I would like to continue the discussion about the ability of the MGRC to invest.
My main thought about this is that by having the MGRC able to invest & seek a return on that investment that it would provide a path for sustained Zcash ecosystem funding post dev-fund. Imagine if after 4 years & the dev-fund fails to pass again. The MGRC may have a pool of funds & equity in ecosystem projects that can continue to fund development without receiving a % of the block reward.
I think alchemyDC shares this general view with me but I would love to hear other thoughts on this as well.
I like this idea in theory, but the hard part would be how do we get 5 people to come to a consensus on what to invest in, how much, for how long, and when to sell? Most people arenāt traders or investors. I am not confident in this until after the election to see who is on the board and what their investment experience is etc etcā¦ The worst thing that could happen is the MGRC gets caught up in the hype of a bull market, investing more than they should, and get stuck holding a bag of promosing, but overpriced projects at the top because nobody wants to sell.
Are you suggesting investing in things that are non-crypto, such as payment providers or point of sale software? That would be the route Iād rather take.
In my honest opinion, I think the MGRC is better off simply holding extra Zcash for the long term in a savings account. And when the price is super high(??), liquidate it and secure a decade of funding that could last us through another bear market plus some extra wiggle room just in case.
Agree 100% that going in heavy and enthusiastically during a forthcoming bull run could be a very foolish way for MGRC to squander the communityās funds.
Iām very interested in having MGRC provide support to projects that live in adjacent and complimentary markets.
I agree that assessing the āinvestmentā experience of the elected candidates make sense before placing any bets. Bottom line is that I believe that it would be a mistake to view MGRC as a funding vehicle with only a four year perspective. There is nothing in ZIP 1014 that says that MGRC has to disburse all of the funds in its slice over the course of the four years starting in Nov 2020.
By keeping āoverheadā to a minimum, and being very thoughtful and intentional about where MGRC deploys capital, I believe that this slice of the dev fund could be an effective mechanism for sustaining Zcash development for decades to come.
Thanks for the reply @alchemydc . Good to hear there are some other people who share some of my ideas. I think investing is possible but would have to be done very carefully, and we cannot allow it to become the main activity that the MGRC engages in. I think the biggest investment that the MGRC can make is to not exhaust all funds and save some zec for the future. Zcash is still an infant. This means adhering to a strict criteria for grant funding and not being too overly enthusiastic to fund any and every team that applies for a grant.
edit: There has been small talk of alternate consensus methods over the years, and if zcash ever adopted a hybrid pow/pos system, pos rewards could be used to fund grants even after the MGRC stopped receiving a slice of the block reward.