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.