RFP Program Updates

Community Grants RFI - RFP Grants
1

Hi everyone,

Last year, Zcash Community Grants launched its RFP initiative to actively recruit developers for specific projects. We published four RFPs, and all four were filled. We also posted a number of RFIs that received a significant amount of engagement from the community. We believe the program has been a success and plan to continue it in 2023.

As a reminder, RFPs are Requests For Proposals that describe specific projects ZCG is interested in funding and seek to solicit bids from developers interested in working on a project. RFPs are posted to the Zcash Community Forum and the Zcash Grants platform. RFIs are Requests For Input, which you can think of as “pre-RFPs,” where we have a general idea for a project and we’re asking for the community’s feedback to help us make it better, or to better reflect what the community wants to see before we post an actual RFP. RFIs are posted to the Zcash Community Forum for discussion. You can view all prior RFP and RFI activity here.

A few updates:

In the coming months, we’ll publish a number of new RFPs and RFIs. We’re also working on creating a form that allows community members to submit RFP ideas to ZCG for consideration. We believe this will allow the community to help shape the future development of Zcash and contribute to the growth and success of the grants program. In addition, we’re exploring ways we can collaborate with ECC and ZF by possibly participating in the bi-weekly Arborist calls. We believe more collaboration will allow us to publish higher quality RFPs that better reflect the needs of the ecosystem.

Finally, given that RFPs are designed to solicit multiple bids from developers, we’ve improved our process to better handle multi-bidding scenarios. Going forward:

  1. ZCG will ensure all pricing information is hidden from the public to avoid a potential bidding war for the same project.
  2. After receiving a proposal, ZCG will announce that a proposal has been received and notify community members that if anyone would like to submit a counterproposal, they have 10 days to do so. After 10 days, ZCG will review and vote on the proposal.
  3. Once the committee has made a decision, all pricing information related to the proposals will be disclosed to the community and memorialized in our biweekly meeting minutes.

Please let us know if you have any questions, feedback, or ideas on how to improve the RFP program.

Thank you,

Zcash Community Grants

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2

Hi Zcash Community -

The ZCG committee has a few updates to provide for the RFP Program with the new year in full swing.

  1. RFP Idea Submission Form: In addition to the RFP ideas, we currently have in the pipeline, we are seeking ideas from the Zcash community to identify gaps in development tooling, resources, or documentation that hinder building on top of Zcash. We have created an RFP Idea Submission form that will help inform the ZCG of the community’s development needs, with the goal of gathering proposals that can be prioritized and developed into RFPs for projects that will improve the development on and usability of Zcash. The form has no deadline, and the idea originator will receive a $500 USD in ZEC bounty reward upon ZCG’s acceptance of an RFP proposal for their idea. The RFP bounties aim to reward community members for their time and incentivize the development of their ideas. Further information can be found under the “Zcash Community Grants RFP Program’’ section of zcashgrants.org. The Idea form and bounty process works like this:

    1. Community member has an idea and fills out the RFP Idea Submission Form
    2. If ZCG is interested in funding the idea, ZCG works with community member to draft and publish an RFP around the idea.
    3. A developer submits a proposal in response to the RFP.
    4. ZCG accepts the proposal for the RFP.
    5. Community member receives the bounty reward of $500.

  2. Standard Terms and Conditions: We are changing the layout of our RFPs to improve the readability of the document and cut to the point of the proposal. Standard language that applies to every proposal will be linked onto the forum thread where the proposal is posted and hosted here. We have also provided clarity about how we will handle the RFP bidding process moving forward.

  3. New RFPs: Finally, we have posted two new RFPs:

As always, please let us know if you have any questions, feedback, or ideas on how to improve the RFP program.

Thank you,

Zcash Community Grants

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