Improvement proposals for Minor Grants and the ZCAP

[gordonesTV]

Hi, @David_Heisenberg

What good does it do us to have members on ZCAP if they don’t vote in repeated rounds? To have them just for the sake of saying we have a certain amount of people?

Why reward the one who votes, if they are precisely on ZCAP to vote?

I don’t see that it is negative to take out of the ZCAP the one who doesn’t vote. Negative is having people occupying a space and not exercising what is expected of them.

I do agree with you on promoting leadership positions to those who demonstrate more active and consistent participation.

Thank you for participating in this discussion. I appreciate your comments.

[gordonesTV]

Thanks for your comment!

Certainly, what is the point of having a great development if it is not informed and educated around it?

[gordonesTV]

Education/information will always be needed, because there are different levels of users. There are advanced users like you or me, but there are basic users, who just want to hit the “send” button.

We cannot assume that all users are the same. And the learning curve is different for everyone.

Education/information will always be needed, because there are different levels of users. There are advanced users like you or me, but there are basic users, who just want to hit the “send” button.

We cannot assume that all users are the same. And the learning curve is different for everyone.

Regarding Zcash Media, we can discuss it in another thread, as it has nothing to do with the main topic of this one.

To think that all educational/community proposals will be like what has happened with Zcash Media is to judge them all and close us off to smaller proposals, but which are indeed fulfilling and paying off.

[dismad]

@David_Heisenberg

I think ZCAP removal should be for people where there is some proof they are a bad faith actor.

How to verify this becomes the new issue, IMHO.

@David_Heisenberg

Instead, what I think would be a great idea, would be to reward people who participate.

Yes, this aligns with a Zcash POS future. Make it happen

[David_Heisenberg]

The burden of proof for removal should be high, I agree. There was an example in the last year or two.

I’m not sure we need to wait for POS to do RPGF. Some entity with a treasury would just need to figure out how to do it and the will to do it. I’m not saying the ROI on RPGF is guaranteed to be high, but I do think it is worthwhile to think about. There are many contributors to Zcash that do lots of pro bono work, I think honoring that has value.

[noamchom]

@james_katz

I agree that inactive members should be removed from ZCAP, but this doesn’t make a lot of difference in the voting process. The quorum for approval is 51%, it makes no difference if 100 people of 500 voted, or 100 of 100, the quorum of 51 votes would be the same.

There is a significant difference!

51 votes from of a maximum 100 is a much more confident outcome, as compared to 51 votes from a maximum 500. The size of the non-voting ZCAP membership decreases the confidence of each voting cycle

I don’t like the current 51% quorom rule, that is irrespective to the participation rate. My opinion is that any voting outcome should only be valid if more than 80% (pick your favorite magic number) of all ZCAP members participated.

[gordonesTV]

I like it too!

80% sounds good!

[artkor]

Guys, all the proposed grants are great and important. People have ported a lot of time and energy into their proposals. And if the current price of ZEC was at $250, but not $25, this thread would not exist because, for example, 17 out of 20 grants would be approved. Let’s assume that all ZCAP members have a head and have a right to express an opinion in a particular context. If someone has a suspicion that ZCAP has been hijacked by pests, then give the arguments. If we start delving into the calculation methodology, which is actually quite fair, it’s like the notional government letting the accountable statistical agencies change the calculation methodology to make their board’s results look better. We shouldn’t be doing that, let’s just work within the confines of what we have and let’s be patient.

[gordonesTV]

Thanks for commenting!

Does it mean then that since the ZEC price is low you have to give priority to technical and development proposals?

To me this is a mistake.

Both oars, both wings (educational and technical), are equally important for the momentum and growth of Zcash, regardless of price.

[artkor]

I’m sorry, but I cannot answer your question. My opinion doesn’t matter because the majority of ZCAP members have already voted. And I trust the majority opinion. That’s why I wouldn’t want to discuss changing the methodology for determining the results, on the grounds that I don’t like or vice versa favor the majority’s decision.

Although that’s probably how the discussion should be framed when framed that way. How does the community prioritize? What areas are critical under stressful conditions? How do we determine the amount of response per dollar invested? And how do we determine the effectiveness and usefulness of a technical improvement? What return horizons are we considering? Should we publicly evaluate projects in an attempt to endow them with KPI criteria? Should we consider grants in terms of investment return for Zcash?

When we have answers to these questions, and when the community can make informed evaluations based not on personal preferences, but on public analysis of projects. Then we won’t have to dig into the methodology and look for errors in it.

[gordonesTV]

Majorities are not always right. I live in Venezuela and I know that. You being from Russia should know it. “Democracies” are not perfect, and can always be improved.

I can answer your questions. Let’s see:

Community does not prioritize, it is not above development, it is an indispensable element, not above but in equal importance.

The critical areas in times of stress are information and marketing, because it allows you to explain and disseminate what is being done in that period of stress. If in times of stress you do not inform, chaos ensues.

In marketing and education everything can be measured: you can measure metrics achieved, people impacted, community engagement, usage, implementation. And you can cross-reference that with dollars invested, if you wanted to know.

We determine the effectiveness of a technical improvement when we teach it to a critical mass of users, use it, apply it and test it, to continue with the cycle of improving and teaching/testing again.

Whose profitability? I understand that the Foundation is a not-for-profit entity. The money for Grants is already earmarked for proposals and improvements, not for commercial profitability. And if this were the approach, you can also measure ROI with some of the KPIs I mentioned above.

Yes, I think every project can have KPIs, no doubt about it. What is not measured cannot be improved or evaluated.

I am of the opinion that every grant proposal has the same thing in mind: mass adoption. So, from this point of view yes, every grant proposal itself has a higher or lower degree of return for Zcash. And how will we know? By measuring the metrics considered in the proposals themselves.

We are not talking about personal preferences. The answers to your questions are there, and could even be put to a vote. Even ZCAP could vote on them and see which ones are adjusted and implemented.

The methodology can always be improved. We are not trees, we can move, suggest, contribute and change. It is by not suggesting and proposing that autocracies arise, you and I know that.

[artkor]

I’m really well aware of what you mean by democracy. Yes. It’s very hard for me myself to be in the minority in an authoritarian regime. It’s like going against the flow on a major highway. You either have to constantly maneuver to stay invisible, or pull off to the side of the road and be invisible, otherwise you’re going to get wrecked as soon as you can’t dodge. But look. In these countries, the voting system is set up so that absolutely everyone is allowed to vote. Thus, it is in the interests of the ruling circles to reduce the general literacy of the population, to load them with domestic issues, so that they have no time for politics (i.e. to reduce their level of material status), to outlaw any opinion different from the authorities, and finally to subordinate all mass media to their theses. Ok, let’s memorize - this is called democratic elections in an authoritarian context. Now consider another system in which the public is not allowed to vote directly on a key issue, but the public has a system of electors. And this system is designed to balance the interests of all parties, including territorial minorities and just minorities. So what is ZCAP voting? Are all holders allowed to vote? Does Zcash have a ban on differing opinions in the community? Is ZCAP being hijacked by an alien group of influence? It seems to me that ZCAP is more like a balanced form of democracy.

I agree with all of your answers and especially with the fact that we should do more outreach, i.e. education, to the voting public. But trying to find a flaw in the methodology is the wrong way to go, and it calls into question all previous ZCAP polls, which is something that is very dangerous to do, because the questions on previous polls are not simple.

[noamchom]

@artkor

But trying to find a flaw in the methodology is the wrong way to go

There are a few simple, and obvious, flaws with the current methodology/ ZCAP interface to the ecosystem.

1. Election data is not well aggregated anywhere, to allow independent trends/ participation analysis
2. The voting system does not differentiate absence (no-show-no-vote) from indifference (there is no active-abstain vote)
3. Because of point 2, there is no means to understand confidence in the quorom of a voting cycle.
4. Related to 2, 3, there is no minimum threshold to assert insufficient quality of the quorum per voting cycle. (once again, chose your favorite magic number… I believe that 75-80% participation should be required for a quorum to be valid)
5. ZCAP members who have been absent without explanation for X voting cycles (choose your favorite magic number, I would say 3-4) should lose their seat at ZCAP

Fixing these flaws should be relatively trivial.

1. Incorporate an “Active-Abstain” voting option (to go alongside the current “Yes” and “No”)
2. Per voting cycle, a confidence weight can now be determined as a function of Yes vs No vs Active-Abstain vs no-show-no-votes
3. Scrape all past voting cycle data, aggregate it into a digestible site where trends can be simply observed (for participation rates, total ZCAP size at the time of vote, et al)
4. For any voting cycle where participation % is below the threshold to create a valid quorum, then that voting cycle is invalid and should be re-conducted in the future.
5. For any ZCAP member who has been absent for X voting cycles (i.e. X consecutive no-show-no-votes) then remove them from the ZCAP

[yoditar]

I think what has been proposed and discussed in this post is intended to improve ZCAP, not to call into question its recent or past voting.

I also understand that for some members of the community there may be more important issues to be discussed than a proposal to improve ZCAP. Or probably for them ZCAP works well as it was designed.

I do not consider it a complicated thing to improve ZCAP’s participation and voting system, as it would imply having a more robust community participation system that is participatory and committed to the interests of the community, given that ZCAP is supposed to represent the community.

@noamchom and @gordonesTV make good points that I think can be easily implemented.

Anyway, nothing is set in stone and everything is susceptible to change and improvement.

But if we are not willing to improve what we have, it is difficult to evolve to better forms of governance in the future.

[gordonesTV]

Totally!

My intention is not to question or destroy, nor am I driven by personal interests.

I like Zcash, its philosophy and its community, and I feel that I can contribute and that we can all be critical in order to improve more and more.

[gordonesTV]

Thank you for responding. It is a pleasure to debate with intelligent people in the community.

I don’t mean to question the legitimacy of ZCAP, but to propose to improve what is already in place.

Little by little we can make big changes. Fortunately these communities are not like the autocracies you and I suffer from.

Hopefully more community members will give their impressions and the ZF will take these interesting discussions into account.

[gordonesTV]

I fully agree with these points.

Thanks for proposing and mentioning them!