Grant Application - Revocable Private Delegation in Token Holder Voting

Community Grants Applications
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Hi Zcash Community,

We are excited to announce a new grant proposal from @AikStouka and me on Private Revocable Delegation for Token Holder Voting.

The Problem

Motivated by ongoing discussions and proposals on incorporating Token Holder Voting in Zcash governance, we identify a key limitation in the current design space.

Existing private delegation protocols typically achieve only a subset of three desirable properties: preserving (i) the privacy of the delegator, (ii) the privacy of the delegate, and (iii) supporting revocation during an active delegation period. To the best of our knowledge, no existing solution achieves all three simultaneously.

In practice, these properties are all important:

  • Delegation must remain flexible. New information often emerges between delegation and voting; delegates may change behavior, become controversial, or better candidates may appear. Without revocation, users are locked into decisions that may no longer reflect their preferences.

  • Revocation helps mitigate coercion. If delegation can be privately revoked, an attacker cannot reliably “purchase” voting power in advance. This weakens incentives for bribery, since control over votes cannot be guaranteed during the delegation period.

  • Privacy protects participants and the system. Concealing who delegates, revokes, and receives delegation prevents social pressure and signaling effects (e.g., appearing “active” or “consistent”), and makes it significantly harder to identify and target high-influence delegates.

Our proposal

We propose an e-voting protocol for private, revocable delegation that allows token holders to delegate their voting power privately and revoke that delegation during the delegation period.

The protocol is compatible with existing Zcash-style voting systems in which eligible voters use secret credentials linked to Merkle tree commitments, including the voting subprotocol developed in the previous grant (Coin Voting 2.0) and the Token Holder Voting protocol by Nazirkhanova et al., proposed here.

Project Outcome and budget

Two deliverables that will be publicly released under the MIT license.

  1. A technical design spec for the proposed solution.

  2. A proof of concept, including a client application and a coordination server for delegation, revocation, and vote registration.

Total budget: $140,900

Full Proposal – You can find our proposal here.

We would love to hear your feedback.

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Zcash Community Grants Meeting Minutes April 27, 2026
Zcash Community Grants Meeting Minutes 5/11/2026
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Thank you for submitting your proposal. After careful consideration by the ZCG and a period for community comments on the forum, the committee has decided not to advance this proposal. Details will be included in the next meeting minutes.

We genuinely appreciate the work and dedication you put into your application and hope you’ll continue to participate and contribute to the Zcash community.

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