Integrating BloodFuse on Zcash

Community Grants
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Good day all, we are working on a web3 blood donation platform that will connect blood donors to the nearest blood banks and hospitals that are in need of blood. Also, members of the Zcash community can also leverage on BloodFuse to save the lives of themselves and their loved ones when they are in need of blood. More details are in the grant application, therefore I would want you to go through the grant application via the link below and make your comment. Thank you
https://zcashgrants.org/gallery/25215916-53ea-4041-a3b2-6d00c487917d/32222527/

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Hello, please do go through the above grant application and drop your comments. Thank you

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Hi @ogasky. Thank you for submitting your grant proposal! We will review it in the upcoming weeks and reach out if we have any questions.

If you have any questions for us, you can post them to this thread or DM us at @ZcashGrants.

Thanks!

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@aquietinvestor duly acknowledged and thank you.

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Hi @ogasky! - First of all, thank you for submitting a proposal to our community. It sounds like you are pursuing a noble cause. The committee met last Friday and had some questions about the technical details of your proposal.

In your proposal you state “The crypto payment to be accepted is STXs and we are integrating BTCPay API. However we want users on BloodFuse to have the option of making their transactions either to be Private or Public, thus the need to integrate Zcashd-wallet-tool.”

Can you please elaborate on what you mean by this? You mention BTCPay, but are you aware that work was recently done to develop a Zcash integration for BTCPay server? Is this something that you could leverage to support Zcash via your site? If not, can you please provide more technical details regarding what’s required to integrate Zcash into BloodFuse?

Additionally, are the hours you have quoted specifically for the design, development, testing, and deployment of Zcash integration on your site? Or is this funding request meant to support the design, development, testing, and deployment for the entirety of the site?

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@wobbzz Thank you for these questions raised and I want to state here clearly that Zcash (ZEC) will also be part of the approved crypto payment to be accepted on BloodFuse as stated in the last sentence of the project description as highlighted below.

STX is currently an approved crypto payment on BloodFuse, because the Stacks Foundation supported BloodFuse with 35,000 USD in STX for the initial phase of the BloodFuse Project. Also, our intention for the BTCPay API integration is to incorporate BitCoin (BTC) payment on BloodFuse. However our dev team will look into leveraging on the latest integration of Zcash on BTCPay server, of which we just discovered now, as well as other possible means of integrating Zcash as crypto payment on BloodFuse. It is key to note here that users of BloodFuse will be able to create Zcash wallets and Zcash (ZEC) will be by default an approved crypto for payment transactions and reimbursement on the BloodFuse platform.

What was quoted as regard redesign, development, testing, and deployment was specifically for the Zcash integration on BloodFuse. This is because time and expertise are duly required for the modification of BloodFuse to allow in for all Zcash related operations. Thank you.

Proposed Solution: Describe the solution at a high level.

## Also, the usage of Zcashd wallet will add value to the Zcash community, in addition to the fact that transactions can be done on BloodFuse using ZEC and users will then be holders of ZEC.

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@ogasky, thank you for your submission. After consideration from @ZcashGrants, the committee has decided to reject this proposal.

The Committee stated that it’s an interesting use case but the application was lacking technical detail on the actual implementation and that the cost was too high for a non-Zcash specific project.

I hope you stay an active member of the Zcash community going forward both here on the forum and the below avenues as well.

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I have a question to ask, are people like us really needed to develop project here?. cos am of the opinion that the decision is of a biased one. Technically, I don’t think our implementation lack merit on this project, but I hope and want to believe that judgement here is not on a sentimental approach. Thank you.

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Hello Onose, Thanks for your efforts related to your grant application. The ZCG discussed this proposal in our bi-weekly meetings held this week and the meeting notes /with decision making factors will be posted in a week or two.

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@aiyadt I will like to have the email address or other contacts to send any of my proposed Zcash projects for initial discussion before applying, so as to know the exact necessary requirement for Zcash projects to scale through, this is very necessary as I am beginning to feel that approved projects here are for certain persons, thus making the judgmental process unfair. Therefore if my proposed idea is discussed before I applied, it will help save me time and make the entire application seamless for me.

Also, I will still ask if this proposal can be repackaged to fit into Zcash requirement too, as well as the best way we can have Zcash integration on BloodFuse, towards making Zcash an approved currency on the https://bloodfuse.com/ platform. Thank you

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I think @ogasky’s point of being able to reach out to the committee before going through the process of applying and waiting to hear feedback is a good one. Right now, the grants process is a multi-week guess and check situation. Someone may hear about the grants program and be excited to see how they can incorporate Zcash into their projects, but are not exactly clear if what they are doing will be understood or well received. This can lead to outcomes ranging from the grant being painlessly approved to waiting for a few weeks to have it rejected without much feedback to long debates of people talking past each other and not really getting anywhere.

If someone’s grant is rejected but they are still motivated to incorporate or work on Zcash somehow, they may have to go through the whole process again, eventually taking up a significant amount of everyone’s time (especially the applicant). Additionally, someone may actually have a really good skill set and be able to contribute to Zcash in a good way, but because their grant wasn’t understood or they should have actually applied to do a slightly different thing, they could get rejected and never quite know what they did wrong, or feel like they could have easily modified their grant if only they knew better what ZCG was looking for.

Now, some people may be rejected no matter how many times they apply because the project idea brings no benefit to Zcash or the team is not qualified to do the work - there’s not much that can be done to fix that. However, I propose below what I think could be an improved process that doesn’t skip any of the steps that currently (can) occur while hopefully making the grants process more welcoming and efficient.

Preliminary Discussions with the Grants Committee.

I think, if an applicant so desires, that they should be able to speak directly with the grants committee to ask questions about the grants process and to brainstorm the project they would be proposing. This can help with mutual understanding between the committee and the applicant where the applicant understands the committee’s priorities and the committee can understand the applicant’s skill set, motivation, project idea, funding requirements, etc. This can help the applicant when they make their grant to avoid potential pitfalls that will lead to a long guess and check scenario where they have to guess what aspect of their project could get funding and only learn how to modify it after the typical multi-week review period.

In particular, I think it should be okay if only a portion of the committee (perhaps just one member) were to take the preliminary meeting with an applicant and relay back to their fellow members the summary of the meeting.

To save the committee’s time, there could be an initial screening process done by ZF admins where potential applicants without a relevant background or proposing something really weird do not make it to the preliminary meeting stage (although they could still be free to post their application nonetheless).

Some potential outcomes of this that I see: an applicant realizes what they were interested in proposing is not something that would get funding and they can apply their time elsewhere, saving the hassle of formally going through the grant process. Alternatively, the ZCG could tell them that what they are thinking of proposing is not something ZCG is really interested in, but the applicant nonetheless feels strongly it’s a good idea and can post the grant idea to the community anyway for feedback. The applicant can learn from ZCG that ZCG likes portions of what they are thinking and the applicant can adjust their forthcoming proposal accordingly. The applicant and ZCG are in perfect harmony and the applicant can post their grant for public review.

In most of the outcomes I foresee, I don’t see a lot of down sides to having a preliminary meeting. In most scenarios, it can save a lot of time for the applicant, and in some scenarios it requires an extra meeting between (a portion of) ZCG and the applicant.

Public Review Period

After the preliminary stage where applicants and ZCG alike can get their questions answered and ideally come to a mutual understanding of what the grant is and hopes to achieve, the applicant can go through the typical public review period where their proposal can be reviewed by the public. The remaining stages of approval/rejection/meeting with ZCG could occur as is.

In summary, the above inclusion of a preliminary discussion stage would be the main change I would advocate for. In essence, it front-loads some of the work that usually happens anyway, but has the benefit of helping streamlining the iterative feedback process to potentially reduce the number of steps in the grant process.

It is possible that the above suggestion could lead to more hours ZCG members have to dedicate to working on grants. However, I am already in favor in beefing up ZCG hours for various reasons - including what I’m suggesting here. I would rather have ZCG have the flexibility to work more hours if needed. Maybe they won’t need more hours, but maybe they will - both situations can be accounted for by increasing the “cap” of 15 hours per month and instead creating a higher cap that can be used as needed.

Please let me know what you think,

David

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We have a Contact form on the website Contact us | Zcash Community Grants

Additionally, grant applicants can DM @ZcashGrants to get in touch with us.

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@David_Heisenberg Thank you for this educative write up and I hope the appropriate quarters are going through it, to be very honest your points are very in order. Thank you once again.

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@aiyadt thank you for providing these contacts, and this is to inform you that I just sent a message to them. Also, I noticed that my application has been deleted from the application gallery page. Thank you

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