Hey zancas, thanks for the questions 
== MGRC member term length ==
Common practice in normal boards is to have three year terms, after which directors stand for re-election. In countries with good corporate governance, there is often a ceiling for independent directors to sit for only three terms, to avoid longstanding relationships getting in the way of independence (this is not the case in the US, though there are calls for change).
Three years is enough for major projects and strategies to pan out (or at least to start bearing fruit). In crypto, however, I’d argue the pace of change in the industry, and hence the relevance of directors, is faster. Three years feels too long from the perspective of evaluating whether things are working out.
At the same time, one year feels too short. That’s rarely enough time for a project to get off the ground. When you throw in the administrative costs of elections, the forced short-term lens of MGRC members, and the opportunity costs (as you mention in another post, individuals may be giving up opportunities to take up their MGRC positions), one year seems to guarantee sub-optimal outcomes.
I think ultimately the conflicting needs are:
- we want people to be incentivized for the long term (=> bias to long terms)
- we want people to be contributing constructively (=> bias to short terms)
- we want good people to stay, and less good people to pass on the mantle (=> not time dependent)
I think a solution that meets all these needs could be:
a) two-year terms; with
b) bi-annual evaluations where MGRC members rate each other on various factors, and if someone falls below a threshold, the ZF can choose to find a replacement. There is likely to be resistance to retiring someone early except in the case of egregious conduct, so perhaps these evaluations can be made privately (which does go against the ethos of transparency, but makes up for it in the social ease with which we can continually optimize the quality of the MGRC); and
3) no limit on number of terms. So that we keep the best people!
== Rust ==
Losing a key ingredient for some of our “critical bits” (DC) and some leading projects is bad news.
It does seem that the community is fighting (and winning) to keep it alive via a foundation in partnership with Mozilla. An obvious priority would be to see how we can contribute to these efforts, especially in close collaboration with the ECC and related Zcash apps that rely on Rust.
However, from a strategic perspective, it would be sensible to contribute to diversifying the community away from Rust, in case the foundation doesn’t pan out in the way we expect it to. We could support projects that support migration to languages that are expected to have greater longevity. As efforts to continue building Rust pan out (or fail), we can decide to reduce (or increase) funding for these efforts - in this way, we can manage our risks across a range of scenarios.