This doesn’t pass the smell test.
The conversation started a long time ago with these and many others.
[Ledger: A Path Forward for Ledger and Zcash]
(a lot of people here are upset at Ledger, perhaps with good reason.)
[Brave: Brave + Zcash]
(Zcash is in Brave Browser. This is great! But they’re in the loop.)
[Coinbase: ZEC is launching on Coinbase Pro]
(this link is dated 2018. Also Fred Ehrsam, Co-founder at Coinbase, was an early investor, at least back to around launch in 2016. I think Coinbase knows about Zcash.)
Communication between executives happens privately (without expensive grants for salons) when they want to communicate, sometimes with great haste.
Publicly, It plays out everyday (without expensive grants) online.
If ZSAs are a workable, good thing, it will be newsworthy and everyone will know.*
Setting up virtual calls and getting the figurehead advocates publicly leading projects (briefly) on the line and on topic might be worth doing (? not my world), but I don’t think it should cost $51k, seems almost 10x too much.
More, the entirety of any discussions funded in this way should be made public! Practicing transparency for institutions while working toward protecting the privacy of individuals…
Exclusive meetings with later briefings and highlight reels sounds like back room stuff, and a PR effort. If it is, okay, but let’s just call it that.
When you’re dealing with CEOs you have two things going on, deciding directions (rarely changed at a quick chit-chat) and PR soundbites (disjoint from actual directives and sometimes any deep understanding at all).
This sounds really naive, possibly intentionally deceptive. Executives won’t be ‘solving integration hurdles in real time.’
This application should be justified with why this is a value add for Zcash. If it is decided that it is, it should have a reasonable cost and a information flow with the people who have funded it (all ZEC users).
I urge the ZCG to reject this proposal as it stands. It has the optics of and the effect that the block subsidy is propping up big wig happenings and consultants while engineering efforts are still tenuous and uncertain. It reminds me (in a smaller way) of prior mistakes in resource allocation, where courting ‘important’ entities came at the cost of neglecting more grounded issues.
*If ZSAs are the way forward, let’s make sure that they work well first in all the important ways. Grants relating to this should be allocated to testing, auditing, rolling out. In short, engineer a product, not a promotion. A good product. The rest will follow, as the executives smell money, and people without titles build useful things.