Hello everyone! I’m Glenn, the Executive Director of Science & Design, Inc., a 501(c)(3) non-profit building open-source software for free speech and access to information online.
Our core product is Hush Line, a managed whistleblowing platform for journalists, businesses and educators. We’re applying for support to integrate ZCash payments for our customers. We have paid tiers of service available for businesses and professionals, and allowing folks who might not have access to Stripe payments is critical for our mission.
Our platform connects whistleblowers with lawyers, journalists, business leaders, and more, and we believe we have the opportunity to help make the whistleblowing journey safer and more successful. We support E2EE, Tor Onion Services, and require no PII to sign up. To help protect users, we offer Verified accounts to tip line owners who are vulnerable to phishing attacks.
I’m not sure if NOWpayments currently supports U addresses (or private addresses at all) after looking through their site, so that should be the first consideration.
Secondly, the setup funding amount seems high for simply adding a pay-with-Zcash button via NOWpayments and tracking payments via Python script.
If this was an integration with the ability to receive and process private Zcash payments directly to your U or Z address would provide the maximum privacy for your users.
A third party processor (NOWpayments, Coinbase Commerce, Coinpayments, etc…) is potentially another layer of metadata or company that an adversary could use against your users, especially if that platform only accepts payment to a T-address.
Hi @glenn - Welcome to the forum, and thank you for submitting your grant proposal! We will review it in the upcoming weeks and reach out if we have any questions.
In the meantime, if you have any questions for us, you can post them to this thread or DM us at @ZcashGrants.
Zcash Community - We want to hear your feedback on this grant! You can post your comments to this thread or DM us at @ZcashGrants if you’d like to provide feedback in private.
I am the creator of ZGo, a payment platform for Zcash. We have built a plugin that allows WooCommerce users to accept ZEC as payment and would be happy to help with an integration into Hush Line.
Thank you for the questions, everyone! @Shawn—Yes, I intentionally quote a little high—30% margin of error, and with crypto payments, I add another 30% for tax purposes and volatility. NOW Payments is just an example, but it doesn’t reflect a final decision. I’m looking forward to talking with @pitmutt more about ZGo, and I want to be as strict as possible about our integration to reduce metadata that could expose who a tip line owner might be. If running a node is in our user’s best interest, I’m interested, too. And with whatever decision we make, since this is a managed service, I budget for three years of infrastructure costs.
I aim to have two engineers, one PM, one doc writer, and one UXR for our team structure. And because of learned experience, we double the final rate because things seem to take twice as long as planned.
@glenn Thank you for your submission. After consideration from @ZcashGrants and sufficient time for the community to provide feedback on the forum, the committee has decided to reject this proposal.
The committee appreciates your grant submission efforts and encourages you to continue as an active member of the Zcash community going forward, both here on the forum and in the below avenues as well:
Thank you for your consideration!
