Retroactive Grant Application - @zkMarketer Videos

Community Grants
1

zkMarketer Videos Retroactive Grant

Submission deadline Friday 14 August 2026, 20:00 UTC.

Team members

Name

Connaugh Gaskin

Intro
Hi everyone, it’s great to be here. I am super excited to submit my first Zcash grant request. Hopefully a few of you would have seen my videos about Zcash already but in case you haven’t - Connaugh 🛡️ (@zkMarketer) / X

My full grant request can be found - Retroactive Grant Application - Connaugh Zcash Videos · Issue #55 · Financial-Privacy-Foundation/ZcashCoinholderGrantsProgram · GitHub

I look forward to discussing my proposal below please ask any questions you have.

Role

Creator and sole producer. Research, scripting, editing, design, distribution.

Background

Six years in tech marketing across biotech, AI and crypto, the last two and a half in zero-knowledge cryptography at Mina Foundation and o1Labs. There I built the ecosystem content programme and ran it at a consistent cadence for over a year, the first time that had been sustained in that ecosystem. It held because of process rather than effort: a repeatable pipeline built around the constraints of the crypto industry. I produced many different types of videos including: thought leadership, Ecosystem highlights, protocol upgrades, whiteboard sessions, fundraising announcements, whitepaper announcements and more.

I do research, scripting, editing, graphic design and distribution myself. That removes the handoffs that normally set the ceiling on how often a small team can publish, and it is the reason the cost per film and speed of delivery in this application is what it is.

Responsibilities

  • Sourcing and archiving video from across the Zcash ecosystem: co-founders, engineers, the ecosystem organisations, external advocates, and the institutional cohort

  • Editorial. Finding the story inside each source, and threading claims across separate videos so speakers corroborate one another

  • Verifying technical claims against primary sources

  • Scripting and voiceover

  • Editing, graphic design, sound design and packaging

  • Publishing and distribution

  • Series architecture and publishing cadence

How did you learn about the programme

Through conversations with the Cypherpunk Technologies team, who directed me to the Zcash Community Grants team.

Requested grant amount (USD)

$22,000

Project summary

Zcash produces more high-quality video than almost any ecosystem its size, scattered across founders, engineers, the ecosystem organisations, external advocates and its institutional backers. I cut that footage and re-architect into short, single-argument films designed for audiences who will never sit through a one-hour podcast: five films researched, built and published between 28 July and 12 August 2026, reaching 45,811 impressions and 9,931 views from a standing start. Total work time including researching and editing 31 days.

Project description

Overview

Zcash has a distribution problem, not a content problem. Every month the ecosystem produces a serious volume of video: protocol engineers explaining upgrades, co-founders on podcasts, the organisations building on Zcash, advocates from other ecosystems, and the institutional cohort that has arrived over the past year. The material is excellent. It is also long, spread across a dozen channels, and mostly reaching people who are already convinced.

I treat that footage as raw stock. Each film pulls clips from across the ecosystem and threads them into a single argument, so that people who were recorded months apart, in different places, end up corroborating each other on camera. The technical claims stay in the mouths of the people who built the protocol. My job is the through-line.

Origin

The work started with Ironwood. The upgrade was significant and the explanation of it was scattered, with different aspects covered by different people in different places. Nothing assembled them. I built the first film to do that and shipped it within a week.

Why the films are short

Each film carries one or two points, told once, properly. Three things follow.

The archive compounds. Crypto content dates fast, whether through protocol changes or shifts in the political situation. A long film dies as a whole when one section goes stale. A short film making a single point stays publishable, which means every film I make adds to a library I can keep drawing on instead of a back catalogue that decays.

Fragmenting the case widens the reach. Zcash is not one story. It is an institutional story, an apolitical money story, a cypherpunk story, a technical story about what the protocol does, the people etc. Having different stories and different view points is critical for reaching different audiences. Cutting to the point level lets each audience find the argument aimed at them, and lets advocates share the exact claim they care about instead of a film that is three quarters about something else.

The format is what distribution rewards. Short, fast-paced explainer video is the dominant form outside crypto and thinly served inside it, where most output is either long-form conversation or low-effort promotion. The video direction of travel is visible: Ethereum has committed to an in-house media team, and a16z’s video output over the past six months has moved towards short documentary work at a production standard the rest of the industry has not matched.

Why this is worth funding

Having one person with a specialist background to run the entire video process will dramatically reduce costs and time. I want to commit to a cadence of 2 videos a week to really help grow the Zcash momentum. Because research, script, edit, design and distribution all sit with one person, these cost $3,000 each and ship published.

It multiplies work the ecosystem has already paid for. Every film is built from footage that already exists. This does not compete with the podcasts, talks and engineering explainers being made across Zcash. It extends their reach to the people who were never going to watch them at full length.

It is already working. Five films, 16 days, no existing Zcash audience, and the numbers set out below.

Technical approach

Process

Every film runs the same five stages.

Research. I gather source material from across the ecosystem: podcast appearances, conference talks, engineering explainers, interviews. Each clip is logged against the claim it supports.

Editorial. I build the narrative before I open the timeline. Claims are threaded so that speakers recorded independently corroborate one another. Anything technical is checked against primary sources.

Scripting. I write voiceover into the gaps only. Source clips carry the mechanism, voiceover carries the consequence, which keeps the technical claims with the people who built the protocol and keeps me out of the way of them.

Production. Editing, sound design and music in Adobe Premiere Pro. Motion and graphic design in Figma.

Distribution. Published to X, packaged and hooked for that feed specifically.

Tooling and position on AI

Premiere Pro for editing. Figma for design. Claude for research synthesis and script structure. ElevenLabs for generated video assets, including a generated likeness of myself used as an on-screen presenter.

All narration is my own recorded voice. There is no voice cloning and no synthetic narration anywhere in this work.

I use AI at the edges and keep it out of the centre. The edit is done by hand in professional software, deliberately. Template-driven AI video tools produce output that is recognisable on sight, and in an ecosystem whose entire value proposition is credibility, content that looks automatically generated damages the argument it is making. That is an editorial decision before it is a technical one.

Equipment

Recording and production hardware, including a Shure SM7dB and mixing desk, is mine and self-funded. It is not claimed here.

Time period of work completion

13 July 2026 to 12 August 2026 working full time, weekends and evenings. Five films published over 16 days (31 days total research, editing + publishing).

Total budget (USD)

$22,000

Budget breakdown

Compensation
$22,000
Time only, priced per film + research week ($4,000). Launch film $6,000, covering the longer build and the research base it established. Four subsequent films at $3,000 each.

Technology / Software
$0
Adobe, Figma and AI tooling subscriptions self-funded. Not claimed.

Infrastructure / Hosting
$0
None incurred.

Services / Contractors
$0
Sole producer. No third parties engaged.

Other
$0
Recording and production equipment owned and self-funded. Not claimed.

Total
$22,000

Previous funding

Yes/No, plus details. Assumed No for this work. Confirm.

Other funding sources

Answer: Yes

I have received no funding for this work from any source. I intend to explore different funding options within the Zcash ecosystem for future work. I believe I can dramatically scale video content and reach in the Zcash ecosystem.

Success metrics

The account carried no Zcash audience when this started. Every figure below was built from a standing start. Snapshot taken 14 August 2026, 14:29 BST.
Film
Impressions
Views
Likes
Reposts
Replies

Ironwood launch
Impressions: 5,479
Views: 1,483
Likes: 87
Reposts: 17
Replies: 8

Scaling Zcash to Visa levels
Impressions: 3,322
Views: 713
Likes: 45
Reposts: 9
Replies: 2

"Zcash never upgraded its privacy."
Impressions: 8,018
Views: 2,679
Likes: 123
Reposts: 27
Replies: 4

“You don’t have a right to a bank account.”
Impressions: 16,578
Views: 2,486
Likes: 68
Reposts: 15
Replies: 1

Zcash is much better than Bitcoin.
Impressions: 12,414
Views: 2,570
Likes: 133
Reposts: 37
Replies: 10

Total
Impressions: 45,811
Views: 9,931
Likes: 456
Reposts: 105
Replies: 25

Trajectory

Reach grew across the run. Each of the three most recent films reached more people than either of the first two, and the strongest took roughly three times the impressions of the opener. Views tracked the same curve.

Films three and five drew the heaviest engagement of the set. Film four reached the largest audience by some margin on lighter engagement. The full set is reported here, including the weakest performer.

Scope

Five films is an early signal rather than a proven programme, and the figures are presented as such.

Proof of completion

All five films published on X at @zkmarketer.

Analytics snapshot for each film, taken 14 August 2026, 14:29 BST.

Conflict of interest disclosure

N/A.

9 Likes
Call For Proposals: Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Grants Program Q3
30 Day Review Period: Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Grants Program Q3
2

Thanks for submitting this.

The work was completed in 16 days from a standing start, and the initial impressions and views across the five films are an early data point. Since the request is for $22,000, though, I want to understand the cost-effectiveness against a reasonable benchmark. Could you share how views and impressions are defined, along with any unique-viewer, watch-time, or audience-segment data? On the metrics shown so far, the application does not justify the requested amount.

The application also mentions extensive use of third-party footage, and the source videos look heavily edited. Was that done for copyright reasons? I have a preference against the pacing and style, but I’m treating that as secondary unless there is data or feedback showing it materially hurts retention or accessibility.

3

Thanks, these are fair questions and cost-effectiveness is the right one to
press on.

First, one correction that matters for the rest of this.

This was not 16 days of work. 16 days is the publishing window, the gap between
the first film going out and the fifth. The work period was 13 July to 12
August 2026, a full month, worked full time including evenings and weekends.
The first nine days of that were research before anything was published at all,
and the launch film took a further week to build after that.

Definitions

Both figures come from X’s own analytics. Impressions are times the post
appeared in a feed. Views are counted when the video plays.

Watch-through, per film. X reports retention at quarter intervals.

Film Runtime 25% 50% 75% Finished Finished (people)
Ironwood launch 9:08 4% 2% 1% 1% ~15
Scaling Zcash to Visa levels 1:55 11% 6% 5% 3% ~22
Zcash never upgraded its privacy 2:36 10% 7% 5% 3% ~81
You don’t have a right to a bank account 1:53 16% 8% 5% 4% ~100
Zcash is much better than Bitcoin 1:08 22% 12% 9% 7% ~184

Total watch time is roughly 87 hours, estimated from these figures.

The improvement holds at every point on the curve, not just at the end.
Quarter-point retention went from 4% to 22%, halfway retention from 2% to 12%,
and three-quarter retention from 1% to 9%. The number of people watching a film
all the way through went from around 15 to around 184 across five releases.

Completion is the strictest measure available and I’ve included it, but it’s
the smallest number by definition and I don’t think it’s the only one worth
looking at. In absolute terms none of these are strong figures and I won’t
dress them up. The direction is what I’d point to.

One thing to be straight about: the quarter marks aren’t directly comparable
across films, because a quarter of a nine-minute film is 2:17 and a quarter of
a 68-second film is 17 seconds. Part of what these figures show is that
shortening the runtime improved retention, which is exactly the change I made
after seeing the Ironwood data.

Audience

Segmented on engagement rather than all viewers, 28-day account-level window,
which aligns closely with the work period.

  • Followers 22.7%, non-followers 77.3%
  • Age: 29.5% aged 25-34, 29.8% aged 35-44, 30.4% aged 45 and over
  • Geography: US 35.5%, Canada 6.1%, Brazil 5.8%, UK and Nigeria 4.0% each,
    France and India 3.5% each
  • 99 new followers over 28 days, from no existing Zcash audience

The older skew and the US weighting sit where the institutional argument for
Zcash is currently playing out. Nigeria at 4.0% is notable given the debanking
film specifically.

On Ironwood

Worth addressing the price difference before it looks odd. It runs eight
minutes against one to three for the others, so roughly three times the
finished length for twice the cost. It’s also the weakest on retention, and
that data is the reason nothing since has run past three minutes. I’d rather
show you the film that taught me that than leave it out.

On the benchmark

Measured as ad spend, these numbers don’t justify the ask and I won’t argue
otherwise. This is production cost. A studio short of this kind runs into
several thousand dollars for a single film, delivers a file, and distribution
is bought separately on top. This covers five finished films that shipped
published, on an archive that stays live.

On durability

Each film carries a single argument, so they don’t date the way a broader piece
does. The most useful moment for one of these may well be the next time that
argument is live rather than the week it went out. Judging a one-month-old
archive on first-window numbers measures the launch rather than the asset.

The Ironwood film is a good example. Its retention is the weakest of the set,
but it contains a long, well-researched segment on formal verification that
stands alone as a separate film. The research and the edit are already done.
That’s what I mean by the archive holding value past its first window.

I’d apply that standard to myself: if it’s still doing nothing in six months,
that’s a fair verdict.

On the amount

Your point about the stage this is at is fair. The request has two parts: the
films, and $4,000 of start-up costs. The start-up element is the least
retroactive part of the application and the hardest to defend at what is still
an experimental phase. I’m withdrawing it, which brings the request to $18,000.
I’d hold the per-film figures, but I’m listening on this.

On the footage

I didn’t seek permission before using it. What I did do is credit sources on
screen and retain the original channel logos throughout, so attribution travels
with every clip. I’m careful to represent people’s points accurately and never
to edit in a way that changes what someone meant. Where I’ve tagged the people
whose footage appears, they have engaged with the films and shared them. If any
source creator wants a film amended or removed, I’ll do it immediately.

There’s a broader point worth raising. This would be better solved upstream
than by each creator chasing individual permissions after the fact. When Zcash
organisations record podcasts, conference talks and interviews, they could ask
participants at that point whether the footage can be reused by the community
for derivative work. That would give every creator in the ecosystem a clear
pool of usable material and remove the ambiguity entirely. It costs almost
nothing to implement and it would be a real unlock for anyone making this kind
of content.

On style

Two separate things.

Zcash already has hour-long podcasts and 30-second clips pulled from them.
There’s very little in between. What I make sits in that gap: a concise
argument assembled from a wider discussion. Several of these films combine
clips from different speakers and different sources so that a claim is
corroborated by people recorded independently rather than asserted by one
person. That’s a trust mechanism, and it’s the main reason the cutting is
dense.

That method suits Zcash specifically. It’s discussed by an unusually broad set
of people: protocol engineers, the ecosystem organisations, advocates from
other ecosystems entirely, and an institutional cohort that has arrived
recently. Building films that corroborate a claim across independently recorded
speakers depends on having that spread of voices available. Most ecosystems
couldn’t produce this format because they don’t have the source material.

On pacing, that’s fair and I’ve been experimenting with it. What I’m optimising
for is density rather than speed. I watch the analytics closely on every film
and keep testing against them, and I’ll carry on doing that to push the reach
and the retention further.

Happy to go deeper on any of this, and if there’s other data that would be
useful to you, tell me what it is and I’ll pull it.

1 Like
4

Big lover of your videos man. I hope your proposal gets considered.

1 Like
5

Thank you so much! I really appreciate your support. If you have any feedback on the videos, please reach out. I just want to try to make the best content possible for Zcash :folded_hands:

1 Like