They have taken 113,375 impressions and 35,508 views, and both the reach and the retention have climbed across the run. The 2 most recent films hold 18% and 32% of viewers to the quarter mark, against 3% on the first.
What 12 weeks is for
This is a proof of concept for a format rather than a request to fund a channel indefinitely.
24 films is enough to establish whether the format holds at a fixed cadence, which subjects it works for, and whether the ecosystem picks the work up and uses it. 6 weeks of output at my own cost suggests it does. 12 weeks of funded output would either confirm it or show clearly that it does not, and I have set out in Success Metrics what failure would look like.
Everything produced belongs to the ecosystem in practice as well as in principle. Every film will be publicly downloadable at full quality, free to use, with no credit required, so any Zcash organisation, engineer or advocate can take it and use it however is useful.
Proposed Problem
Zcash’s advantage is that an unusual number of credible people are on record talking about it, and almost none of that footage is in a form most people will watch.
The range is the thing. Protocol engineers explaining upgrades. Co-founders on podcasts. Builders across the ecosystem organisations. Commentators from outside the community entirely, including figures from other ecosystems with no reason to flatter Zcash. Institutional voices that arrived in the last year. Very few projects of this size have that spread of people on camera, and none of it can be manufactured, because the credibility comes from the speaker rather than the production.
The format is what limits it. Most of this material exists as hour-long podcast appearances, conference talks and interviews. Someone who wants to understand why the shielded pool matters, or what changed in NU6.3, has to know which podcast to look for and then sit through most of it. The argument they need is in there, split across 4 minutes somewhere in the middle, and often only complete when set against something a different person said on a different show 3 months earlier.
So the case for Zcash exists, in full, in the words of people qualified to make it. It is simply not assembled. Nobody sits across the whole ecosystem, holds an index of what has been said and by whom, and cuts the best of it into something a newcomer will finish.
This is a defensible position rather than a temporary one. An ecosystem cannot copy this by deciding to. It requires years of credible people choosing to talk about you, including people with no stake in your success. Zcash has that inventory. What it lacks is anyone whose job is to use it.
Proposed Solution
I cut the ecosystem’s existing footage into short single-argument films and publish them at a fixed cadence.
Each film makes one point. Source clips carry the mechanism and my voiceover carries the consequence, which keeps every technical claim in the mouth of the person qualified to make it. Speakers recorded months apart, in different places, with no knowledge of each other, end up corroborating one another inside a 2 minute film. That is the effect the archive makes possible, and it is not something you can produce by writing a script and filming someone reading it.
Behind the films sits a clip database I have been building since July: ecosystem footage indexed against the claims each clip supports. It is early and it is growing. Its value is already visible in the work, though. The first films drew on 2 or 3 speakers. Recent ones thread 5 or 6, and the range of what I can reach for widens with every film I make.
Three reasons the films are short.
The archive compounds. Crypto content dates fast, through protocol changes or shifts in the political weather. A long film dies as a whole when one section goes stale. A film making a single point stays publishable, so each one adds to a library that keeps working rather than a back catalogue that decays.
Fragmenting the case widens the reach. Zcash is a freedom story first, about money that no government can watch or switch off. Underneath that sits the cypherpunk history, the cryptography that makes it work, and the institutional money that arrived this year. Someone cold on one can be hot on another. Cutting at the point level lets each audience find the argument aimed at them, and lets advocates share the exact claim they care about.
The format is what distribution rewards. Short, fast-paced explainer video is dominant outside crypto and thinly served inside it, where output is mostly long-form conversation or low-effort promotion.
Everything sits with one person. Research, editorial, scripting, voiceover, editing, design and distribution. There are no handoffs, which is what makes a fixed publishing rate realistic for a single producer and what sets the cost per film.
Since 28 July I have published 13 films at 2 a week, at my own cost. This proposal asks for that rate to be funded for 12 weeks so it can be sustained deliberately rather than absorbed.
Solution Format
Solution Format
The deliverable is a series of short documentary-style films, published at a fixed cadence for 12 weeks.
Specification
24 films. 2 a week.
Runtime of around 2 minutes, 3 minutes at the absolute maximum. Each film carries one argument, told once, properly.
Landscape, built for viewing in the X timeline on a phone.
Assembled from existing ecosystem footage, with original voiceover recorded by me and original graphic design. Source clips carry the technical claims and the voiceover carries the consequence, so the substance stays in the mouths of the people qualified to speak to it.
Where they@zkmarketergo
X at @zkmarketer as the primary channel. Mirrored to YouTube. Adapted for Instag@zkmarkete@zkmarketerortraitam and TikTok in a @zkmarketerortrait frame tha@zkmarketerortraitilm dresses the landscape edit.
Every @zkmarketerortraitilm publicly downloadable at full quality, free to use, no credit required.
Subject matter
Zcash has more good stories than one person can film in 12 weeks. There is the cryptography and what it does that nothing else does. There is the political argument about money that cannot be watched or switched off. There is 30 years of cypherpunk history running into the present. There is the history of Zcash itself, and the people who built it. There is the institutional money that arrived this year and the reasoning behind it, and there is whatever the ecosystem generates each week.
I am not going to name 24 titles 12 weeks in advance. The ecosystem moves, and a film pegged to something that happens in week 7 is worth more than anything I could schedule in week 0. Choosing the subject is most of the editorial work, and it is the part I am being funded to do.
The baseline set is the evidence for how that judgement gets exercised. 13 films across protocol upgrades, shielded money, comparisons against Bitcoin and Monero, institutional interest and weekly ecosystem news, all chosen the same way.
If there is something the community particularly wants covered, the door is open. Comment here@zkmarketer reply on the forum, or send it to m@zkmarketer on X at @zkmarketer. I would like to hear it, and I will@zkmarketermake what I can, though the running order stay@zkmarketer mine.
Reporting
A written report to the Zcash Community Forum at each monthly milestone, covering every film in the period with per film analytics attached.
Dependencies
Technical
Adobe Creative Cloud and Figma for production, both self-funded. Claude for research synthesis and script structure. ElevenLabs for generated video assets. None of these are load-bearing in a way that would stop the work if one became unavailable, and no cost for any of them is claimed against this grant.
Recording and production hardware is owned outright.
Source material
The films are assembled from video the ecosystem has already published: podcast appearances, conference talks, engineering explainers and interviews, all publicly available. The work depends on that material continuing to be produced, which it reliably is, and on my use of it under fair dealing for reporting and commentary.
I use short excerpts to make a point, with the speaker and source identifiable, in films that are transformative rather than substitutive. No film reproduces a source at length or stands in for watching it. Where a source is not publicly available, I do not use it.
People and organisations
None of the 24 films requires the cooperation of any person or organisation. Everything is built from published material, so nothing in the schedule depends on someone agreeing to an interview or approving a cut.
I have no formal relationship with any Zcash organisation and none is needed for this work. Cooperation from the ecosystem would improve the work, particularly access to source files rather than screen captures, and I would welcome it. Nothing in this proposal is contingent on it.
Platforms
X is the primary distribution channel and the source of the reported metrics. YouTube, Instagram and TikTok are secondary.
Technical Approach
Process
Every film runs the same five stages.
Research. I gather source material from across the ecosystem: podcast appearances, conference talks, engineering explainers, interviews. Each clip is logged against the claim it supports.
Editorial. I build the narrative before I open the timeline. Claims are threaded so that speakers recorded independently corroborate one another. Anything technical is checked against primary sources, including the relevant ZIPs and project documentation, before it reaches the script.
Scripting. I write voiceover into the gaps only. Source clips carry the mechanism and voiceover carries the consequence, which keeps the technical claims with the people who built the protocol and keeps me out of the way of them.
Production. Editing, colour, sound design and music in Adobe Premiere Pro. Motion and graphic design in Figma.
Distribution. Published to X, packaged and hooked for that feed specifically, then mirrored to YouTube and adapted for Instagram and TikTok.
The clip database
Underneath the process sits an archive of ecosystem footage I have been building since July. Source material is transcribed to word-level timecode, and clips are indexed against the claims they support rather than against the video they came from. That means I search by argument rather than by memory of which podcast something appeared in.
It is early. It is also the reason the work gets faster and wider at the same time. The first films drew on 2 or 3 speakers because that was the reach of what I had indexed. Recent ones thread 5 or 6. Every film I make adds its sourcing back into the index, so the archive grows as a by-product of production rather than as separate work.
The index itself is a working tool rather than a publishable asset, since it is largely rough capture made for my own use. The films it produces are a different matter.
Availability of the finished work
Every film produced under this grant will be publicly downloadable at full quality, free to use, with no credit required and no permission needed. Zcash organisations, engineers, advocates and community members can repost them to their own accounts, cut them into their own material, or use them however is useful.
The point of this work is that the arguments reach people. Where they reach people from matters less to me than whether they do.
Tooling and position on AI
Premiere Pro for editing. Figma for design. Claude for research synthesis and script structure. ElevenLabs for generated video assets, including a generated likeness of myself used as an on-screen presenter.
All narration is my own recorded voice. There is no voice cloning and no synthetic narration anywhere in this work.
I use AI at the edges and keep it out of the centre. The edit is done by hand in professional software, deliberately. Template-driven AI video tools produce output that is recognisable on sight, and in an ecosystem whose entire value proposition is credibility, content that looks automatically generated damages the argument it is making. That is an editorial decision before it is a technical one.
Upstream Merge Opportunities
N/A.
Hardware/Software Costs (USD)
$0
Hardware/Software Justification
Adobe Creative Cloud, Figma and AI tooling subscriptions are self-funded and not claimed. Recording and production hardware, including a Shure SM7dB and mixing desk, is owned and self-funded and not claimed.
Service Costs (USD)
Service Costs: $0
Service Costs Justification
Sole producer. No contractors, agencies or third parties are engaged, and no hosting or infrastructure costs are incurred.
Compensation Costs (USD)
$60,000
Compensation Costs Justification
24 films at $2,500 each, covering time only. Research, editorial, scripting, voiceover, editing, design and distribution all sit with one person, and no other costs are claimed against this grant.
This rate sits below the $3,000 per film I priced my earlier work at, and the reason is that the earlier films paid for building the pipeline from nothing. There was no clip archive, no sourcing routine and no established working relationship with the material. That set-up cost was priced once, as the research week in my retroactive application, and is not claimed again here. The archive exists, it grows with every film, and the marginal cost of producing one has come down accordingly. $2,500 is what a film costs now that the groundwork is done.
The rate is fixed for the full 12 weeks and no expenses will be claimed beyond this figure.
Total Budget (USD)
$60,000
Previous Funding
No
Previous Funding Details
No response
Other Funding Sources
Yes
Other Funding Sources Details
Yes.
I have an application in front of the Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Grants Program for Q3 2026, run by the Financial Privacy Foundation. It requests $22,000: $18,000 for 5 films and $4,000 for the initial research week that established the sourcing base for all of them.
The work ran across 31 days, from 13 July to 12 August 2026, working full time including weekends and evenings. The 5 films were published across 16 of those days, between 28 July and 11 August. The publication window is the visible end of a longer period of research, sourcing, scripting and production.
The public review closes on 16 September 2026 and the coinholder poll runs from 17 to 29 September 2026, so the outcome will likely be known before this application is decided.
The two applications do not overlap. That one covers films already published. This one covers 24 new films over 12 weeks, none of which have been made. No film will be funded twice.
The research week is also why the rate in this proposal is lower. That set-up work was priced once, in that application, and is not claimed again here.
I intend to submit a second retroactive application in a future round covering the films published since 14 August 2026. That application will cover everything up to the point this grant begins, and no further. Films published from the start date of this grant onward are funded here and will not appear in any retroactive request. The 13 films referenced in this proposal appear only as a performance baseline and are not part of what this grant would fund.
Beyond that I have no funding from any source for this work, and no application pending anywhere else.
Implementation Risks
Key person risk. I am the only person on this project. If I am ill, or something happens that takes me out for a period, output stops. There is no redundancy and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
What limits the damage is that the grant is paid in arrears against films delivered. ZCG is never exposed to work it has not received. If I fall behind, I deliver late and get paid late, and if I cannot complete the 24, the unearned portion is simply not paid.
The sole producer structure is also what makes 2 films a week possible at this cost. A team of 3 at this cadence would cost several times more and would still have handoffs. The concentration is the reason the economics work, and the payment structure is what protects the fund from it.
Falling behind the cadence. 2 films a week for 12 weeks is demanding. I have sustained that rate for 6 weeks already, at my own cost, which is the best evidence I can offer, though it is not proof I can do it for 12.
Where I lose time it will be to research on subjects that turn out to be harder than expected, or to films that do not work and get abandoned partway. My mitigation is the archive. Every film adds indexed footage back into it, so the cost of finding material falls as the grant progresses, and I can move a subject forward or back in the running order when one becomes difficult.
If I fall behind within a milestone, I will say so in the forum report rather than quietly shipping weaker films to hit the number.
Platform dependence. X is the primary channel, and the reported results depend on how that platform chooses to distribute video. Reach can move for reasons entirely outside the work. This is the risk I control least.
Mirroring to YouTube and adapting for Instagram and TikTok reduces the exposure over time. Making every film freely downloadable reduces it further, because a film that ecosystem organisations can repost from their own accounts is not wholly dependent on mine.
Quality drift under cadence. The risk in any fixed publishing schedule is that the schedule starts driving the work and quality slides to meet the date.
Two things guard against it. The monthly forum reports put every film in front of the community with its numbers attached, including the weak ones. And the second attempt commitment means a film that fails gets another go rather than being written off, so there is no incentive to ship something I am not happy with just to hit a count.
Subject risk. Zcash is a technical project and a lot of what makes it interesting is technical. Any honest run of 24 films has to include subjects like the cryptography itself, or the history of zero-knowledge proofs and the part Zcash played in taking them from research into a working product.
I do not know how those will perform. Technical subjects are harder to make land than comparative or political ones, and my instinct is that some will underperform. Zcash also has a genuinely technical community that likes the detail, so some may do better than the obvious crowd-pleasers. 6 weeks of data is not enough to tell me which.
So I want the room to find out. My default will be to keep pushing the subjects that work, and I want the licence to spend some of the 24 on material that is worth covering whether or not the numbers reward it.
Paying per film rather than per result is what makes that possible. If payment were tied to performance I would take the safe subjects every time, and 12 weeks would tell us less about the format than it should.
Potential Side Effects
Reuse of published footage. Funding this work makes the format more visible, and I would expect other ecosystem creators to do more of it. That is a good outcome and worth anticipating. Cutting published footage into commentary is standard practice across media and sits comfortably within fair dealing, though the ecosystem could make it easier. When Zcash people appear on podcasts and at conferences, permission for the community to reuse the footage could be agreed at that point, by the organisations, once, rather than left to individual creators to negotiate case by case afterwards. That would cost nothing and would remove friction for every creator who comes after this grant.
Speakers appearing without having agreed to it. The people in these films chose to speak publicly, and their words are used in context and attributed. Nobody has objected so far, and several people who appear in the films have shared them or replied positively.
If someone who appears in a film asks me to remove it, I will, without argument and without needing a reason. That commitment stands regardless of whether the material is publicly available and regardless of what fair dealing permits.
Success Metrics
What I commit to
24 films in 12 weeks, at 2 a week. This is what the grant is priced against and the on@zkmarketery pass or fail condition.
Every fil@zkmarketer published to X at @zkmarketer and mirrored to YouTube.
@zkmarketer written report to the Zcash Community Forum at each mon@zkmarketerhly milestone, covering every film released in that period including the ones that underperformed, with analytics attached.
Baseline
13 films published between 28 July and 7 September 2026. The median film took 8,400 impressions and 1,900 views. Across all 13: 113,375 impressions, 35,508 views, 1,433 likes, 285 reposts, 384 bookmarks.
At each milestone I report per film: impressions, views, view rate, retention at the quarter mark and at completion, bookmarks, reposts and replies.
The target is that the median film across the 24 meets or exceeds the baseline median. Median rather than total, because a single film that catches a rival community’s attention can carry an average and prove nothing about the programme.
Signals that matter more than reach
Bookmarks, which indicate someone intends to return to a film or pass it on. Baseline is 384 across 13 films, rising sharply across the most recent 5.
Adoption inside the ecosystem. Reposts and quote posts from Zcash organisations, engineers and advocates, use of a film inside someone else’s content, and any request from an ecosystem organisation to cover a subject.
Accountability for weak films
I hold a high standard on every film that goes out and I expect all 24 to meet it. This is marketing, though, and marketing is unpredictable. A film can be well made and still fail to land, for reasons that usually sit outside the film itself.
My Grayscale film is the weakest in the baseline set, at 975 impressions and 383 views. I can only speculate about why. My best guess is the copy. It ran along the lines of Zcash sitting at around 1% of Bitcoin and Grayscale’s head of research finding that low for financial privacy, which tells you very little about what the film contains. The film is a walk through Grayscale’s thesis and why they are buying Zcash, and the framing never said so.
I do not treat a film as finished when it is posted. I treat it as finished when the argument has reached people. Where a film clearly fails to do that, I would rather make another attempt at the argument than leave it undelivered.
What that attempt looks like depends on the subject. An evergreen film can be recut and reframed and posted again. A film pegged to a news event cannot, because the moment has gone, so the better remedy there is a new film carrying the same argument on its own terms. If a film on quantum resistance failed, the useful response is another film on quantum resistance that works, rather than a repost of one that did not.
So the commitment is to the argument rather than to a particular file. Anyone may comment on this application, or on the monthly forum reports, to flag a film they think did not land. Where I agree, I will make that second attempt in whichever form suits the subject. Where I disagree, or where it is unclear, ZCG decides and I accept the decision. I will carry up to 3 of these across the 12 weeks at no additional cost, and they are additional to the 24 rather than counted within them.
Attaching payment to performance would push me towards safe subjects and away from the technical films the ecosystem actually needs, which is the opposite of what this grant is for. A second attempt at an argument that did not land is the more useful remedy, and it is the one I would want as a producer regardless of the funding.
Distribution beyond X
X is the primary channel and all reported metrics come from it. The films are built for that feed and the results above are from it.
I will also publish every film to YouTube, and adapt them for Instagram and TikTok in a portrait frame that dresses the landscape edit rather than reformatting it. That treatment is deliberate. Reworking each film for portrait natively would cost time I would rather spend on quantity and on raising the quality of the core work, and this is a 12 week proof of concept for the format itself.
These secondary channels are reported for completeness rather than measured against targets. Building an audience on them is a separate problem I would expect to take on once the format is proven.
What failure looks like
If the median film across the 12 weeks falls materially below the baseline, and the ecosystem is not picking the films up, the proof of concept has not worked and I would not expect a renewal. I would rather set that line myself than argue about it afterwards.
Startup Funding (USD)
$0
Startup Funding Justification
Already requested during my retroactive funding request.
Milestone Details
Milestone Details
3 milestones, one a month, priced identically and paid on delivery. The grant begins on the date of the first film published under it, and milestone dates run from that point rather than from a fixed calendar, since approval timing is not in my control.
Milestone 1.
Weeks 1 to 4. $20,000.
8 films published to X and mirrored to YouTube, at 2 a week. Written report to the Zcash Community Forum covering every film in the period, with per film analytics attached: impressions, views, view rate, retention at the quarter mark and at completion, bookmarks, reposts and replies. Underperforming films reported alongside the rest.
Milestone 2.
Weeks 5 to 8. $20,000.
8 further films on the same terms. Forum report as above, with performance compared against both the baseline set and Milestone 1.
Milestone 3.
Weeks 9 to 12. $20,000.
8 further films on the same terms. Forum report as above, plus a closing assessment of the full 12 weeks: median performance against the baseline of 13 films, what the format proved, what it did not, and a recommendation on whether the programme warrants continuation.
Any second attempt films arising from the accountability commitment are additional to the 24 and carry no additional cost.
Supporting Documents
| Film | Date | Impressions | Views | 25% | 100% | Bookmarks |
|---------------------|-------|------------:|-----------:|--------:|-------:|----------:|
| Ironwood launch | 28/07 | 5,900 | 1,574 | 3% | 1% | 18 |
| Visa-level scaling | 30/07 | 3,400 | 737 | 11% | 3% | 2 |
| Privacy upgrades | 04/08 | 8,400 | 2,759 | 10% | 3% | 19 |
| Bank account rights | 07/08 | 17,000 | 2,536 | 16% | 4% | 14 |
| Better than Bitcoin | 11/08 | 14,000 | 2,758 | 22% | 7% | 19 |
| Multicoin thesis | 14/08 | 3,600 | 1,531 | 10% | 3% | 8 |
| Cypherpunk entropy | 19/08 | 1,800 | 672 | 9% | 2% | 5 |
| NEAR Intents | 21/08 | 2,100 | 665 | 9% | 3% | 3 |
| Weekly roundup | 24/08 | 12,100 | 1,900 | 9% | 4% | 12 |
| Swiss vault | 27/08 | 14,300 | 4,107 | 13% | 4% | 14 |
| Grayscale ETF | 01/09 | 975 | 383 | 10% | 2% | 4 |
| Monero vs Zcash | 03/09 | 21,000 | 11,326 | 32% | 12% | 216 |
| Bitcoin hedge | 07/09 | 8,800 | 4,560 | 18% | 6% | 50 |
| **Total** | | **113,375** | **35,508** | | | **384** |
| **Median** | | **8,400** | **1,900** | **10%** | **3%** | **14** |
