Hi Zeeps,
This generation of humans spends an ungodly amount of time staring at screens: computer screens, smartphone screens, TV screens. Some of that time is spent creating, a lot of it consuming, and all too often, scheduling time to connect with other people in other rooms. We are jacked in, and we’re getting jacked up. It messes with our brains, gaslighting us into believing this is how humans are built to engage with one another.
It’s why in-person conferences are so popular, even with mediocre content. We need the connection. We crave the warmth of another hand, a smile uncorrupted by digitized bits, and time to sit in space with another heartbeat and chat without specific intention.
Computer Screen Showing A Human Genetic Sequence
I’m writing to you from San Diego, where the ECC team and members of the Zcash community met this week at the Z|ECC summit to reconnect with one another, reassess our priorities and contributions, and recommit to a roadmap for ECC that we believe in.
Could we have done this remotely? Nope. We could have accomplished tasks: cold, lifeless, digitized, packed neatly into a backlog. Instead, we moved from behind the screen and came together, discussed, questioned, debated, and collaborated. I came away clear-eyed, focused, and full of life.
ECC kicked off the week in a team-only session. We discussed the legacy of the cypherpunks (as I shared last week) from which the Bitcoin whitepaper was later born, leading to Zcash, which is now our best hope for realizing digital cash.
We made space to think. The photo above was taken in 1934 at an IBM sales training meeting. What is true of all the people in the picture? A bunch of men wearing hats and standing in the cold. Yes, true. What is also true is that they are all dead.
Here’s the thing. We only get so much time on this earth. What we do matters. Some of us have the privilege of choosing to embrace the legacy of others and to carry that legacy forward. And if we have that opportunity, we must use it wisely. We must move Onward.
We spent time asking ourselves about our passions and gifting and what we can be the best in the world at. One by one, we shared what brings us to life and what we’re really good at. The ECC team was highly aligned on a few key things:
- Making an impact
- Turning ideas into solutions
- Turning complexity into simplicity
- Building things people use
- Dealing with uncertainty
- Doing difficult things
We then came away with a working definition of our unique calling: Delivering digital cash through a privacy protocol and product innovation.
We are committed to cutting out the noise and focusing on this one thing.
The following days were spent in workshops, overflowing into conversations and playing with ideas over lunches, dinners, drinks, and mind-blowing late-night tacos. I don’t have the space to cover everything communicated and discussed in this post. It was so rich! But to give you an idea, the sessions included:
- A review of Zcash user survey results using a correlation of NPS and Zcash user segmentation
- A usability workshop with a beta version of Zashi that included Coinbase integration for purchasing ZEC, an address book, and payment URIs. (Comming soon to your Zashi wallet!)
- An overview of user feedback we’ve received on the Zashi UX
- Overviews from Edge and Flexa on what they are building
- Zashi feature prioritization
- A discussion of Zcash as digital cash - where it is well suited and where there are challenges
- An overview of zec.rocks and their roadmap
- Innovation workshops on instant payments, user targeting and marketing, and DEX integration
We ended the week working through possible paths for ECC sustainability and refactored our roadmap based on where we’re at, what we’ve learned, what others in the Zcash ecosystem are doing, and our decisions over the week. We’re cleaning it up and look forward to sharing it with you late next week.
We ended the week at Edge’s office for a meetup to chat and hang out with the local crypto community in San Diego. Our panel is up on YouTube if you’d like to check it out.
Special thanks to @pacu, Evans, @paullinator, Trev, David, @emersonian, @aquietinvestor, @aarnott, @mrkit2u, @decentralistdan, Bruce, and @zancas for coming alongside the ECC team this week. You truly made it magic.
What a fantastic week, building a legacy, out from behind the screen.
Bonus: Dev Fund Polling
ICYMI, polling on various Dev Fund proposals is underway within various communities. They’ll run through the weekend. The community will determine the future of how work on Zcash will be funded, whether that work is aligned with the community’s interests, and how the community will decide what Zcash becomes. If you are in one or more of these communities, please get your opinions in!
The ECC ZAC, ZecHub, Spanish, and Brazilian communities all received the same survey, which was created in collaboration between Zcash community members, including @gordonesTV, @skyl, @ peacemonger, @ nuttycom, @ aquietinvestor and me. [btw, lame that I can only mention 10 zeeps in a post on the forum - out of tags]
ZF sent out a similar survey to its ZCAP.
@ hanh enabled ZEC holder polling, and @ zooko just announced another round of that same poll to allow latecomers to express their preferences.
The ZURE survey also went out this afternoon. The same ECC ZAC questions were used but with a bit more explanation and a slightly different scoring method. I posted the screenshots below because they might help respondents participate in other polls.
Here are a couple of other resources that I found helpful:
A summary of proposals from the ZIP editors.
A breakdown of funding implications from @ dismad.
Happy polling, everyone!
It’s incredibly heartening to me to see the Zcash community coming together. Amazing. So cool.
That’s it for this week.
I can’t wait to see you all again, Zeeps, someplace out from behind the screen.
Onward.
