The lack of a response from Josh creates a bit of a conundrum here because ECC’s position is not clear-cut.
Above, Josh states that “ECC has already communicated that we will not accept direct funding from the chain”, and ECC’s May 1st blog post says " we have decided not to accept funds directly from the protocol under a new development fund. Our wallet address will no longer be codified in the protocol."
However, the same blog post goes on to say “We are open to … extending the existing development fund for no longer than one year” and @joshs’s draft ZIP proposes a one-year Dev Fund that would allocate funds directly from the protocol, and would codify ECC/Bootstrap’s address(es) in the protocol.
So ECC is willing to accept direct funding from the chain?
From ECC’s May 24th blog post introduces another wrinkle: “We will not endorse or accept direct allocation from another four-year Zcash Dev Fund proposal that directly distributes to any formal organization, including our own” (emphasis mine).
Would a one-year proposal be acceptable? Or a two-year proposal?
In terms of this exploratory poll, what should we do - should we include Bootstrap/ECC in the list of potential recipients?
If we do, I expect we’ll be criticized for including them when they’ve already stated that they “will not accept direct funding from the chain”.
If we don’t, I expect we’ll be criticized for excluding them, and denying the community the opportunity to vote to fund ECC/Bootstrap.
This is another wrinkle.
I usually refer to “Bootstrap/ECC” in the context of the Dev Fund because the Bootstrap Project is the Dev Fund recipient (and it then funds ECC) but, in my experience, many people are unaware of that.
Neither of ECC’s blog posts mention the Bootstrap Project.
Last week, I sent the draft questions directly to two Bootstrap board members (Alan Fairless and @ml_sudo) but neither of them responded.
I’ll try reaching out to Alan again.
If we don’t get a timely response, my inclination is to include “the Bootstrap Project (the parent of the Electric Coin Company)” as a potential recipient in ZF’s poll.
If they later decide that they do not wish to be a recipient, we can always drop them at that point in the process.