Q4 2026 Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Grant Program - Call for Proposals

[FPF]

Call for proposals

The Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Grants Program is now accepting proposals for the Q4 2026 round. You can submit a proposal for your own completed work or nominate an individual, company, or project you believe should receive funding to apply for a grant. Retroactive grants provide funding for work that has already been completed and can be publicly verified. Coinholders will decide which proposals to fund through a coinholder vote scheduled for December.

Deadline to submit a proposal: November 13th at 20:00 UTC

Full Schedule:

• Call for Proposals: October 30 (Fri) – November 13 (Fri) @ 20:00 UTC

• Mandatory Review Period: November 16 (Mon) – December 16 (Wed) @ 20:00 UTC

• Polling/Voting Period: December 17 (Thu) – December 29 (Tue) @ 20:00 UTC

How to Submit:

1. Complete the proposal template on GitHub.

2. Copy and paste your completed proposal into a new separate thread in the Community Grants | Retroactive Grants section of the Zcash Community Forum so the community can provide feedback on each proposal. Make sure you post a comment on your GitHub proposal with the link to your Forum post - if you do not your proposal will not be listed for the vote.

Info:

1. GitHub Repo
2. OpenZcash (all eligible applications are posted here with details)

Understanding the Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Grants Program (CDRGP)

The Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Grants Program (CDRGP) is funded by 12% of block rewards (per ZIP 1016, in effect from November 2025 through Zcash’s third halving in 2028) plus initial capital from the Deferred Dev Fund Lockbox. Funds are held in a legally binding multisig wallet managed by Keyholder Organizations. FPF administers the program’s submission and reporting process via a grant that expires at the end of the Q4 voting period.

Who can apply

• Anyone can submit a proposal — for their own completed work, or to nominate another individual, company, or project.

• Grants are retroactive only: the work must already be fully completed and publicly verifiable at the time of submission. This program does not fund proposed or in-progress work.

• There’s no fixed cap on request size, but grants above $50,000 require FPF to perform KYC checks before disbursement.

• If a proposal is rejected by coinholders, the applicant can still resubmit it for consideration through ZCG’s milestone-based model instead.

Process

1. Call for Proposals — Announced each quarter via the forum, GitHub, and social channels.

2. Submission — Complete the proposal template on GitHub, then mirror it as a new thread in the forum’s Retroactive Grants category so the community can give feedback.

3. Mandatory 30-day Review Period — Proposals are discussed publicly; anyone can ask questions or raise concerns directly in the applicant’s thread.

4. Proposal Summary — FPF publishes a summary of all proposals before polling opens (total requested funding, treasury impact, historical outcomes).

5. Coinholder Poll — Each proposal is voted Yes/No individually. A minimum participation threshold of ~420,000 ZEC (~2% of supply) per proposal is required for the vote to count, and a simple majority passes. Further voting guidance will be shared prior to the vote.

6. Funding & Disbursement — Payments come directly from the multisig wallet in ZEC (requests are denominated in USD). Keyholders retain veto authority pre- and post-approval for legal, regulatory, or community-harm concerns.

If you have any questions about the process or your submission, please post them in this thread.

Thanks!

[emersonian]

It will be interesting to see if coinholders continue to vote out of merit or reject valid contributions out of the spite of differing opinions.

This is the chance for amount-voters to show their values and how they intend to serve the Zcash ecosystem.

I’m not going anywhere. Building and releasing! Thank you to all who work hard to keep Zcash governance going regardless of opinion and debates.

It sure would be nice to know how many actual humans vote in coinholder polling.

[shieldedonly]

I’ll be submitting a proposal in the next few days for a critical-severity vulnerability I found and reported to the Zebra team in April. I missed the Q3 window, but after seeing the strong support for the other critical reports last round, I’m putting this one forward for Q4. Programs like this help make sure that finding and reporting serious issues that keep Zcash safe, secure, and operational actually get recognized.

[0xoucan]

Hi @FPF, thanks for opening the Q4 round.

I’d like to submit a retroactive grant proposal for LeekWallet Zcash, an open-source DIY hardware wallet for Zcash (ESP32-S3, PCZT signing, Orchard and Ironwood) that I built and released for ZECATHON. The work is completed and public: firmware, companion apps, a Zodl fork with hardware signing, and a signed release.

I have a process question. My forum account is new and I can’t create topics yet, only reply. That has also kept me from posting my introduction to LeekWallet and my post-ZCon7 thank-you to the Zcash Foundation and, above all, to the community members who took the time to see the board and talk with me at the event.

Since the proposal has to be mirrored as a new thread in Retroactive Grants:

1. Could a moderator raise my trust level, or let me post in that category, so I can open the proposal thread before the November 13 deadline?
2. If that isn’t possible in time, is it acceptable to submit the proposal on GitHub and post it as a reply here (or have a moderator move it into its own thread), with the forum link added as a comment on the GitHub proposal?

Thank you, and thanks to everyone at ZCon7. It meant a lot.

[FPF]

Trust level increased

[0x15]

@FPF Will also need my trust level increased so i can post…thanks

[FPF]

Trust level increased