Lack of information about future funding

Its not like we haven’t been asking for it, it is just idk the whole situation feels strange to me.

Have you heard zookos talk at zcon1 - he openly comes out and says his original stance (which it was a conflict of interest for them to suggest funding) might not have been the right call. (It was done with the best intentions though, I can see an argument both ways).

Although in my humble opinion, they should have been courting the community like we were prospective investors.

One of the problems of the forum is it is quite hard to nail down actual info from the ECC, they clearly mark their accounts and posts, but sometimes an answer to a much bigger question only appears in a smaller thread.

I have pointed out before it is like the community is playing poker(a game of partial information) whilst the ECC is playing chess. (a game of full information)

I will dig out some links for you about some of the funding concerns you have raised and the official responses. Quite a few can be found by searching for either zooko or Nathan-at-least replying to my messages.

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There’s an even simpler way to address this than finding posts and statements from ECC: they can answer funding questions directly!

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@sonya has ZF released information about their proposed operational actions at different funding levels? I realize that ZF has not taken as large a role in protocol development and engineering for Zcash, but it is a recipient of mandatory fee funding in several proposals so far.

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I aboslutly agree with these statements. I can’t count the number of posts i made on this forum asking for whatever not related to the funding. Unfortunatly there are no or not much and vague answers at all if any if the questions is a direct one and at least i have the impression nobody is comfortable to answer a lot of questions.
Even worse, after being left alone with the only ability to make assumptions, guessing there are even accuses like spreading FUD, offending ECC and such stuff. I don’t want to get deeper here, but there is a deficit of information, clarifying and whatever not. Unfortunatly the community itself seems to have not a big interest in it as only a few actually ask more uncomfortable questions and/or repeat them.

Again, absolutly agree with this. Hence i first made a proposal favouring the Foundation as the 100% funds recepient as it’s obvious that the ECC is not as transparent as it should be in my opinion. Hence in my opinion the funneling of funds through the foundation and having the foundation allign them through grants to the ECC should bring absolutly clarity on what is used for what, which upgrades are desired by the community and whatever not. At least in theory.
Strange enough i realized later that the foundation itself does NOT want to be the only recepient for a possible funding dev reward. The exact reason for this is not clear either which doesn’t sound optimal.
I mean it’s at least strange that proposals, there have been 2 out of 13, that had the foundation as the only recepient and that these automaticly do not get foundation support.

It’s a simpler way for sure, the question is will it lead to a result at all?

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The reasoning is simple, as Josh Cincinnati has mentioned you before, having a single entity acting as the sole steward of all development funds can become a single point of failure.

Eliminating single points of failure was one of the reasons the Zcash Foundation was started in the first place.

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No, we haven’t. Currently we reassess our budget and spending on a yearly basis. Plans for 2019, with some financial details included: The State of the Zcash Foundation in 2019 - zcash foundation (this section especially: “The Foundation’s Finances, Today and Tomorrow”)

tl;dr version: “At a price of $50 USD per ZEC, we have roughly $16 million in assets, which translates to a five-year runway if we meet the 2019 expected budget.”

There’s also our 2017 990: https://www.zfnd.org/about/incorporation-docs/Zcash%20Foundation%202017%20Form%20990.pdf (not super relevant, since we ramped up a lot in 2018, but I’m including the link anyway)

@acityinohio might be able to fill out more context, but here’s the quick-and-dirty version:

  • As with ECC, less funding for ZF = less ambitious roadmap, fewer hires, etc.
  • Unlike with ECC, ZF has an endowment, so the organization is financially comfortable for the next few years at least.
  • Since ZF is a nonprofit, we can raise money through direct donations. Without a dev fund, rolling out a donor program will become a priority more quickly, but in either case we don’t need new funding immediately.

In short, the Zcash Foundation will survive and continue its work regardless of whether, or how, Zcash dev funding is decided in October.

(Btw @boxalex I got an answer for you about the 2018 990 — the forms are released on a year delay and roughly follow our auditing schedule, so the 2018 990 will most likely be made public in November this year.)

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Does this mean that ZF’s contributions to protocol development and engineering should be considered largely independent of protocol-awarded funding?

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That’s what they stated, this doesn’t mean it makes much sense or is a good reasoning, hence i call it strange and unclear.

Most proposals right now advocate a funneling of funds through the ECC to the foundation, which in my book is a bigger possible single point of failure than the reverse case IF the foundation uses the ZFND grants platform and/or in combination with a foundation governance panel and allocate funds to the ECC. But that’s of course just my opinion.

Thank you for the well written post. I agree with a majority of your points. I’d like full transparency as well on a project we consider open source.

It seems that the majority of funding is concentrated among-st a small group of people. I find this deeply concerning because this shuts the door to other researchers that may get involved with the project.

Personally, I’d like to see the developer fund expire. This will encourage full transparency for future funding and allow the community to make decisions at a case by case basis as opposed to being protocol level decision that can tear the community apart.

Zcash is already a well respected project in the crypto space. There are other ways that funding can be achieved aside from depending on a block reward.

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This statement is not accurate at all. The Zcash Foundation has given thousands of dollars from thier allocation of the FR to fund researchers in the form of Grants. Anyone who’s serious about getting involved in Zcash can do so and be compensated for their work. It was the original FR that helps enable this funding and any new development fund allocated to the Zcash Foundation could be used for similar Zcash community projects.

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Eh, I think @TheJerz has a point. It’s not literally just ECC and ZF employees who work on Zcash or its ecosystem — that would be a reductio ad absurdum. But it’s fair to point out that the only paid Zcash protocol development opportunities are at ECC and ZF, pretty much. Maybe Bolt Labs. Or you can get paid for occasional contributions by working at different organization that has some overlap with Zcash. But having Zcash be your job, let alone your full-time job? There just aren’t that many of us right now.

It’s definitely something we’re working on, both ZF and ECC. It’s just gonna take time for the market to develop. We’ve made a lot of progress over the past year, and I expect that to continue in 2019.

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Actually it’s super accurate.
Tell me how much of the current funding is going to the Foundation, how much to the ECC and than make the mathematics and let’s see where the majority of fund goes …
The fact that the foundation has given away some funding to grants doesn’t mean the majority of the founders reward didn’t went elsewhere, hence in my opinion his conclusion seems to be more than true.

That’s not even the statement I was referring to @boxalex :roll_eyes:

I edited my post so it represents now the whole paragraph where you quoted part of it, but left the main argument aside.

You seem to be misunderstanding my point. I wasn’t disagreeing with the statement that funding is currently centralized between two entities (its obvious that this is true).

However I completely disagree with the conclusion that having centralization somehow

There are plenty of ways for researchers to get involved. They can volunteer and contribute to the codebase directly through GitHub on the ECC or Foundation side, or if they want to be paid for their work they can post a project for community funding on the zfgrants platform and get crowdfunding (similar to Monero’s FFS). Or they can also apply for a Grant directly to the Zcash Foundation as many academic researchers already have.

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I’am not a native English speaker/reader/writer but even me gets out of his text that the issue is that the majority of funds is going elsewhere but not to possible researchers that are not in the ECC and this is clearly the main point he made in his post, which is just accurate and hits the current problem on the nail.

Just read it again and you will not the little difference. Actually thinking about it there has been even a period this amount of funds have not been enough even for the ECC itself, so what’s left for researchers outside the ECC.

I’am far away from saying the foundation isn’t doing their best to give independent researchers and devs some funding, but we all know these are more than limited cases & funds.

You are free to draw your own conclusions, but there is no evidence that having a couple centralized entities distributing funds somehow “shuts the door” and discourages participation.

This approach has been working fine for groups like the Ethereum Foundation and has been successful so far for many projects funded by the Zcash Foundation.

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Yes, but Ethereum Foundation had a premine and are no longer receiving block rewards.

Zcash has backing from major exchanges (Coinbase, Gemini) and Grayscale. There’s interest in the project and it’s not necessary to tax miners.

And not to mention, there will be a loss of trust across the wider crypto community should there be protocol level changes that go against the original plan.

Those are all valid points, but we are getting a bit off-topic of @sarang reason for making this thread:

@TheJerz You seem to share Sarangs opinion that the FR should end as scheduled. Feel free to join in forming one of the ZIPS that supports that position: [ZIP 1001] Final: ZIP proposal Keep the block distribution as initally defined. 90% to miners

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Actually there is. The ECC itself is the best example for this when it run at a deficit and might be right now near a deficit again at current exchange rates . Having this in mind while there are principally and in theory enough funds the ECC struggled themself some months ago, what’s left for the independent researcher & developer that wants to build for the Zcash blockchain.

Another (possible) evidience is the current ZF grants platform itself. It’s far from what it could offer, far from what developers could offer there, far from a lot of things IF more funds are funneled there instead elsewhere. To be fair, my personal opinion is that it’s a mix of reasons why the ZF grants platform is far from reaching it’s potential including it’s a new one, but as well including discourage, missing competition (who is competiting against a top funded ECC?, and so on. So if you think about there is indeed some reasoning in his claim.

I fully would agree with your argumentation IF all funds are allocated to researchers/developers through the ZF foundation grants platform for example, but that’s not the case as we all know, hence i agree that the current funding distribution is, to say it diplomaticly, not developer friendly at all and the majority of funds is not available for independed researchers/developers.

However, i don’t want to de-rail this thread either and will stop here and not comment further.

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