I think that would be a fantastic problem to have . For now we can look at the past calls for Grant applications (2017/2018) and the current status of the Zcash Foundation Grant platform website to give us some guesstamations.
2018 had 41 intial proposals submitted (21 asked for a full proposal) and 13 were accepted. This was a multi-month process and the average rate of accepted vs submitted was less than 50%.
The current Zcash Foundation Grant Platform: https://grants.zfnd.org is probably a better measure of what MGRC would see because itâs âalways openâ for people for people to submit, unlike the older process where it had a hard deadline. A rough estimate looking at the site seems to be around 4-6 per month?
But as you said, itâs anyoneâs guess how many the MGRC will see. I would say itâs likely that initially (as the word gets out) there will be a rush/spike of proposals which will taper off over time.
Further to your point I think that breakdown of work is a pretty naive and incomplete take on the work of an accountable and robust review committee.
As Iâve experienced serving on a few from academia to industry to civil society; many great ideas will arrive in mediocre applications with fuzzy goals, stretched timelines and inadequate checkpoints.
Ideally it would be the role of the committee to shepherd through such applications which, depending on the scope of the work this can take weeks to months of dedicated meetings with applicants, followed by reviewing check-ins and deliverables as they occur once the project is underway. The work doesnât stop once the grant is approved, arguably that is when the real work of the committee begins.
For example, we must also consider the work required when things donât go to plan. Schedules fall behind, accidents happen, budgets are overrun, and worldwide pandemics undo weeks of work. Different grant applicants run into duplication of effort or conflicts of interest. Committee members need to be available to respond to requests for changes in scope, budget reallocations, project cancellations and a potential stream of requests for input and oversight.
All that work is multiplied by each project. That oversight takes time and work to do properly. It may be the case that the community prefers to leave such effort to the wider community but that, in my view, would be a mistake and one of the firm reasons I think the committee needs full time effort in some form.
Might actually vote for @sarahjamielewis - well put, its when things go wrong that the hard work starts.
Iâd expect applications to find an MGRC champion, ie: a project that really meshes with what that person wants to happen. Theyâll spend a lot of time helping that project succeed, perhaps even be formally responsible for it.
I agree. The hardest part will be determining their ability to deliver and meet deadlines, and dealing with the backlash that results from making the wrong vote in the first place.
Expanding the community panel is not the same like âreplacingâ it, at least not as i understand it.
And about the second part âor a successor mechanism â and to integrate themââŚ
It states integrate them, not replace them. As there is anyway NO successor mechanism on the horizont i would say there is as well nothing to be integrated/replaced/whateverâŚ
This is why I was suggesting to have quota based work with a very heavy incentive for quality of work, time being 1 factor. Make it competitive between MGRC members to maintain a high regard for ethics to get paid, multiple ways for the ZCAP and the community to engage in arbitrary claims against the MGRC, potentially resulting in a vote to dissolve the committee if something crazy happens where all 5 members attempt to do something unforeseen such as network attacks. A quick example being if the MGRC members had over 50% of the hash rate, the control of those grants would make a nightmare if a attack was in mind.
Disclosing your hash rate privately to the ECC and Foundation would probably be a good idea.
If MGRC members really had over 50% of the hash rate with intentions to attack the network, what makes you think they would be honest in their disclosure? Thatâs a rhetorical question, the answer is of course they would lie about it.
I donât think disclosure of such information is necessary or even useful. Honest candidates wouldnât attack the network anyways, and candidates that would attack the network would just lie about how much hashrate they control.
The likelihood of any one person/group controlling that much hash rate is low, and if they do, they probably have better things to spend their time doing than running for a seat on a funds distribution board. They would be more concerned with the price going up so they can make more money mining. The incentive just isnât there to be destructive.
I would personally consider grants for mining hardware development to be out-of-scope for the MGRC grants. As far as I read ZIP-1014 grants should be used to further the Zcash core software, adoption, and ecosystem. If something like an algorithm change were to be wanted/needed for network stability then that could possibly be in-scope but that is quite different than funding hardware ventures so a chip maker can be more profitable.
MGRC related question - will the Major Grants be explicitly grants or could the MGRC decide to distribute funds as investments and other stuff like that? Is that something the MGRC will decide or is that determined by the community beforehand?
Falling under the legal purview of 501c3 they would be limited from funding private benefits or inurement (as it should be)
What people do with their money is their business but it couldnât be funded specifically for the purpose of a non-public interest
In ZIP-1014 it refers to funding specific teams/ projects for Zcash the ecosystem a few times:
The Dev Fund should encourage decentralization of the work and funding, by supporting new teams dedicated to Zcash.
This slice of the Dev Fund is intended to fund independent teams entering the Zcash ecosystem, to perform major ongoing development (or other work) for the public good of the Zcash ecosystem, to the extent that such teams are available and effective.
Iâm not sure how the MGRC would distribute the funds as âinvestmentsâ unless it is to bolster a team that is already working on Zcash, possibly from a previous grant?
It could be argued that a diverse hardware manufacturing base increases adoption and ecosystem. the GPU supply chains are a lot less fragile than the ASIC based supply chains. If someone had a new take on hardware that significantly improves on current ASIC designs and they wanted to share that for free then I do think this would be in scope for a MG it should certainly be considered if they can be awarded after the fact.
But generally you are right.
Im still on team miner tho, so expect these sorts of posts
I see grants and investments as separate activities. The MGRC is to issue grants to projects without expectation of financial ROI, and should likely be excluded or strongly discouraged in personally investing in grant projects without transparent disclosure.
Kidding, but I still think the price is too low to invest heavily into projects. ($62 at time of writing this)
I donât think the MGRC should invest/gamble development funds.
I think they should strictly be for development.
I think granting a large amount of funds at $400 would be a good usage of funds. That price level has a lot of resistance on the chart.
What about the MGRC hedging against volatility by selling zcash for USD when it is super expensive? (at the peak of the bull market if/when price is $1000+,$2000+)
Where does that money go? A bank account? Controlled by who? Probably the ZF/ECC?
Preparing to be able to fund grant projects during the next bear market is important.
Vitalik did this and called it âsound financial planningâ.
Iâd very much like to but would require ECCâs sign-off; weâd need it to not rely on Foundation arbitration of criteria, and Iâm not sure itâs possible to craft something with mutual buy-in so quickly â quoting myself up-thread:
. For now we can look at the past calls for Grant applications (2017/2018) and the current status of the Zcash Foundation Grant platform website to give us some guesstamations.
