Hey Zcash community! 
We’ve submitted a grant application to ZCG for our next grassroots marketing initiative, for Cypherpunk week in Amsterdam. This continues the playbook we’ve been running since Buenos Aires, with a new centerpiece we’re genuinely excited about.
Cypherpunk Week is a decentralized constellation of independent privacy and cypherpunk events, drawing an estimated 1,000–2,000 attendees across the week and 700–1,000 at Common S3nse alone. It’s the tightest values-aligned audience Zcash can reach: privacy engineers, security researchers, cryptographers, and cypherpunks. Sponsorship builds visibility; people on the ground turn that visibility into onboarding, captured leads, and follow-up.
What We’re Proposing
A week-long grassroots presence at Cypherpunk Week Amsterdam (Aug 31 – Sep 6, 2026), anchored by something new:
1. The Zcash Privacy Tour (centerpiece) — Two to three guided evening walking tours through Amsterdam’s canal ring, tracing the physical history of privacy in the city: the hidden courtyard gardens and the clandestine attic churches. Each tour ends at a café or bar for relaxed community drinks, networking, and hands-on onboarding. Attendees are incentivized to download ZODL by receiving starter ZEC with which to tip their tour guide in ZEC, demonstrating real shielded transactions while onboarding attendees and local guides alike. Tours are scheduled on the week’s open evenings (Aug 31, Sep 2, Sep 3), converting the schedule’s gap days into intimate, high-conversion, Zcash-branded experiences.
This is an AI-generated, inspirational image of the proposed tour.
2. In-Person Conference Support (as usual) — A 4-person team on the ground across the full week: Solana Startup Village (Aug 31), the Web3Privacy meetup (Sep 1), DashCon (Sep 3), and the Common S3nse conference + hackathon (Sep 4–5), where Zcash is a confirmed partner. Live demos, hands-on Zodl onboarding, real conversations, and our signature “Protection is ZECsy” condoms. We’ve confirmed directly with those behind the Zcash sponsorship that no Zcash-related side events are planned, so the tour complements the official program rather than colliding with it.
3. Live CipherPay Demo (new) — A portable CipherPay demo on an iPad at the end of each tour, walking guests through a real ZEC transaction and pairing with the starter-ZEC and tip-the-guide mechanic for first-touch onboarding.
4.The ZECsy Apprentice Program (ongoing) — Every ZECsy activation doubles as hands-on training. Alongside our veterans, we bring an apprentice (often a former student of @fabacab 's privacy workshops) who learns the Zcash onboarding flow through repeated, real conversations in the field. Today’s apprentice becomes tomorrow’s veteran, steadily growing the pool of people who can confidently onboard others to ZEC. In ETHDenver it was Cosmo (@cos ), at Exxxotica Chicago it was Bee and Kat. During Berlin Blockchain week we mentored Justine, who interviewed with @ryan.taylor at the ZK AV Club about her experience learning zcash through Violet’s workshops and her interactions at the Zcash Späti event.
Track Record
Primary KPIs
- 30+ new Zodl wallet downloads
- 150+ documented conversations
- At least 2 Zcash Privacy Tour events with attendance tracked per night (goal is 3 tours)
- ZEC transactions and onboarding completions during the tours
- Daily social media documentation (@zReadyMouse), including selfies of new Zodl users with their unified addresses
- One apprentice trained in field onboarding
- Full trip report with metrics, photos, and engagement data posted to the forum within 1 week of the event
The Team
We love teaching about zcash and deeply appreciate ZCG’s past support for our proposed trips.
Below are some team photos from our previous trips: Berlin Späti, Exxxotica’s Zcash Kitchen Booth, and ETHDenver.
Thanks for reading, and for everything you do to support the Zcash community. 
Supporting links:
- Common S3nse (Zcash listed as partner)
- Berlin Blockchain Week Späti - Post-Trip Report with @webzero