Paul Brigner for ZCG (June 2026)

[paulbrigner]

Hi Zcash community — I’m Paul Brigner, and I’d like to nominate myself to serve on the Zcash Community Grants committee. I’m currently Chief Policy & Regulatory Officer at Zodl and founder and organizer of PGP* (Pretty Good Policy) for Crypto. My long-term vision is clear: Zcash should become private digital money at global scale, capable of competing with and ultimately supplanting fiat currency, and helping separate money from state. I do not see Zcash as merely a privacy feature, a speculative asset, or one crypto project among many. I see it as one of the most important tools we have for individual freedom, financial dignity, and resistance to surveillance and control. Outside of my family, I spend nearly all of my waking hours working on Zcash, financial privacy, and the broader fight to make privacy normal.

I bring a very broad and unusual set of experiences to this role. I have been a soldier, a software developer and technical manager, a lawyer, a technology policy advocate, and an executive in startups, Fortune 500 companies, influential nonprofits and trade associations, a leading crypto exchange, and the Zcash ecosystem. I spent roughly a decade writing software, consulting, designing internet systems, and managing technical teams before moving into more than twenty years of internet, technology, and cryptocurrency policy work. My career has included roles at Verizon, Internet Society, the Motion Picture Association, the Chamber of Digital Commerce, Coinbase Institute, Electric Coin Co., Bootstrap, Zodl, and Georgetown University, where I teach fintech. That diverse background matters because ZCG must evaluate engineering work, wallets, infrastructure, adoption, education, events, policy-adjacent efforts, community initiatives, and new ideas that may not fit neatly into existing categories.

My approach to ZCG would be ambitious, disciplined, and open-minded. I want ZCG to fund work that helps Zcash become useful, resilient, understandable, widely adopted, and aligned with the cypherpunk values that make it worth building in the first place. That includes core protocol and wallet work, shielded adoption, payments, developer tooling, infrastructure, exchange and merchant usability, documentation, user education, and ecosystem decentralization. It also includes serious efforts to put Zcash in front of policymakers, builders, institutions, journalists, companies, and communities that need private digital cash but may not yet understand why Zcash matters. I do not believe every valuable grant must look like a narrowly scoped engineering milestone. Zcash also needs credibility, distribution, narrative power, relationships, and strategic presence.

My prior ZCG-supported work with PGP* (Pretty Good Policy) for Crypto and the 2025 DC Privacy Summit reflects that broader view of ecosystem growth. That work helped create a trusted forum in Washington, DC for serious discussion of crypto policy, privacy-preserving technology, and Zcash’s role in financial privacy. My pending Cypherpunk Policy Dinner proposal continues that effort in a more explicitly Zcash-forward way. I am proud of that work, and I also understand that it creates responsibilities if I am elected. I would fully disclose all relevant relationships and would recuse myself from any discussion, evaluation, or vote involving my own grants, PGP*, Zodl, Project Glitch, or any other matter where my participation could create an actual or perceived conflict.

Zcash is at an inflection point. The community has serious builders, renewed energy, growing external attention, and a real opportunity to make private digital cash useful to far more people. ZCG should be a force multiplier for that moment: rigorous but not timid, accountable but not bureaucratic, and willing to support both foundational infrastructure and unconventional ideas that can advance the mission. I am applying because I believe I can help evaluate grants with technical understanding, policy judgment, operational experience, and deep commitment to financial freedom. If elected, I will work to fund projects that make Zcash more useful, more resilient, and more widely adopted as private digital cash and a store of value, while expanding the ecosystem’s independence and moving us closer to a world where privacy is normal and money is separated from the state.

[aaal]

Since ending their MPAA days, @paulbrigner has done some good things for digital freedoms at the Internet Society, among other venues. They are a strong, professional communicator.

Now, Paul wants to have the agency to allocate Zcash community ZEC and provide community endorsement - not only make requests, like for DC political outreach - while presently working for a private company (ZODL) endowed by huge USA Republican (and additionally, POTUS Donald Trump vanity project) donors.

To quote myself in the most recent ZCG request Paul put forth:

People here are advocating courting favor with and legitimizing a racist and violent regime, on behalf of the whole community, and using community resources to this end.

I think this is, to put it quite mildly, distasteful, and a potential strategic misstep. Paul (and some other important community figures) seem to think it’s fine to lobby and use typical means to this end, like plating expensive dinners in front of VIPs, using Zcash community funds and branding.

I would expect this type of thing to get a carte blanche in the future if they were elected: the blurring and management of interests would deepen.

@paulbrigner

I would fully disclose all relevant relationships and would recuse myself from any discussion, evaluation, or vote involving my own grants, PGP*, Zodl, Project Glitch, or any other matter where my participation could create an actual or perceived conflict.

Paul claims they have perspectives independent of conflicts of interest. But who would believe that?

As a default, I don’t trust skilled professional communicators working inside the Beltway encircling Washington DC, on the payroll of billionaires.

I definitely don’t trust them to impartially allocate funds and endorse projects on behalf of a distributed and diverse community.

[radbro]

[maxdesalle]

100% support @paulbrigner for ZCG.

We desperately need experienced people to defend Zcash against upcoming regulatory threats, that are inevitably going to take place with Zcash’s rise. Having met him IRL, Paul brings an immense wealth of experience having been a community member for a long time and being the chief of policy and regulation at ZODL.

We need to win, and for that, policy and regulation will be critical.

[paulbrigner]

I want to respond directly to the reference to my MPAA background, because I understand why some people in this community may have questions about it.

My last public appearance on behalf of MPAA was at the January 17, 2012 State of the Net Conference, on a panel titled “Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA): The Debate.” I encourage anyone who has concerns about that part of my career to watch my opening remarks in the video. I was on that panel with Mike Masnick, Steve Tepp, Tim Lordan, and Dr. Stephen Crocker. Dr. Crocker is an Internet pioneer, author of the first RFC, former ICANN Chair, and someone I am honored to call a personal friend based on our interactions during that period.

That experience was foundational for me. I was not in a comfortable echo chamber. I was sitting with people who had deep technical expertise, strong views, and serious concerns about the policy position I was there to discuss. Those interactions shaped how I think about technology policy, public debate, institutional incentives, and the importance of listening carefully to people who disagree with me. Shortly after that period, I left MPAA and joined the Internet Society as North American Regional Bureau Director, where my work focused on the open Internet and engagement across technical, policy, civil society, and industry communities. Of note, while at ISOC, a large part of my work was on encryption and privacy, and I am extremely proud to have produced this 2015 short documentary that I also encourage you to watch: “The Internet Exposed: : Encryption, Backdoors and Privacy – and the Quest to Maintain Trust”

I want to add a personal note about that MPAA panel. My comments were my own. I remember clearly seeing an MPAA executive sitting in the front row, visibly unhappy with where I was taking the discussion and signaling that I should cut my comments short. I did not. That moment has stayed with me because it reflects something important about how I try to operate: I am willing to stand up for my own judgment, even when doing so is uncomfortable, even when powerful people are watching, and even when the easier path would be to stay quiet. I am not intimidated by billionaires, large corporations, or, in this community, zillionaires. I will not sacrifice my values or independent judgment under pressure.

The lesson I took from that chapter was not that every institution is right, or that every position I have ever held should be immune from criticism. The lesson was the opposite: serious decisions require due diligence, humility, direct engagement with stakeholders, and a willingness to update one’s views when the facts and arguments demand it. That is exactly the posture I would bring to ZCG. I do not think any person, organization, or grant application should be judged by caricature, affiliation, employer, social proximity, or first impression. It should be judged by the actual proposal, the facts, the risks, the tradeoffs, the applicant’s record, and the benefit to Zcash.

That is also why I think it is important to be direct about conflicts and perceived conflicts. I have current roles and relationships in the Zcash ecosystem, including Zodl, PGP*, Project Glitch, Bootstrap, ECC, and my own grant-related work. I have already said that I would disclose relevant interests and recuse myself from matters where my participation would create an actual or perceived conflict. I mean that. But I also reject the idea that having worked in policy, having represented different organizations over a long career, or having relationships across multiple communities means I cannot exercise independent judgment.

@aaal (Distrust Affiliate), I understand the concern you are raising. I just ask that you apply the same standard I try to apply to others: look at the full record, not just the easiest shorthand for it. My MPAA experience did not make me less committed to open systems, privacy, technical integrity, or individual freedom. It helped teach me how important those things are, how easily policy processes can misunderstand technology, and why it matters to engage across disagreement rather than dismiss people, organizations, or grant applications without doing the work.

[Lowo88]

I support you Paul your third paragraph

@paulbrigner

I remember clearly seeing an MPAA executive sitting in the front row, visibly unhappy with where I was taking the discussion and signaling that I should cut my comments short. I did not. That moment has stayed with me because it reflects something important about how I try to operate

This statement resonates with me this something, I would’ve did and I feel the same way as you. That’s why, I think you are one of the best candidates for this position. Since I have the opportunity to speak, I believe it would be incredibly valuable to establish a dedicated community or forum where you can share your extensive knowledge and experience. Your proven track record and expertise could serve as a guiding light for others, helping us all learn what it truly takes to achieve the impactful work you’ve accomplished throughout your career. I think you would be the perfect person to lead this initiative and inspire the rest of us.

[gil]

100% in support of @paulbrigner for ZCG, community grants committee. Governance Community Grants

Paul is a leader for privacy and a relentless ambassador of the Zcash community.

[aaal]

@paulbrigner I think you are, right now, on team corporate business USA, and you are working to erode any remaining partition between the agenda of powerful entities now driving much of the Zcash ecosystem, and the remaining non-corporate community.

You’re not independent of corporate forces: you literally work for them.

Your speech is paid speech. Your agenda is likewise curated. I think the community would be foolish to trust you.

Notably, the substance of my comments about money flowing into the Zcash ecosystem (minimally to both ZODL and Shielded Labs), relating to partisan (aka, single party) interests in DC and US politics has not been contradicted or refuted.

I understand it’s probably uncomfortable to have this brought up.

I hope it is uncomfortable. I hope talented and principled developers, business people, newcomers, youth, and community members will carefully consider this relationship with government power overall (the monopoly on legal violence), and the specific alignment of the patrons funding things.

Again: Your speech is funded by billionaires, and mine is free. There is no way you can beat that with words.

You cannot be independent with such a configuration.

The question is if people outside your spheres think you’re a trustworthy community member, ready to act in their interests instead of your employers.

[aaal]

…and to address a MUCH smaller point: you yourself brought up your time at the MPAA. The way I mentioned it was not to hold that against you, which is clear in what I wrote about it. You did take their money and work their agenda for a time, but I think your public transition from team-copyright to team-internet was a good thing. I imagine MPAA was upset, but that’s not why I am out against you now.

Finally, I did see the short documentary you mention which has good informational points! … if not the best production values or the most engaging qualities…

I think your best move is to pull another MPAA-style exit and publicly highlight how your current position is untenable: indefensible under scrutiny, it cannot be justified without shutting off your corporate speech (money) inputs.

[valens]

Really cool! I believe you’d be a great addition to the committee (:

[emersonian]

I’m excited that Paul Brigner is open to serving as a ZCG board member.

I first met Paul when he handed me a “Privacy is Normal” T-shirt at the Zcash booth at Mainnet 2022 and encouraged me to become a contributor.

Paul has a strong moral compass. He brings a rare and well-aligned communications skill set to our community, with deep experience educating lawmakers, regulators, and privacy-cautious audiences.

His years of determined campaigning in D.C. are a major reason Zcash is respected in important policy circles as a safe privacy technology for human rights.

Paul was steadfast throughout Zcash’s periods of regulatory scrutiny and uncertainty. He also stood firm as a board member through his prior company’s governance turmoil. He is not only widely respected; he has proven time and time again that he has strong character.

Yes, Paul is part of Zodl’s team, but Paul’s reputation is his own, and it is one of high integrity. It is also nothing new for ZCG board members to hold multiple roles within our community. For example, there have not been issues with Jason or Dan contributing to multiple teams at the same time.

I have zero conflict-of-interest concerns with Paul. I have no doubt that he will abstain from any vote in which he feels conflicted due to his role at Zodl.

I endorse Paul Brigner for ZCG.

[ogasky]

Very impressive for the role. Thank you for all you do for the ecosystem.

[paulbrigner]

I appreciate your support!

[CryptoEpoch]

Welcome, Paul.

As someone who is interested in contributing more actively to the Zcash ecosystem, I’d be curious to hear your perspective on community growth.

Where do you think ZCG should focus more attention over the next 2–3 years: developer tooling, education, adoption, or ecosystem expansion through new communities?

• Crypto Epoch

[paulbrigner]

Thanks for the question. I think all four categories are extremely important: developer tooling, education, adoption, and ecosystem expansion. I would not want ZCG to treat them as separate silos or force a false choice between them. The strongest grants will often advance more than one of those goals at the same time.

I would slightly reframe the timeframe, though. Two to three years is a long time in crypto, so I tend to think first in terms of the next 6 to 18 months while still supporting work that can compound over a longer period. In that nearer-term window, I think adoption and ecosystem expansion deserve especially focused attention.

We have a major opportunity ahead. With important Zcash work such as Ironwood and Tachyon creating new reasons for people to pay attention, ZCG should be ready to help the ecosystem convert that attention into real users, builders, advocates, contributors, and communities. We should not wait until interest arrives and then figure out how to onboard people. We should be preparing now.

That does not mean deprioritizing developer tooling or education. It means funding tooling and education that directly support adoption: better wallets, clearer docs, better developer paths, usable payments, simple onboarding materials, stronger community initiatives, and outreach that helps people understand and experience Zcash now.

My own work is moving in that direction. I recently announced a pivot of the PGP* effort I have been running in DC toward PGP* for Zcash, with a specific focus on onboarding policymakers and the broader crypto-policy community into Zcash. In prior years, I thought the right approach for PGP* was broader crypto-policy engagement with a privacy and softer focus on Zcash. Today, I believe Zcash is positioned to stand more directly on its own, and PGP* is now laser focused on Zcash. If you have an interest in crypto policy, please sign-up for the PGPZ community!

So my answer is: focus on all four areas, but in the near term I would put a very high priority on ecosystem expansion and adoption, supported by tooling and education that help new interest become lasting participation. I think this is a special adoption moment for Zcash, and ZCG should help the community act on it with urgency and discipline.

I posted more about the PGP* for Zcash pivot here on the forum:

Introducing the PGPZ Community Site for Zcash Policy Engagement

Hi everyone — I’m happy to share that the new PGPZ community site is now live (early beta with lots of community engagement features coming soon): PGPZ — PGP* (Pretty Good Policy) for Zcash — is a Washington, D.C. policy initiative focused on privacy-preserving digital cash, practical compliance, and the public-interest role of Zcash. The main PGPZ site is here: PGPZ builds on the long-running PGP* (Pretty Good Policy) for Crypto convening series and is now being refocused around Zcash po…

[common1]

Proud to show support for Paul as my first post on this forum.

I’ve known Paul for about four years, since I finished school and started working in DC. I met him through his PGP events, which became the place where serious people across the full spectrum of crypto and policy would show up in the same room. What stood out immediately was that it didn’t matter where you stood on crypto, Zcash, or any specific policy question, everyone came because Paul created an environment where those conversations could happen without the usual DC posturing. That’s genuinely hard to do in DC, and Paul has been doing it consistently for years.

I’ll share something personal: Paul helped me get my first job in the space out of college. I met the people who hired me at one of his events, and he wrote me a letter of recommendation. That says something about who he is beyond his resume: he invests in people with no expectation of anything in return. He is the opposite of transactional and just wants to help from the heart.

I’ve seen the conflict of interest concern raised in this thread. Every interaction I had with Paul, including moments where he could have steered things in his own favor, he acted on principle. For example, there were many people and companies that tried to sponsor his PGP events because of how many important people showed up each month and they wanted to shape the narrative. They offered a lot of money, but instead of taking their money, Paul stood true to the founding principles of PGP and operated the event on a smaller budget. He could have personally profited a lot but instead chose to stay true to Zcash and the privacy community by not selling out to institutions who only wanted recognition in DC.

On the broader question of whether Zcash should be engaged in the policy world at all: I understand the concern, but I think it gets the situation backwards. Privacy coins don’t get to opt out of the policy conversation, they just lose it by not showing up. The alternative to Paul being in those rooms isn’t that DC leaves Zcash alone. It’s that Zcash gets defined by people who don’t understand it or actively want to limit it.

What I saw at PGP events was someone running a genuinely independent forum. People who walked in skeptical of Zcash or unfamiliar with it walked out with a different impression. Connections formed that turned into jobs, collaborations, and real ecosystem relationships. That’s Zcash adoption happening in a room full of policymakers and builders, which is exactly where it needs to happen right now.

ZCG needs someone who has spent years doing the unglamorous work of building trust across communities that don’t naturally talk to each other. Paul has done that consistently, with integrity, and without compromising the mission. I can’t think of a better person for this committee at this moment in Zcash’s growth.

[zancas]

@emersonian

It is also nothing new for ZCG board members to hold multiple roles within our community. For example, there have not been issues with Jason or Dan contributing to multiple teams at the same time.

Maybe it’s time to become MORE @decentralistdan (oopppss.. tab-completion error)… I meant decentralized, not less?

I note that @aquietinvestor stepped down from the ZCG in order to focus on other organizations.

An effect of that decision was decentralization.. is there really a shortage of candidates now, such that we need to have one powerful influencer wearing hats in multiple orgs?

You mention that @paulbrigner would likely recuse himself from voting on ZODL-conflicting issues.. to me, that begs a question:

Why place people who need to recuse themselves, and presumably not therefore provide guidance and experience, in critical roles?

Surely that’s a cost-benefit that ought to be explicitly weighed.

[zancas]

@paulbrigner

It helped teach me how important those things are, how easily policy processes can misunderstand technology, and why it matters to engage across disagreement rather than dismiss people, organizations, or grant applications without doing the work.

Well said. Mistakes are learning opportunities.

[paulbrigner]

I appreciate this observation very much, and I certainly do not want to stand in the way of other qualified candidates who wish to serve. At this juncture, however, I believe my specific expertise is needed on ZCG. My intention is to serve on ZCG for a limited time, which is not to suggest that I would strictly limit myself to one term, but that I would be very cognizant of the need for others to have a meaningful opportunity to contribute and would want to step away at the appropriate time. Admittedly, I have a ton of things on my plate, so I will not hesitate to pass the torch to other contributors in the future.

As the voting deadline approaches, and as I have been thinking very hard about what I would want to accomplish on ZCG if elected, I have been working on an idea that I believe could materially improve the grant process: re-architecting the ZCG application and grants-management workflow.

Today, the system appears to rely on a disjointed collection of tools: GitHub issues for applications, GitHub labels for workflow state, Google Sheets for grant and milestone tracking, forum threads for public discussion and updates, Jotform for certain RFP-related intake, and separate FPF/ZCG manual processes for review, KYC, agreements, payment approvals, and operational follow-through. Each of these tools has value, and the public history they contain should be preserved. But together they do not form a coherent system. There is no single canonical grant object, no unified workflow model, no consistent audit trail, and no clear public/private data boundary. A great deal of the real “system” is the human effort required to keep all of these surfaces aligned.

I think ZCG should move toward a purpose-built grants operating system: one that mirrors and reconciles the existing public record, preserves source evidence, and gradually establishes a canonical model for applications, grants, milestones, progress updates, payment status, reporting, and public transparency. The goal would not be to abruptly abandon GitHub, the forum, or the existing Sheet. The goal would be to make those systems sources, mirrors, archives, or publication surfaces, while the actual grant lifecycle is managed in a structured, auditable, and transparent platform.

I have begun prototyping this direction at https://zcg.pgpz.org (Github at GitHub - paulbrigner/ZCG · GitHub) The end state I envision is a system with a public transparency layer for the community, an applicant-facing workflow that is easier to use than GitHub issue forms, and an internal ZCG/FPF operations console with appropriate permissions, auditability, and public/private boundaries. In other words, the simple thesis is that ZCG needs one coherent grants model; the complex work is migrating toward that model carefully, without losing the public trust, history, and openness that already matter to the Zcash ecosystem.

I look forward to taking on this challenge, if elected.

[BostonZcash]

Couldn’t have highlighted Paul’s qualities better than @emersonian here. You had my vote, @paulbrigner. Hoping to see you further serve the Zcash community in this capacity.