We are about to expand the Community Advisory Panel (CAP) by allowing existing members to invite one other person, and inviting applications from long-standing members of the Forums.
We’re interested in hearing the Community’s ideas on other methods for growing the CAP, and making it more representative of the Zcash Community, whilst ensuring that it remains independent. Please post your ideas and feedback here.
UPDATE (30th November 2021): We are expanding the ZCAP again, and have adopted some of the ideas proposed here in this topic. Keep 'em coming!
Two ideas that come to mind, are to allow ZOMG candidates & ZOMG grant recipients to be added to ZCAP. I say this not only selfishly as I would like to be added to the ZCAP & am 2 months shy of the forum member requirement & am unsure if I will receive an invite, but because I feel that both of those additions would be indicative of active Zcash community members who would be valuable members of the ZCAP
One idea that comes to mind is to reach across to another community. The overlap between Ethereum’s community and ZCash community is considerable and there is a mutual respect between both communities. So my suggestion would be to also publicize the CAP article on expanding the community (https://www.zfnd.org/blog/preparing-for-zf-board-elections/) to the Ethereum community’s social media spaces such as the main Ethereum subreddit which is primarily used for dev discussions, and perhaps their stack exchange. That article contained everything pertinent for signing up for the CAP.
I’m not aware of too many communities that are supportive or respectful of ZCash. Largely this is because many communities view ZCash as a competitor or as an existential threat if they are also privacy focused projects or are working on adding a privacy layer. I feel like its better to go for quality than quantity when it comes to input so I would say the Ethereum community is the only community that I can see having a stake in ZCash technology. They want a privacy layer and they already integrated with ZCash to an extent. If we go for quantity we become sluggish and will have more difficulty achieving consensus. Over time I think this is what happened to Bitcoin.
I think that only ZOMG candidates who have reached a certain approval threshold should be invited to join ZCAP, as it would otherwise provide a simple path for anyone to get onto ZCAP by simply standing for ZOMG, even if they got zero votes.
I’m instinctively opposed to anything that could be viewed as “pay to play”.
In a blog post published on May 28, 2021, the Zcash Foundation stated:
Going forward, to ensure that the CAP remains a useful and representative method of soliciting community feedback, membership will be on a “use it or lose it” basis. Members who do not vote in a CAP poll will be dropped from the CAP. “Abstain” will be included as an option on all votes to cater for anyone who doesn’t want to vote in a particular poll but who wishes to retain their membership of the CAP.
In the most recent Helios poll, 90 of 126 members participated. As a result, the ZCAP has been reduced by roughly 29% to 90 members and therefore should be expanded to better represent the Zcash community.
I propose the Foundation consider expanding the ZCAP as follows:
Eligibility: The ZCAP shall include any member of the Zcash Community Forum who (1) has an active account in good standing for at least 6 months prior to the announcement of the poll and (2) requests via email or forum post that the Foundation add them as a member of the ZCAP. Note: This process is somewhat similar to the process used for determining eligibility to vote on ZIP 1014 (though I believe eligibility was extended to forum members with active accounts for 9 months).
Modified “use it or lose it” policy: The Foundation will eliminate any ZCAP members who (1) do not vote in two consecutive polls or (2) do not vote in two polls in a given calendar year. Note: Monitoring user participation can easily be tracked via Excel.
Please let me know if you have any thoughts or feedback. I’d love to see a vibrant discussion about ideas on how to expand the ZCAP.
Even though ZCAP polls are non-binding on ECC’s decisions and ZCAP is administered solely by the Zcash Foundation, it is still one important data point to us at ECC when we’re trying to learn what Zcashers think. Therefore, I’d like to offer a suggestion.
In this iteration, ZCAP is being expanded with friends/recommendations of the current ZCAP members, long-standing participants in this forum who weren’t already in ZCAP, and people who’ve contributed to Zcash through winning and executing grants or contributing software to the open source software code bases. I think those are all good ways to do it and as always I appreciate how thoughtful the Zcash Foundation is about things like this.
My suggestion is that in a future iteration of the ZCAP, the Zcash Foundation include people whose qualification is that are ZEC holders.
We know that there is are permissionless, decentralized, anonymous ways for ZEC holders to prove that they hold ZEC and to express their intentions (such as a request to join the ZCAP) because they’ve done so multiple times before successfully, most recently Coin-holder poll: results summary - Electric Coin Company
This suggestion is in line with ECC’s belief that ZEC holders are a critical part of the Zcash community, and that their voices should be heard, even if they are not friends with anyone on the current ZCAP, can’t or won’t participate in this forum, and can’t contribute to software or grant-receiving projects. Let’s give ZEC holders a voice - Electric Coin Company
