Here are my responses to the “big open questions” that have been distilled from community discussions.
- ZIP Ambiguity: The ZIP-1014 language has some ambiguities. Where would you stand on how to interpret and implement operational activities when there is no explicit language to guide you? How should the MGRC consider community will/preference?
The goals here are legitimacy and efficacy. Zcash holders are trusting the MGRC with their money. This money is not coming out of thin air; it’s the result of work and sacrifice of real people. So Zcash holders deserve a clear, transparent implementation of the intention of the ZIP. Zcash holders also deserve an effective use of their funds. This pool of money is just too precious to waste. Finding funding for privacy tech is hard. This funding pool is historic, and it’s crucial for Zcash. We can’t mess this up!
Legitimacy requires that all steps flow clearly from reasonable common-sense interpretations of the ZIP and the intentions behind it. But efficacy requires MGRC members holds themselves accountable to impact—not blindly following a set of steps because it seems like what the ZIP authors wanted. (The community doesn’t want the MGRC to waste their money.)
So if there’s ever a tension between efficacy and legitimacy, that is, if MGRC members ever feel the ZIP is holding them back, I think the solution is that MGRC members should push for the best possible answer within reasonable interpretations of the ZIP, explaining their interpretation and listening / responding to outside feedback. And if MGRC members believe the ZIP is holding them back, they should write this up and propose a change for the community to vote on, rather than stretching the interpretation of the ZIP. (But no idea that makes sense should be permanently set aside just because the language in the ZIP seems to preclude it.)
- MGRC Role: Should MGRC be a “driving actor” or provide sourcing, oversight and review? [context]. Should MGRC be more of a bureaucracy (with hierarchy, continuity, defined rules, and expertise) or can it be an adhocracy (decentralized and flexible)?
We don’t want to create another ECC or ZF. But I think the MGRC will need to do more than simply reviewing grant applications to be successful. For example, I think we’ll need to do a lot of work to build a pipeline of high quality applicants, and this might require some support staff. That said, it should still be pretty flat, i.e. MGRC committee members with support staff who report to the MGRC.
- Teamwork: Have you had previous experiences of being put together rather arbitrarily in a team before? If so, how did you manage? How will you go about managing disagreements between 1) yourself and another MGRC member and 2) other MGRC members with each other?
My response to this question is here: MGRC candidates teamwork questions - #8 by holmesworcester
- Processes: If you were elected to the MGRC, what processes and frameworks would you attempt to set in place in order to allow frictionless collaboration between the members of the MGRC?
I think it makes a lot of sense to have a part-time staffer working on recruiting, outreach, screening calls, and generally moving candidates through the pipeline, with decisions from all or some of the committee at each stage in the process. There’s a basic requirement where you want applicants to be getting timely responses, and that’s hard when the work is spread across a group of people. When we ran a grantmaking program called A-Teams at my previous organization Fight for the Future, having someone in this role was hugely helpful, and I don’t think it would be too hard to find someone excellent.
In our candidate call, @LizBoomLiz mentioned the approach of some kind of scoring system for applicants given a set of criteria we decide on. That sounds like a good idea too, once the volume of applications gets to a certain point.
Is it a conflict of interest for a member of another cryptocurrency project to be on the MGRC?
If they’re a good fit for the role, and they follow standard practices for conflicts of interest, I don’t think there’s an issue here. A role working in another cryptocurrency project could bring experience and connections that would benefit the MGRC.