Major Grants committee

You’re right, that was the starting point, but ZF has already moved past that by proposing that we will go for “B”, leaving open only the question of timing (the proposed deadline is end of 2021) and implementation (TBD).

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@lex_node No one, I dare say, pushed harder for the trust fund mechanism than I and after great discussion about a multitude of various different frameworks, it was not selected. But this was literally months ago and we have to move on because all of the discussion since then up to this point has been under that assumption. (I was disappointed for about 0.2 secs.) All I can say is dont be a stranger! :fist: Stick around! :zebra::zebra::zebra::zebra:

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OK these proposals are sooo terrible and thoughtless, I incentivized myself to come back and revisit this.

Triggering on retirement isn’t a good idea.

Basing the size of the future reward on the current value is a misalignment.

So how about:

Two Parts of Compensation:

(1) Some standard paycheck paid out every 15 days, calibrated to the current value of ZEC in USD.

(2) For incentive alignment, a one time fixed-relative-to-USD amount: e.g. $500 USD-worth-of-ZEC at the moment of Appointment-To-Committee, which is then paid out after a 24 or 36 month delay (or other thoughtfully chosen delay) .

Some other independent compensation paid out every 15 days, a paycheck.

For compensating the Major Grant Review Committee members, I don’t understand why something like my original suggestion isn’t sufficient:

ZF SHOULD compensate Major Grant Review Committee members for their time and reasonable expenses.

Do we really not trust ZF to do something sensible with this? IMHO it is perfectly fine to leave it to ZF’s discretion exactly how to implement it.

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Strongly seconded, the ZF can solve basic comp issues on its own. Trying to detail all of this stuff by committee is an anti-pattern.

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Should ZF compensate Major Grants committee members?

  • No, it must not.
  • Yes, “for their time and reasonable expenses” as determined by ZF.
  • Yes, by specific amounts or mechanisms set in a ZIP.
  • Keep this out of the ZIP, and leave it at ZF’s complete discretion.

0 voters

Please select all that you think are acceptable. Your vote will be public. This is a non-binding non-official straw poll.

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Strictly speaking, MG committee compensation is also out of scope for the question at hand. Since the discussion already started, I created a poll to gauge if there’s an easy resolution. If no clear consensus emerges then let’s open a separate forum topic to discuss further.

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It sounds strange to me for the ZFND to have full control over the MG slice while having its own engineering roadmap which it decides on its own.
Any thoughts?

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Given that the ZF has to declare all expenditures and that they all have to conform with regulation surrounding a 501c3 anyways I feel that defining it is simply better than not (concerning the ambiguity about what we’re doing here) even though there may not be much of a difference beyond being able to point and say “see” and then “see also”

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Finalisation of a ZIP requires the 2-of-2 approval of ECC and the ZF (with evidence of the community’s intention as a tie-breaker in case of dispute).

I take these issues very seriously, because good governance of the MG has the potential to be one of the most important factors in Zcash’s success in the long run. (And, not to focus on negative possibilities, but capture-prone governance of MG would be a major risk, since the MG funds are potentially very large.)

I believe it is one of ECC’s most important duties, as one of the two stewards of the trademark, to serve as a check-and-balance against overreach (even well-intentioned overreach) on the part of the Foundation and to ensure that Zcash has a high-integrity governance structure.

For me, this discussion has been very helpful. The things posted here — especially the new inputs that I haven’t heard before, and those based on relevant prior experience from the posters — are informing my thoughts about these issues. As Josh Cincinnati has stated, the next step in Zcash governance is for ECC and ZF to agree on a ZIP text that honors the community’s expressed desires. We’re going to be working together on that in the coming days. Like Josh said, it realistically is going to take a couple of weeks to hammer out all the details.

I think everyone here has governance fatigue. (Except for Avichal and Lex, who sat out the second and third quarter and are now leaping back in with vigor! :joy:) But we’re just about done.

ECC and ZF have an informal mutual understanding at this point that we’re going to draft a mutually-acceptable refinement of the ZIP — including resolving the open question about independence of MG governance — without unnecessarily revisiting any decisions that are already settled by the community sentiment polling.

And remember, Zcash can upgrade its governance mechanisms in the future. NU4 doesn’t have to be the be-all-end-all of governance — it just has to be a good foundation to build on.

We’re working hard on this, and we’ll get back to you as soon as we have something to show you. In the meantime, I will be watching this thread. I think some of the responses on this thread have been defensive, and I think that’s a mistake — probably due to governance fatigue. For my part, I remain keenly interested in all the opinions I’ve seen expressed in this thread recently.

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Yes, but I also understand finding 5 zealots is easier to do if you pay them.

This seems reasonable to me.

Less of this, please.

I was referring to my own proposals.

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Ahh, gotcha! Fwiw that wasn’t apparent (to me, anyway).

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In response to Watkins’ piece: “ The only outstanding item the community needs to agree upon is whether the ZEF should have independent authority to verify grants or if a new grant review committee should.
I believe it is crucial for a new grant committee to oversee the verification of grant. I refer to this new group as ZCash Angels

5 reasons why ZCash Angels should lead investment decisions:

  1. At least initially, we want a small group of experienced crypto thought-leaders to make investment decisions on behalf of the entire ZCash community. I will not mention names yet - but I have my list (and you’ve heard of these names). A small group of crypto thought-leaders (with skin-in-the-game) will efficiently evaluate top engineering teams that can bring real value to the ZCash ecosystem.
  2. Although there will be many forms of public blockchain governance in the future, at this moment in time ZCash has the advantage of seeing what hasn’t been working… community voting (1coin/1vote kind of thing) has not been working and has proven to mis-allocate resources… terribly inefficient. We want a small, nimble group at the helm that can run a tight ship and allocate resources into the most talented teams and engineers.
  3. Most of the ZCash Angels will be people who already lead cutting edge blockchain companies and crypto investment firms. We want these people to be integral parts of the ZCash community because they have strong networks and ties to both traditional finance and academia. They can help with not only enhancing technological advancement, but also institutional and retail adoption.
  4. We need a small, lean group of people who have experience structuring term sheets and operating agreements with new companies. The companies that are funded by ZCash block rewards need to be contractually bound to building leading tech products/services for the betterment of the ZCash protocol. It is crucial that terms are structured correctly before making an investment (aka wasting block rewards).
  5. The ZEF and ZCash community at large does not know what is best to invest in at this early stage in crypto – just like you would depend on a doctor’s advice if you were sick, we should depend on the advice and experience of ZCash Angels to make investment decisions on behlaf of the ZCash protocol and community.

I will wait to see if there is positive response to this post before putting forth my list of people for ZCash Angels . I have 10 names in mind.

Thanks for the welcome @Autotunafish!

What is exotic about having a third entity? When it comes to protocol funding, isn’t any design exotic since there is not that much precedence?

Apologies for being late to the governance party here :slight_smile: Is there a clear reference as far as the distinguishing moment when the possibility of a third entity was thrown out? As a newcomer, I’d love to learn about the previous pros & cons that the community discussed.

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Thank you for the welcome, @zooko.

To answer your question: it is the unnamed foundation; I have no experience working with the Zcash Foundation.

I side with @lex_node here.

I understand how it can be frustrating to have people who are new to the community or who were on hiatus to come in and revive some decisions that may be past their debate period, but I’d find the current pushback more understandable if a clear decision-making trail and reasoning was provided.

Now, there seems to be some kind of alarmism about “blowing up the problem space” and how having this discussion now will stand in the way of “keeping ECC’s employees paid”, which both seem like unnecessary hyperbole that seem to deflect from presenting an actual cost-benefit analysis.

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Hi,

As someone pretty heavily involved in the process I empathise with the difficulty following what is/was going on. It is spread over quite a few threads and probably thousands of posts. Some really good summaries are in the hangouts.

As zooko stated above there is a large amount of fatiuge in the community over this subject, but decisions should still be talked over. Please understand though it is too late for major (or any at all really) changes.

A good place to catch up on the discussion and decision making would be here:
(it is not 7 hrs long, it is about 3hrs, but the hangout didnt end properly)

Here is the second hangout:

I timestamped the second hangout in this post.

and the most recent one:

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