I just want to chime in on this. There are a lot of good ideas coming up here. It kind of feels like we’re getting a “positive feedback loop” on governance, where word is getting around that Zcash’s governance has good structure and real force, and that is attracting people who have experience at software, law, governance, etc. who see Zcash as potentially a place where their contributions can have leverage for good. That’s great!
I think this discussion is repeatedly getting confused by an ambiguity that I too was falling into previously, about whether we’re talking about a new legal entity, or we’re talking about different rules for a Zcash-Foundation-sponsored legal entity. I posted things about “an independent third party”, and then in subsequent conversation, I tried to clarify, and then again, and then again, that what I meant was honoring the intent of Question 3 on the second Community Advisory Panel:
- Do you believe the Foundation should have independent authority in determining Major Grants, or should there be a new Major Grant Review Committee as prescribed in this ZIP?
A. The Foundation should have independent authority in determining Major Grants
B. There should be a new Major Grant Review Committee with near-complete authority
Avichal did something similar, arguing for “a separate Major Grants organization”, and when Shawn pushed back, based on the results from the Community Advisory Panel, Avichal said that a separate legal entity is “an implementation detail” and that he is advocating for answer B on Question 3.
(Lex’s recent comments can be read as an expert opinion that implementation details matter, and that to an expert, they are not that hard to implement.)
I’d like to ask everyone to clarify and narrow the scope of the conversation by agreeing that the Community Advisory Panel results have already excluded standing up a new legal entity before NU4 activation. This is based on the fact that none of the proposals that had at least partial support in the first round of polling (Community Advisory Panel, forum, and spontaneous petitions from coin-holders) called for the creation of a new entity.
So, creating a new legal entity is off the table for NU4. But what is still on the table is: shall the MG’s governance be independent from the Foundation (even though the legal entity that holds the funds on behalf of the MG body will be the Foundation, at least at first). That was Question 3 on the second round of polling, which was a picture-perfect “split vote” in the Community Advisory Panel but a landslide in favor of an independent MG among the (highly controversial) petitions posted anonymously by coin-holders on the blockchain.
It is within the community’s power and its right to specify that the MG funding will go to the Foundation on conditions that guarantee independence of the MG governing body. Lex’s cautionary tales of non-profit shennanigans notwithstanding, I believe that the Foundation would act with utmost integrity to honor that commitment, at least as long as the current personnel of the Foundation are in place. The ECC would use our rights over the trademark and our zcashd source code to honor that mandate. Future improvements to governance, such as Lex’s intriguing suggestion to hire an existing third party to monitor our compliance with our own rules would use this mandate as a basis. I’m interested to find out if Lex agrees with any that!
So, by all means, let’s continue the discussion about whether the Major Grants should be governed independently, but with the common understanding — as Josh Cincinnati’s post today re-iterates — that we’ve all already agreed that at least for NU4 it will live within the Foundation’s legal entity.
(ICYMI, the ECC’s position is that the MG governance being independent is important for decentralization of power and for the stated purpose of drawing in new third-party developers to support Zcash, but that we’ll use our trademark rights and our zcashd source code to support a ZF-controlled third party if that is the community’s decision.)