Grant Application - Zcash Hack to Dark during Devcon 8, Mumbai

[webzero]

Dear Zcash community, We are WebZero, and some of our new friends here already know us. This June we built the Blockspäti in Berlin with the ZECsy ambassadors, and it turned into one of the biggest IRL Zcash moments of the year: Over 900 people through the door, a lot of them touching a shielded transaction for the first time, and a room that looked nothing like a conference. Vid 1 Vid 2

We walked away from Berlin with the strong feeling that we should continue working with this great ecosystem, the outpouring of support was much stronger than what we are used to in this space, with the added bonus of Zcash being strongly value-aligned. In our view: With recent mass protest against companies like Flock, the hard part is not getting people interested in privacy. The hard part is giving them somewhere to go the moment after they get interested, access to a community to explore further.

One of these next opportunities could be in Mumbai during Devcon 8 week, and we would like Zcash on the front of it again, for another fully branded Zcash side event activation.

What follows is a two-day hackathon that turns into a club night. 75 builders by day, 150 to 200 people by night, one building, Zcash tooling in front of all of them.

Global attention on Zcash is surging. The proposed online and offline marketing mix below will be instrumental in converting that momentum into lasting brand strength. We’re ready.

Zcash Hack-to-Dark At Devcon Mumbai 8
A one-day Zcash privacy hackathon and evening cultural programme by WebZero, with a demo day the following afternoon · Mumbai, 4–5 November 2026 (dates pending confirmation)

1. Summary
Devcon 8 brings more than 10,000 people to the Jio World Centre in Mumbai between 3 and 6 November 2026. Hack-to-Dark is a one day, application-only hackathon held 500 metres from the conference venue, followed by a demo day the following afternoon at the same venue.

75 builders are selected by hand by application in advance via Luma. The programme runs 15 hours in a single building, and at 20:00 the room opens out to 150-200 guests from Devcon week for a cultural programme under the WebZero club night series: UNFOLLOW.

We are asking the Zcash Community Grants committee for USD 38,580 to make Zcash the headline partner of the event and the anchor of its privacy track.

The figure is all-inclusive: it covers the venue, zcash building branding, food and beverage, production, media, merchandise, curation, an extensive marketing campaign and the prize pool and a fully maintained Zcash activation, similar to the production level during the Berlin Blockspäti in June.

The build floor is capped at 75 by design, because that is what makes 15 hours of contact time and hands-on mentoring possible.
Between 150 and 200 people come through the building in the evening, and the whole activation sits inside a marketing and media push that runs for weeks on Luma, email campaigns to >30k Web3 subscribers, side-event listings, an in-house film crew on site all day, and a month of content afterwards.

At a glance

What	Details
Format	Two day hackathon, three themed tracks, evening cultural programme until 1am, demo day the following afternoon.
Zcash position	Headline partner across the whole event; anchor of the privacy track.
Builders	75 builders, applications curated beforehand
Evening programme	150–200 guests from Devcon week on the bar floor from 20:00, under the UNFOLLOW club-night identity
Marketing and media	Full campaign either side of the event plus a month of content afterwards — approx. 100,000 social reach and a 30,000-contact direct list from WebZero’s previous events.
Expected submissions	40+ across the three tracks
Bounty track	One main privacy track. Written, curated and judged by WebZero with ecosystem partners we recruit.
Follow-through	30 days of structured support for winning teams; report to the committee.

2. Why WebZero?

WebZero is a Berlin-based culture house. We produce in-real-life experiences, multi-day events, parties, workshops, hackathons with milestone-based remuneration, co-working, in-house catering and a party bus, rather than your standard conferences.
WebZero contributes what side events live or die by: audience pull and activation expertise, we bring global community reach and Luma distribution (30k+ subscribers) to fill the space, plus hands-on experience producing large-scale crypto activations for thousands of guests across major conference weeks (including ETHDenver 2023-2026, Devconnect/Devcon 2023-2025, Token2049 2024 Singapore, ETHCC, Berlin Blockchain Week 2023-2026).

The recent Blockspäti Berlin was one of Zcash’s biggest IRL marketing initiatives and we were proud to co-organise it with the Zecsy ambassadors.

TRACK RECORD - HISTORIC DEVCON/DEVCONNECT EVENTS

Year	Event	Scale
2024	Sub0 Bangkok, Devcon	1,742 attendees, read the conference report here.
2025	Sub0 Flagship conference & hack Buenos Aires, Devconnect	Approximately 2,500 attendees, read the hackathon report here

Team

Position	Function
Devrel and curation	WebZero DevRel lead Sacha hosts the workshop programme, briefs the room on Zcash tooling, and scouts ecosystem partners to join the privacy track.
Marketing	Full time marketing manager, branding & social media marketer for 4 weeks.
Production	WebZero production team — venue, AV, build, door, crew, F&B and run-of-show
Design	In-house artist & 3D designer for merch items, banners & video editing.
Media	WebZero media crew photography, reels, interviews and the aftermovie fitted with a media brief and scripts.
Local partner	To be confirmed: Our first approach is the Zcash India community and would reach out if this proposal is accepted. We’re currently working with local venue providers and local teams will be supporting additional resources for the best budget (catering etc).

3. Why Devconnect, and why now?

India represents the largest concentration of new developer talent in the ecosystem, and there is already organic Zcash activity on the ground.

The event targets a similar audience profile to our previous flagship events.

Audience from Sub0 Symbiosis during Devconnect (WebZero, Polkadot 2025)

735 identified as developers and a further 355 as technical founders — 37% of the room writing code, rising to 48% once students are counted — while founders, investors, marketers and media made up the rest, which is the mix that turns a hackathon into coverage rather than a closed room. Mumbai is engineered for the same composition, tightened further toward builders.

Audience target groups for Mumbai

• Engineering (50%)

• Product and marketing (25%)

• Technical Founders (15%)

• Non-Technical Founders (10%)

We are aware that Mumbai has a heavy student population for crypto. We will engage by collaborating with local blockchain clubs but will make sure only 5% of our overall audience target groups are students to keep the audience more professional. We expect roughly 90% of this room to be building on Zcash for the first time — an excellent opportunity to onboard builders and privacy newcomers.

4. HACK-TO-DARK
4.1 The venue and the shape of the day

Doors at 10:00am, submissions close at midnight, demo day the following afternoon. Two floors: the hackathon floor and the seating area downstairs, a mezzanine for workshops and office hours, and a cocktail bar that becomes the evening programme at 20:00. Brunch, dinner and an open bar run across the day.

The venue is Capital Social — 500 metres and a six-minute walk from Jio World Centre, where Devcon is held. Proximity means attendees can walk over to the conference and venue easily and we’ll divert a lot of attendees to our side event. There is high demand for this venue - it’s as good as it gets.

4.2 Run of show

Hour	Space	Program
10:00	Both floors	Doors. Seats allocated, teams formed, tracks briefed, tooling walkthrough
11:00	Hackathon floor	Opening presentation, housekeeping, builder rules
11:30–17:00	Mezzanine	Workshops and office hours on rotation. Mentors on the floor throughout
All day	Bar and seating	Brunch at 11:30, dinner at 19:00, open bar with coffee and snacks throughout
20:00	Bar floor	Evening programme opens to a wider guest list and audience. Hacking continues in the mezzanine area.
00:00	—	Submissions close. Judging overnight against the track briefs
Day 2 (TBA)	Demo day	Top 6 teams invited to demo. Winners announced at the end

4.3 Tracks

Three themed tracks: Privacy, AI, and Peer-to-Peer Commerce. Zcash anchors on all three but with a focus on the Privacy track geared to pushing forward the Zcash ecosystem specifically. The other two tracks, AI and Peer-to-Peer Commerce are tracks we’re proposing for other partners to add bounties to but which we foresee submissions that combine all three, giving Zcash maximum exposure to the hackathon.

A combined prize is weighted so that teams building across more than one track are rewarded. This pushes the room toward integration rather than into three separate corners, and we’ve seen it successful with the sub0 hack.

WebZero writes and runs all three tracks end to end. WebZero will ensure that any additional bounties added will not dilute the Privacy track as being the main Zcash track. Partners give us their judging criteria, which we apply when determining the winners for each track. We will select judges based on balancing for technical and non-technical areas of expertise. For example, at our last major hackathon we had judges from specific fields that corresponded to the judging criteria which worked well.

We will be contacting ecosystem partners from Zcash and beyond to contribute to the tracks. All partners will be approved on review from the committee.

4.4 The evening programme

5. What gets built?

These are the briefs we would propose. They are drawn from the Community Grants wish list and from gaps we can see in the current tooling. They are starting points for discussion with the committee, not a fixed menu, and we would expect to refine them with input from the maintainers before we publish. All briefs below would be strong Privacy Track submissions but could also be eligible for the other tracks, AI and P2P Commerce. The Privacy track focuses on specific needs from the Zcash ecosystem.

Brief	What a team would ship
Point of sale	A shielded checkout built on WebZjs and ZIP-321 — payment request in, QR rendered, shielded receipt confirmed in the browser. Point-of-sale is named on the Community Grants wish list and there is no good reference implementation.
Shielded payouts	A tool that pays a room of contributors without collecting wallet addresses by hand. This was the winning shape at the community hackathon in late 2025 and remains unsolved at any scale.
Snap-native application	A web application that spends shielded ZEC through the ChainSafe MetaMask Snap, with no wallet install. The Snap is audited and already funded jointly by Community Grants and the MetaMask Grants DAO; almost nothing has been built on top of it.
Ironwood tooling	Migration and pool-health dashboards against Zebra or Zaino, off the back of the July upgrade. Visual, judgeable in 3 minutes, and immediately useful to the ecosystem.
SDK hardening	Work against the proposed TypeScript layer over WebZjs — URI construction, QR, payment monitoring. This is currently an unfunded request-for-comment. Turning it into merged code is a legitimate hackathon outcome.

5.1 What we pre-provision

• A builder pack with the SDK map based on latest content from ZecHub (e.g. which library to reach for at which level, from browser through mobile to Rust) all as a builder pack shared one week ahead

• Testnet funds pre-loaded and a faucet link in the builder pack

• A tooling & housekeeping walkthrough at 10:00 to kick off the hack, delivered by WebZero DevRel.

6. Curation: how the room gets filled

• Hacker applications open 20 September 2026, reviewed by hand and selected until the start of November.

• Talent is drawn across engineering and creative practice — we want designers and founders in the room as well as protocol engineers, because the wish-list items that go unbuilt are usually the ones that need an interface.

• We recruit ecosystem partners into the privacy track ourselves rather than waiting for inbound, using our own network and the local community.

• Target composition is majority India-resident, with many international builders arriving for Devcon.

7. Deliverables to the committee

Deliverable	Detail
Lead Sponsor	Zcash named as headline partner across the event - the hackathon, the evening programme and the demo day. The entire venue is Zcash branded.
The privacy track	Anchored by Zcash, curated and run by us, with ecosystem partners recruited to join it
Workshop programme	Run by our devrel across the day, on Zcash tooling, with office hours on the floor\. How Zcash Works: A Guided Tour of Shielded Money introduces Zcash to an audience encountering it for the first time. Through diagrams and presenter-led walkthroughs, it covers transparent and shielded addresses, the shielded pool, and what “privacy by default” means in practice, with no cryptography background assumed and nothing installed or transacted by attendees. The session is aimed at the broad general audience.
Submissions and repositories	Every submission in the privacy track, with repositories and judge notes, handed over in full
Friction report	A written account of where teams got stuck: the documentation gaps, the setup failures, the API surprises. In our experience this is the most useful single artefact a hackathon produces and it is almost never written down
Media package	2 interviews, 1 aftermovie, 1 reel and a full photo set, delivered as usable files
Merchandise	1 custom hand-drawn item, run of 100, design included
Marketing	Luma, social media, email campaigns and side-event listings, run by us across our reach & zcash’s owned channels
Live analytics	Door and capacity numbers as they happen using privacy-preserving RFID wristbands.
Reporting	Written report against the metrics in section 8, 15 days after the event

8. Success metrics

Tier	Target	Evidence provided
1	75-100 seats filled by hand-selected builders	Attendance log
2	25+ builders complete a workshop or office-hours session on Zcash tooling	Session registers, workshop materials, DevRel notes
3	20 submissions in the privacy track and 20 across the other two tracks	Repositories, demo recordings, judge notes
4	3+ teams still working on their project 30 days after the event	Commit history, 14 day mid check in report - direct contact with teams

Additional metrics: 100,000 organic impressions on X.

The evening networking event has its own goals. We aim for 150–200 check-ins to the evening programme across the night, at an average dwell time of 2 hours, measured on the door.
100,000+ organic impressions on socials, X-led, from 50+ posts carrying @Zcash tags across user-generated content and our own channels.
Merch will be gated: a guest will post on their socials and tag @Zcash or show a TX on Zodl. We expect this to be popular and will have a dedicated staff member monitoring merch.

9. Marketing, media and storytelling

To achieve the 100,000 total organic impressions before, during and after the event, WebZero will apply tactics similar to The Blockspäti efforts through user generated content and owned channels.

The same media team (Little Unusual) that joined us for The Blockspati have offered to join us again for Mumbai. Having familiarized themselves with Zcash, they know what media worked last time and are willing to work together to improve the content strategy.

Zcash has a narrative worth telling and comparatively little footage with which to tell it. One day with an in-house crew in a room of builders — and a full floor in the evening produces a month of material: weekly content, interviews, reels, b-roll and hot takes, cut for the ecosystem’s channels and for ours. Only those who have given consent on the door appear in published material; faces without consent are obscured before anything runs.

We would collaborate directly with the Zcash social team so the messaging lands in the right voice and they have a filled calendar with evergreen content from the event.

New privacy filter for photos

After the Blockspäti Berlin, WebZero tested a new privacy filter on photos. This will be automatically added to photos as a layer and at the discretion of the guest who would prefer to remain anonymous.

Side-Event Calendars

Both side events are listed on the official Devcon side-event calendar, the community-maintained Luma collections and the main community listings, giving Zcash several separate discovery moments during the week instead of one. Listings go live with the early-September campaign launch so they are indexed before attendees plan their week.

“I’m hacking!” attendance cards

Similar to the Blockspäti (example below), we’ll use a generator tool to encourage people to share their application.

Once a hacker has their application reviewed, we’ll send them 4 emails throughout the duration.

This is to ensure maximum attendance, engagement and smooth organisation (marketing emails go only to hackers who have opted in).

1. You’re in! Share the good news (banner tool)
2. What to prepare — 5 tips on what to expect
3. Housekeeping and submission link
4. Thanks for coming! Link to photos and feedback form

Merch

Hand-drawn by WebZero’s resident artist, we’ll have 100 items of merch, similar to the Zcasio watch and 25 limited edition pieces.

As our merchandise provider is in India, shipping within the country is significantly cheaper. We’ll commission one ‘rare’ piece (25 items or less) and one produced in quantity, i.e. custom hacker kits filled with goodies.

Whether it is a kimono, sleeveless shirts, canvas jackets or even custom Zcash Crocs - this item will be the ‘viral’ piece that gets the impressions on socials.

We’ll bring a number of limited edition Zcasio watches leftover from the Blockspäti to supplement the bounty prizes and hacker bounty rewards and encourage X posts and post impressions.

Venue Branding

Zcash will have main branding status with this proposal, meaning entrance banners, drinks menus and all material will have the Zcash logo printed on-site. In WebZero fashion, we aim to have a neo-cypherpunk-looking creative direction fitting nicely with the ‘eat the rich’ vibe the venue already presents physically.

10. Budget

Line	What it covers	USD
Venue	Full-building buyout day 1, demo-day hire day 2, cleaning and reinstatement	$7,000
Food and beverage	Brunch, dinner, all-day coffee and snacks for 75 builders, open bar for up to 200 guests in the evening, demo-day catering	$8,000
Production	AV, sound and lighting with technician, power and wifi provisioning, staging and set build, Zcash signage and print, and DJ fees for the evening	$3,500
Media	Crew on site for 2 days, 1 aftermovie, 2 interviews, 2 reels, 250 edited photographs	$2,500
Design	In-house artist and 3D designer: merch artwork, banners and social templates	$1,000
Marketing	Marketing manager for one full-time month: Luma programme, email campaigns to a 30,000 list, side-event listings, application review	$3,000
DevRel and curation	Workshop delivery, builder pack, tooling pre-provisioning, application review, ecosystem partner recruitment, 30-day follow-up	$4,000
Prize pool	Paid direct to winning teams. Half on the night, half on completion of a 30-day milestone	$2,500
Merchandise	100 privacy survival kits, 50 custom Zcash Crocs and stickers, produced in India	$1,480
Operations	Door and security across both days, local crew, runners and logistics, and public liability insurance	$2,000
Travel and accommodation	Return flights at USD 1,000 each, accommodation and India e-Tourist visas for 4 crew	$5,320
Subtotal		$40,300
Contingency at 8%	Returned to the committee if unspent	$3,224
TOTAL REQUESTED		$43,524

11. Timeline

Date	Task
End of August	Decision sought. Venue contracted on confirmation. Track briefs agreed with the committee
20 September	Applications open. Announcement and track reveal published
September-October	Ecosystem partner recruitment into the privacy track. Luma and email programme runs
Mid-October	Selection closed, seats confirmed, participant pack distributed
Late October	Infrastructure pre-provisioned and tested. Merchandise into production
Day 1 (TBA)	Event day. Submissions close at midnight
Day 2 (TBA)	Demo day. Winners announced
Within 15 days Post-Event	Report with budget breakdown (in case any budget returns to grant). Hackathon projects update report.

12. 30 days post-hack - Milestones

The event is the start of the work rather than the end of it. Once winning teams are announced they will receive half of their prize, agree on a plan to polish what they built and then enter a 30 day sprint to polish their submissions only after which they are eligible the remainder of their prize. Across those 30 days we run 3 office-hours sessions, provide technical guidance, and stay in direct contact with the teams.

This structure exists because of what the evidence says about retention. Handing over a cheque at midnight and walking away is the default in this industry and it does not work. You can find WebZero’s hackathon impact report (Web3 Summit 2024 + 2025) which further validates this methodology here.

Splitting the award and attaching support to the second half is a small mechanism that materially changes the odds of a project continuing well past the event.

13. Risks and mitigations

Risk	Mitigation
Low submission quality	Hand selection against a public brief, no walk-ins, and a room small enough for mentors to intervene early. Starting early and judging allowed more time by being hosted the next day.
Venue in demand	The venue is highly sought after and already we are being pressured to put down a deposit. Alternative venues have been lined up in case we miss out.
Local regulatory context	India taxes virtual asset gains at 30% with 1% TDS. This affects prize structuring, which is one reason we prefer non-cash awards, and is handled with local advice.

[Metehan]

I love this suggestion.

I think it’s a good way to drive developer brain-share to Zcash and general awareness.

Plus I know some of the webzero guys, they are great.

[webzero]

Thank you for your support @Metehan - we’re looking forward to pushing the ecosystem zigher with this event!

[Ondrej0x]

I attended the event in Berlin, and it was great, so I’d love to see more events from the team at WebZero. I actually did my first merch purchase with Zcash at the event.

[readymouse]

Note. The ZECsy Team (Violet @fabacab and I) co-produced the Blockspäti in Berlin with WebZero this June. This application uses the Blockspäti as its headline credential, including the line about being proud to co-organize it with the ZECsy ambassadors. Neither Violet nor I were contacted about this grant submission; we learned of it from this forum. The ZECsy team also has a twelve-month events application currently pending with the committee, submitted before this one, which includes Devcon Mumbai among its candidate events.

What I support. I think a developer-focused Zcash side event during Devcon Mumbai is a good idea. I believe that WebZero is good at a specific set of things: venue and vendor selection, catering, sourcing door personnel and security, photography and video, merch, and drawing a crowd. Berlin demonstrated all of that. Their media and social output was strong, and the after-event reporting was thorough.

What I’m deeply concerned about. Section 2 lists the local partner as “to be confirmed,” with an intention to approach the Zcash India community only if the proposal is accepted. As written, no Zcash-native organization has agreed to be part of this event. This is deeply concerning to me, because I did not witness the Webzero team demonstrating the technical capabilities to effectively onboard users to Zodl never mind more advanced technical conversations necessary for a hackathon.

Additionally for Berlin Spati this Webzero and Zcash-org collaboration was named in the proposal, with budget allocated for both teams. Is the “local team” supposed to volunteer to support this event, or is a follow-on grant expected to support them?

Questions about the application.

1. Who has technical experience with the Zcash SDKs and codebase? Berlin was, as far as I could tell, the first time the named DevRel had onboarded users to the wallet or introduced people to the ecosystem, and I have not been able to find public Zcash code/work under his name. If this exists, I would appreciate the reference. Beyond that role, no mentors are named or budgeted, and the DevRel line covers workshop delivery, participant packs, tooling pre-provisioning, partner recruitment, application management, and thirty days of follow-up. Who else is on this team, and what have they built in the Zcash ecosystem?

2. What is the technical curriculum? The workshop named in the deliverables table, “How Zcash Works: A Guided Tour of Shielded Money,” is described as assuming no cryptography background with nothing installed or transacted by attendees. That is a good session for the evening audience, that named DevRel Sacha could probably handle. However the target audience is folks building on Zcash for the first time, who need greater technical information than a tour of Zodl. What does the builder-facing program actually cover? Who is going to present this?

• • If partnering with an established organization like ZECHUB (@dismad ), that has run previous hackathons, or other ecosystem maintainers then I would feel less of a need for curriculum oversight.

3. Less than 5% students? The proposal says they “will make sure only 5% of our overall audience target groups are students”. This is just a curiosity. What is the rationale behind excluding students and the next generation of builders?

Recommendations I would like to see.

• A named Zcash-ecosystem technical partner confirmed before the event is funded rather than approached afterwards. Zcash India, ZECHUB, ecosystem developers with proven track records, or another org with technically + socially fluent people physically on the floor. It does not need to be my ZECsy team.

• The builder pack, tools, and track briefs reviewed by ecosystem maintainers ahead of the event rather than reported on after it. These are the tools that decide whether the first-time builders get what they need to be successful.

• The mentor roster named beforehand, with a concrete plan for supporting the 30-day follow-up claims.

I want to see this event set up for success. If WebZero brings a Zcash technical partner onto the budget with evidence that they have the technical expertise on the team for a developer-focused event, then I would feel more comfortable about ZCG funding this event.

Mylo

[dismad]

Working with webzero was great, I support this grant. Keep up the great work yall

[fabacab]

I am disappointed to have learned about this grant proposal from this forum posting, as I think my former working relationship with WebZero could have been leveraged to strengthen this initial grant proposal, which is their first lone proposal to ZCG. I also share @readymouse’s concerns about the likelihood of WebZero’s efficacy.

I would not support this grant as currently written for those reasons.

Given my experience building the Berlin Blockchain Week’s Blockspäti with the WebZero team and getting a firsthand behind-the-scenes look at their capabilities, I would suggest that WebZero consider attempting to do half as much, in a manner twice as focused.

This is the same opinion I offered their team in-person, in Berlin, after the Blockspäti closed its doors to its final guests.

[Kenbak]

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend the event in Berlin, but heard great things about it from people who were there.

I got to work with WebZero directly through the integration of Cipherpay for their online shop and can vouch for them.

Strong support from me. The combination of hands-on builder time with real Zcash tooling plus the evening cultural programme is a format that clearly works and builds ‘culture’.

[webzero]

Hi all, Roman here, founder of WebZero.

Thank you for the responses. This is our very first proposal to the Zcash community, and we’re already glad to have got to know so many of you. I deeply appreciate the words of support, in this statement I’m focusing on responding to the posts by @readymouse and @fabacab

As we state in our proposal, it was fantastic getting our feet into the ZEC waters, and the Blockspäti stands as one of Zcash’s most visible events. We mentioned it here because we’re proud of the work we did together, and I’ll come to why we didn’t think to reach out to the ZECsy team about partnering again.

On a technical partner

First things first: you’re absolutely right about getting a technical partner on board to facilitate this hackathon. Our proposal saying we’d find one after it passes is not enough, especially as we’re new to the ecosystem.

We can now confirm we’ll work with Anirudh from Zcash India and Hacktour India and his team, they will support the hackathon from a technical standpoint. We’re also in touch with ZecHub about supporting documentation and helping guide us to make this a success. Together, that covers the technical side and lets Sacha do what he’s known best for in this space, facilitating the hackathon. Video

Zcash India have confirmed they will not charge for the technical support, and will provide a contribution, in exchange for support for their own side event on a different day to Devcon, for which our team will provide marketing, DJing and other operational resources. It’s great to see how supportive and open they are, both our teams are looking forward to supporting each other’s efforts.

Hackathon track record

Our devrel Sacha has run multiple tracks and full hackathons at Coindesk Consensus (2024, 2025), ETHDenver (2024, 2025), Web3 Summit (2024, 2025), and the Devconnect sub0 Symbiosis Hack 2025, raised and dispersed over 200,000 USD in bounties to hackers, with hundreds of builders at each event.

All of our major hackathons had multiple tracks and were multi-chain, with Sacha leading the Rootstock, Starknet, Solana and Polkadot submissions.

Organisations including Algorand and ETHGlobal have since adopted hackathon rulesets we defined through our Blockspace series, refined by systematic experimentation over several years.

Case Study 1 · Case Study 2 · Video ·

On efficacy

I take this comment seriously, the WebZero team consistently goes above and beyond in the pursuit of excellence. We reflected on issues that need improvement in our Blockspäti report at section 10. We didn’t hear the extent of it until 10 days after the event finished, so we weren’t able to fix them together as they happened.

Despite the onboarding issues, we moved the goalpost to merchants and TX proof late in the day, which caused a bit of chaos (the original proposal is just X of wallets). But despite these learnings, our team showed up well beyond their own portion of the budget and carried through a memorable event. The ZECsy report and new proposal agrees with this.

We’re sorry for not giving you the heads up before submitting. When the ZECsy team published their proposal, WebZero was not mentioned, and we took that as a signal that there was no conflict in us applying on our own. Even though I felt the deal and treatment weren’t fair, I still asked on the feedback call whether the ZECsy team wanted to continue the partnership after ironing out the flaws, which was met by awkward silence. I also don’t believe a hackathon has much crossover with their mission goals, which we fully support.

“Who has technical experience?”

No single person or group is named as the “technical experts”, because we plan to lean on experts from the ZEC projects related to what ZCG would like to see built. Reaching out to ZecHub contributors about the builder pack was already on the list. For mentors, the plan is to invite the people behind the projects and SDKs mentioned to add challenge prompts to the Privacy track and to mentor the teams building on their stack.

“What is the technical curriculum?”

This proposal is for a single day hackathon, with demo day on day two, to identify and support teams wanting to continue building in the ecosystem. It’s not about hosting a day of technical workshops. In our experience, overloading the only day dedicated to building with workshops (a) distracts hackers from making serious progress and (b) risks wasting organisational and logistical effort on low-attended sessions.

That is why we’re proposing to kick off the hackathon with an introductory workshop on how Zcash works, where Sacha will also present the different opportunities for building in the ecosystem and the projects we’ve collaborated with that are hoping to see specific submissions.

“Less than 5% students?”

Our goal is longevity of builders in the ecosystem. In our experience students often come to these events to hunt bounties and have limited experience shipping real products. Total capacity here is not high, so we are focusing on a diverse but more senior developer profile. We do however want to encourage students to apply, and look forward to inviting selected ones as relevant to each of our target audience groups.

Why Devcon and WebZero?

Over the last two years we organised two of the largest flagship conferences and hackathons running alongside Devcon and Devconnect: sub0 Reset in Bangkok (2024) and sub0 Symbiosis in Buenos Aires (2025). That built one of the bigger subscriber bases for this audience and one of the biggest organic communities during Devconnect.

WebZero is independent and budget conscious. We have been producing events for the last four years, some with up to a thousand participants a day, and after several conversations with community members and stakeholder orgs, we are excited that there is a clear appetite for more culture building.

I want to end this statement on a positive note, to me this chapter is closed and water under the bridge. The recent rise of ZEC with the incredible work the teams accomplished with the upgrade to Ironwood and introducing formal verification is a perfect setup to ramp up the marketing and community building to properly capture the attention further. There are lots of great initiatives in this ecosystem and they all deserve a chance to prove themselves useful!

Roman

[readymouse]

@readymouse

If WebZero brings a Zcash technical partner onto the budget with evidence that they have the technical expertise on the team for a developer-focused event, then I would feel more comfortable about ZCG funding this event.

While I don’t personally know the Zcash India team, I am satisfied that there is a zcash-aligned organization onboard for this event, and that ZECHUB has been engaged to support as well.

I support this proposal.

[fabacab]

We didn’t hear the extent of it until 10 days after the event finished, so we weren’t able to fix them together as they happened.

Respectfully, you still haven’t heard the extent of it from me.

For the record: I raised some of my concerns and frustrations in the moment, on site. I received active push back from WebZero staff about those things.

I didn’t push further because I didn’t want to cause a scene, and when I’m feeling generous I can argue myself into believing that two differently competent and reasonable event producers can disagree about the appropriate way to execute on a vision. Conflict on site would have been worse, and I’ve produced enough events of my own that I know how important it is to keep up appearances, especially during a live, in-person gathering.

I further raised those same concerns again at event close, immediately post-facto, as described in my earlier post on this thread, and then again during a debrief call, 10 days later. C’mon, man. That is how these things go. The “extent” of things are hashed out over time, because that is how time works.

Your characterization makes it sound like I was silent until after the fact. That’s not the case, and I don’t appreciate your mischaracterization. It makes me distrust you on a deeper level than simply knowing our teams would have executed differently.

On a positive note, I agree that hackathons have little conflict with our own mission goals. Good luck to you in contributing those. I, too, look forward to these issues indeed being water under the bridge.

[webzero]

Hi,

I don’t recall one moment where you suggested any changes to fix issues you saw. I’m very approachable and open to suggestions, and there are always five minutes to walk and talk productively.

But let’s stick with the public facts, the first one being the most relevant to this whole conflict. You did multiple activities that were funded by ZCG in the past, this isn’t your first rodeo. Why aren’t you holding yourself accountable or mention any issues in your report?

Of the two of us:

• only one (self) reported on shortcomings or issues with the intention to fix them going forward. (Honesty)

• only one can show a strong track record of event management in our industry. You state this event in your team’s references, even though you were not directly involved in the production (Professionalism)

• only one of us feels the need to FUD the other’s proposal in the forum. (Conduct)

Respectfully,

Roman

[ryan.taylor]

I support this grant.

Zk Av Club has worked with WebZero at two events over the past year. They invited us to bring the Recording Station to Sub0 last November, then again to Blockspäti in Berlin this June.

Both were a blast.

WebZero events have a fun, slightly chaotic, indoor-festival energy that works really well for what we do. Crypto nerds of all kinds are wandering around, running into each other, starting conversations, bringing friends over, and occasionally ending up at the Recording Station talking about something none of us expected.

That’s a good environment for the club.

Roman and Zöe have also been gracious hosts. They’ve welcomed us in, given us good spaces to work with, and made the Recording Station feel like part of the event.

I’ve worked with dozens of event organizers over the years, especially during the last 15 years of my AV career. Events are hard. There are a thousand moving parts, things get hectic, and the organizers are usually solving five problems at once while everyone else is having a good time.

I can only speak for myself, but I’ve really enjoyed working with WebZero and being at their events. A lot of great people have wandered into the Recording Station because WebZero created the kind of space where those conversations happen.

I’d be happy to see them bring that energy to a Zcash event.

p.s. When I saw that Zcon7 was happening the week before Devcon, I was a little sad because I worried it might mean fewer Zcashers would make it to Mumbai. With Web3Privacy Now also bringing a big privacy crowd together around Devcon, it feels like there’s a real opportunity to keep some Zcash energy going there. A WebZero event with Zcash India involved would be a pretty great addition to that week.

[m.f]

TLDR; I support this grant alongside the team executing it.

I have personally worked with WebZero and visited multiple of their events in various capacities (2x Sponsor, Attendee, Mentor, Speaker, etc.) from Bangkok to Berlin to Buenos Aires. I can easily vouch, based on practical experience, for their execution capabilities.

Especially considering the minimal funds requested for the promised deliverables.

[ZCG]

@webzero at the most recent meeting, ZCG voted to approve this proposal. Congratulations!

To keep the community informed, ZCG requests that you provide monthly updates via the forum in this thread.

Please check your forum inbox for a direct message from FPF with important next steps, including a link to the Milestone Payment Request Form and your unique validation code for submitting payment requests.

[fabacab]

@webzero

I don’t recall one moment where you suggested any changes to fix issues you saw.

I came to Sascha and Dercio in-person, because they were around and more directly involved than you were. (Frankly I don’t recall you being around very much at all.) I spoke up again in the debrief call you yourself cited.

You are again cherry picking selective facts to mischaracterize my actions while projecting your experience as universal. This is what I’m objecting to. I don’t feel that your behavior is the action of a trustworthy or approachable partner.

If you continue to behave this way, I will further regret my earlier choices to keep my concerns private. This was a choice I made that benefited you.

You’re welcome.

Congratulations on winning your grant proposal. I wish you the best of luck in India.

[webzero]

I think it’s very clear to see who behaving badly here, I hope you find peace and happiness.

Roman

[fabacab]

Roman, I understand that you might feel betrayed by me. I, also, feel betrayed by you.

Above, you made a statement about me that is factually wrong, and you did it in this public forum. That was unnecessary and feels hurtful to me.

I understand that my words above were also hurtful to you. I apologize for their emotional force, but the facts remain.

I am not talking about your grant or hackathon, which I wish you the most success with.

My last two posts have been a correction of the record that you simply got wrong, and since it was about me, makes me feel compelled to correct. When you double down on this in opposition to my assertions while attempting to muddy the waters by confusing the topic away from my very simple and focused correction, it further makes me feel deeply distrustful of you as a good faith actor here.

That is all this (now three posts) is about. I would sincerely like to put this to rest on this forum, so this will be my last explanation of my posts here.

I am available via Signal DMs should you ever wish to discuss this privately.

I sincerely hope your hackathon is successful in bringing more builders to the Zcash ecosystem.

[webzero]

Hi everyone! Thanks so much, ZCG, for supporting this vision! Just want to share a few updates:

• Our location scout checked out Capital Social in person and deemed it too small for the type of activities we want to carry out; the budget was also proving difficult to negotiate down. We want a venue with more flexibility and space, and we found something even better fitting over 200 people.

• After reviewing over 15 venues, our local partner found an alternative, a 4-minute drive from the Devconnect venue for both day and night. The budget is under what we estimated & includes all drinks and catering, so we’re investing in Zcash set design and some privacy activations. We’ll also install high-speed WiFi so we don’t have any infra issues. This venue is going to really pop once we’re done with it.

New venue:

We’re in talks with ETHSwarm to offer decentralised streaming to the nighttime party DJs with our face mask overlay as well as offering some privacy artwork/installations for the venue!

Currently in the planning phase of the hackathon: setting out the tasks, partners, sessions and mentors & milestones. Longer update to follow, we have a working group with Zcash India.

Our friends at Bitrefill loved the spati so much they’re considering adding a bounty to the Agentic track. This will increase the total prize pool amount and bring more builders to the room. We’re reaching out to our network to see if we can raise more bounties for the prize pool.

Media team is locked in and confirmed for both days - the same team that joined us for The Blockspati. Expect lots of exciting content - the ideas are being collected, and briefs will be written.

Merch has been confirmed: two items are being manufactured. (incl Zcash Crocs)
If the Zcash India side event proposal goes ahead, we’ll do a merch swap, meaning we share each other’s merch at both events and list them on the online merch shop for people who can’t make it in person.

Design-wise, the concept is underway for both the hackathon and evening party, and we expect to go live with applications and signups end of September.

We’re not hugely stuck on the ‘hack to dark’ concept and currently brainstorming a more creative, energetic event theme that can be used for multiple hackathons.

We’re shooting a pre-event teaser to promote the events, and that will serve as our announcement post. A newsletter will be sent to WebZero’s subscriber base from previous Devcon editions (15,000+ subscribers) to kick off the campaign.

Thanks for trusting us with this event!

Zoe