Creating a topic where everybody should suggest possible improvements for the foundations. I think there is a lot of room how the foundation could and should improve immediatly.
Having in mind that the foundations budget is higher than most coins/projects marketcap i have a feeling that not enough is done, processes are to sluggish and slow and the overall results are lagging or even missing. Hence i would like to adress some issues which should be corrected and i hope other community members jump into this discussion with ideas as well, suggestions as well. I think there is nothing bad on discussing various issues.
1.) Board Election. Currently 3 years if i understand the election process correct. This seems to be a too long period having in mind the the current funding period is 4 years. My suggestion is to change these to yearly Foundation Board Member Elections beginning with having new elections as soon as possible.
2.) Voting system. While the last Community Governance Panel was a first good attempt i think it could be improved further in several meanings and ways:
a.) Either improving the Community Governance Panel with more members, more popularity and better announcement.
b.) or introducing a voting system throug the qt-wallet in some way like many other projects allready have.
3.) Voting on what? I think the community is not involved enough on voting on different matters. Actually the decisions are taken by the foundation board. I suggest that eventually a lot of voting is shifted towards the community, this could include grants, allocating funds, different researches, and whatever not.
As the foundation should represent the community in many matters i think itās just logical to have the community more involved in voting and decision making.
4.) Suggestions: Creating an official āsuggestionā thread/topic/platform/ where community members can creasted suggestions, proposals, and such like so these can be voted or decided either by the foundation or the community.
5.) Grants Approvement. To improve the grants proccess these should be done on a monthly basis to ensure faster realization of such. In a fast performing crypto world this seems to be essential and important.
6.) Grants Announcements. There should be a grants announcement page on the foundations homepage. The Announcements page should as well include directions on what grants the foundation would like to have progress and applications/proposals.
7.) Research. Nearly absolutly missing whatever research. While we all here on the forum have our visions, arguments and our facts itās a different story to have unbiased experts doing a research on a given matter that has influence on Zcashās future. An example would be research on how blossom harmony, time locking, POS, hybrid would effect Zcash. There are way more fields for research and i think research is so far undervalued by the foundation.
8.) Website Reorganisation. Iāam well aware that the technical devs and people in charge are well familar with gifthub and other information channels, but there must be an organized hub somehow, and this should be the foundations website which can be accessed from everybody, beginning from the average joe up to everybody interested in ZEC.
The web page is poorly organized so far, information is splitted on different channels and nothing is easy reach- or searchable. There doesnāt seem to be a plan how to organize the foundations website, the showcase of the foundation. This must change, eventually with the help of volunteer webmasters from the community.
9.) Technical employees. I was mentioned that technical employees are to be added in 2019 after it didnāt happen allready in 2018. As the long term target of the foundation is to take over slowly but surely Zcashās responsibility (due my knowledge) i think it just would make sense to shift the highly qualified tech employees from Zcash over to the foundation step by step. Now only these are allready familar with ZEC but it would make even sense in my opinin. Iāam not sure this is possible but itās worth a thought.
10.) Funding: As the active funding will stop in about 2 years, make plans and prepare a proposal for an extend in funding. Recently the NEM foundation went nearly bankrupt (see news), this is not something i would like to have happening with our foundation. Hence i ask for beginning at least with discussion how proper funding can be granted long term.
11.) Innovation. Something i totally miss. Seriously, i have not seen anything innovative from the foundation so far. This should be improved.
12.) Alliance or strategical alliances. Maybe creating or being part of an cyrpto alliance with choosen projects could improve the efficiency of the foundation. It could result in sharing costs for research, grants, whatever could be a way to be more efficient. Maybe itās worth some thoughs and discussion if this could lead to some positive results. Itās actually allready included under the Foundations Values āCooperation with other cryptocurrencies.ā
13.) Social Platforms: This is a hard one, but i think we lack as well presence on public social platforms and only cover some. This should be improvement in my opinion. As iāam personally not a fan of many of these but see how it might help popularization of ZEC i leave this to others to make suggestions on how this could be improved.
14.) Decentralization: From the foundations page: āā¦we will seek to minimize, monitor and mitigate centralization.ā Iāam not aware of any monitoring, analyzing and similar so far other than here and there some personal opinion and thatās it. In my opinion nothing has be done to combat centralization at this point which might leave a whole bunch of attack/censorship/other vectors open in future. This should be improved in my opinion. Actually it should be one of the piority goals of the foundation in my opinion.
15.) place holder for community and forum member suggestions that hopefully add their views as well how the foundation could improveā¦
These suggestions are made in good faith to improve many things. Iāam far away from thinking iāam right on everything and in case iāam wrong on some suggestions/thoughts/comments, even better. If not, than i think itās worth at least to think about some points and take some critique on given matters. Improvement of any little point will help us all long term. Just my 2 cents.