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.”