Major Grants Review Committee Candidates MEGATHREAD

Also @jmsjsph there are a lot of people in the nonprofit space, especially at small nonprofits, who take their ethical commitments very seriously, and I’m not aware of any reason to think @sarahjamielewis isn’t one such person.

So it’s good to assume good faith, while also pushing for the best possible policies to root out conflicts, which I agree can be really subtle and insidious, and which I’m totally willing to delve into in the most creatively paranoid way :slight_smile:

I’d be happy to talk more about this with you sometime on voice/video too, if you’d like to.

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Nice! Free money and free promo on DCG’s CoinDesk! ZCAP obviously embraces you. Looking forward to cwtch (very similar to zbay! Work together and get it done?! Look at zecwallet and nighthawk go!!! :india::india:)

If I’m not mistaken, you and Holmes earned 2 of the top 3 BIGGEST ZF grants.

[Moderation edit by @daira to restore missing context from this quote (shown in square brackets). This is a moderation advice to everyone but particularly to @jmsjsph: please do not selectively quote people in a way that changes their intended meaning.]

Thank you. Will meditate on it :pray:

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whilst ZF ran an anti-marketing campaign; entities where running a sustained multiyear black PR campaign against zcash. took a shill team almost a year to push back on the FUD on twitter alone

problem is, damage has been done. we really need resources put into marketing/outreach. nobody outside the industry has ever heard of zcash, and an unacceptable amount still think the FUD they’ve read about is true. imo, marketing/outreach cannot be ignored.

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I’m ready to trust our corporate overlords to crypto back the USD and trickle down zeconomics to us. Grassroots may not be necessary, may actually thwart plan. They have their own partners, even in the media! They will roll out carpet when they’re ready. ZCAP knows

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I’m replying here because this seems like a good venue to lobby for MGRC directions.

First off, congrats to the MGRC members! I claim post-hoc that you were definitely unambiguously and in all other ways my favorite five.

Not just that, but you got elected without me undertaking the onerous burden of voting! But srzly I am thrilled by the outcome (though I can’t really imagine a scenario where I wouldn’t be given the strength of the contenders).

My purpose here is to seize the moment to advocate for the MGRC’s attention to be directed toward the issue of diversity.

By many metrics, there’s plenty of diversity in the MGRC… but by some there’s a clear deficit.

Obviously, this has been pointed out before. More than reiterating this point, I am hopeful that this post will serve as a catalyst.

Is there some decisive action the MGRC can take sooner-than-later to:
(0) stimulate diversive inclusion (linguistic, geographical, gender)?
(1) broadly influence the perception that Zcash has an inclusive bent?

I don’t have a tip-of-the-brain idea in this moment, other than to attempt to kick the conversation into a particular direction. Did a thread get created for this discussion already?

Does @Vish have any ideas? @ml_sudo ?

Congrats to the Council!

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How so? Arguably all hand-picked ECC/ZF (like majority CAP, assuming HJ announcement date is not a coincidence) Added 2 more redundancies:

If you think about it, why would approval voting be used to pick PEOPLE instead of pick 5 (other than it was used to pick FUNDING)? Because a popularity contest amongst friends is very safe way to ensure 5 most popular filter to top.


[Moderation edit by @daira: the image above is manipulated to add the “James Joseph 4 MGRC” text.]

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Even though I put out a couple of brainstorms in the diversity thread about how the voting process could evolve in the future to allow voters to choose whole teams instead of individuals, I did not mean to suggest that I think there’s anything wrong with the current team.

Based on what I know about the people, I expect this will be a fantastic team! I’m overjoyed that we found such excellent people to drive MGRC. And I think that they — more so than any improvements to ZCAP or the voting process — will probably be the best drivers of improvements to Zcash’s reach and diversity for now.

(As evidenced by Holmes proactively starting that thread.)

I continue to be concerned about the one-year timeline and process for changing the composition of the MGRC, as I previously mentioned.

My prediction is that a year from now — assuming that the MGRC folks are as good, skilled, and dedicated as they appear to be so far — that a year from now they’ll be, like about halfway into executing on their first major project or projects (i.e. recruiting and supporting one or more major improvements to the Zcash project/ecosystem/technology/community).

I also think they’ll be like about halfway through the process of learning how to work together effectively, bring out the best in each other, and address the inevitable problems that will crop up.

So I’m concerned that having an election in which all five seats are up for grabs a year from now could be very distracting and disruptive, both to the MGRC itself as a body and to the major grant recipients.

Just think of the campaigning! How long has campaigning been going on for this round? Three or four months?

Now, you could say “oh that won’t be a problem because the ZCAP will choose to keep them if they are doing well”. I agree that ZCAP has shown extraordinarily good judgment for such a large voting body, so far, multiple times. But if that’s the right decision then there are some major advantages to signaling it in advance!

If you tell people “all five of of the MGRC might lose their seats September 15, 2021”, then even if on September 16, 2021, you say “ok, we’re keeping all five (or four out of five, or whatever)”, we’ve already paid the costs of the distraction and uncertainty.

In fact, this could potentially already be a problem if tomorrow the MGRC is having a conversation with some stellar team who says “here’s our plan to deliver this fantastic benefit to the Zcash community. It’ll take two years to deliver phase one. But we’re not sure we can commit to that because we’re not sure who will be sitting across the table from us a year from now and whether they’ll support this”.

This is a standard best practice of governance in Boards of Directors of for-profit corporations and non-profits: you stagger the replacement of individuals on the board so that you’re changing out only a few at a time, for continuity. Having a vote to replace the whole board would only occur if there were some extraordinary crisis, like the stakeholders believe that the Board is engaging in some kind of misconduct, or they believe that the entire organization is going to be destroyed before the normal governance process can take effect.

I’d also like to point out that this is another diversity goal that voters might have. As a voter, you might say “I want three continuing members, one fresh member, and the fifth one could be either way.”

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@jmsjsph, approval voting, compared to plurality voting, mainly advantages candidates who are widely acceptable non-insiders. In plurality voting when you’re considering a noninsider, you worry about “wasting” your vote on someone not anointed by a dominant party; you know that your fellow voters will have the same worry even if they have the same preferences. I’m glad this election avoided that problem, and I hope we’ll continue to.

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I’m not so convinced. Besides, the results of this election are self-evident. I’m more convinced that this election was elaborate theatre to entrench the powers that be. Statistically speaking, that is

That quote is saying that for that problem, plurality voting normally is equal to approval voting at its worst.

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I think that in this contentious election we had a large group of preordained voters who prefer their favorite candidate vastly over all others (playing favorites!), so we saw this approval voting revert to plurality voting, as one may have expected.

MGRC should probably resign.

20 days. Worry about “your own” dev fund. Allow ZF

Disclosure: I finally own a non-zcash digital asset. https://opensea.io/assets/0x60f80121c31a0d46b5279700f9df786054aa5ee5/17608

My opinion is that regardless of whether you like what happened with the committee, you need to move on, there will always be dissatisfied people and this is normal. I would like to see what is the real benefit of a separate team when considering large grants and how it is better than it already is.

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Congrats to the new MGRC elects. I am stunned that I got 35 votes - thank you for that. Needless to say, if my expertise is ever needed, just ask.

One last thing: it is easy to find flaws with the composition of the current MGRC. Let’s be honest and admit that this would have been the case regardless, even if we hadn’t ended up with 5 westerners based in North America. It would just have been something else. It was a democratic vote and they are all sound people, let’s respect the process, not bicker, and get behind the new MGRC. And learn, analyse, and iterate our way to better representation next time.

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Why would this make a massive difference to grant recipients? Their contracts are with the ZFND not the MGRC - the MGRC could fund a 4 year project in year one, but the ZFND are the people making sure they deliver and along with the community will be the people they have to work with.

The ZIP makes the MG grant recipients have to directly communicate with the community. Not for the MGRC to do that communication for them. To combat the very problem you outlined. In fact it does not provide any follow up mechanism for the MGRC, only the zfnd and community.

I personally like 1 year terms because we will get to decide again next year if they have actually been effective - lets face it, that is the greatest risk here - an ineffective mgrc.

Year 1 MGRC might not be the same as year 2, and that is a good thing - different skills could well be needed between the two years.

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It would be a problem for the grant recipients if they can’t be confident in the ongoing support of the MGRC, and it would be a problem for the new incoming MGRC if they inherit obligations that they didn’t choose and can’t change.

Success in these kinds of major undertakings is a product of long-term relationships, more than of contracts.

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Big congrats to you all, inaugural @MGRC!

I’m waiting with great anticipation for your next steps, and I look forward to collaborating with your team as an independent, collaborative peer org! Let’s fulfill the potential of Zcash to meaningfully make the world better for our current & potential new users!

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Hey @zancas, the thread on diversity was forked. On that forked thread, Holmes asked me to elaborate on panel voting. Here are some ideas I threw out: MGRC Diversity - #32 by ml_sudo

I like your idea of “sooner-than-later” action, but it would be awkward right now, I think, unless the wider community thinks this is a problem that should be fixed now. I obviously have a natural vested interest in this so i will recuse myself from further discussions on the topic.

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Congratulations to Holmes, Chris, Hudson, Shawn and SJL for being elected by the Zcash community as the inaugural members of the MGRC! I am humbled and stand in awe of the energy, passion and talent of this group. Running as a candidate gave me the opportunity to connect more closely with many of our community members, and while I did not win a seat on the Committee, I enjoyed engaging with the community and other candidates as part of the process.

I am excited to see how the MGRC comes together and channels funding in support of the Zcash community. I would like to take this opportunity to formally make myself available to the panel to serve as a liason to the ECC, helping MGRC understand ECC priorities (and non priorities) where that may help inform MGRC funding decisions.

The Zcash community is blessed to have so many capable and qualified people among us willing to serve on the MGRC. I do believe that future iterations of MGRC would benefit from broader demographic and geographic diversity, and applaud those leaning in constructively on that thread. At this point, I suggest that we come together and rally behind the people that we’ve selected, and support them 100% as they take on the task at hand.

Looking forward to seeing many of you on the ECC livestream this Thursday.

DC

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I have been very busy lately and I try to follow as much as my limited time allows but I just wanted to say that the elected MGRC has my full support.

I read some nasty posts that, in my opinion (as a moderator in the Zcash Community Discord, CAP member, Zcash Foundation 2018Q2 Grant Review committee member and all around privacy advocate), are unfounded and out of place. This community has always been about the mission of bringing financial privacy for everyone and it appears that my worries have been validated.

Folks should chill out and let the committee do its work for a year. We will collectively judge them toward the end of their term and either vote for them again or change them with other candidates.

I am very excited about the future and I look forward to seeing the committee’s decisions.

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