Supporting Financial Privacy Education for At-Risk Communities

Community Grants
1

Hello Zcash Community!

I’m reaching out to crowdfund support for an upcoming in-person workshop in New York City. This workshop, called "Two Sides of the Same Coin: Transacting Privately with Cryptocurrency" has been developed with support from the Tech Learning Collective, another freedom tech advocacy and education organization that has a stellar reputation with years of experience in IT and cybersecurity education focused primarily on communities underserved by traditional technology schools.

As I write this, this new workshop run already has over 20 first time students signed up, many of whom have little to no prior experience with cryptocurrencies. Further, more student sign ups are rolling in at an increasing rate given this week’s news of fiat payment services like CashApp rolling out new KYC policies that also threaten to unconditionally reveal PII (including full legal names!) of parties to a transaction.

  • Donation Address:
    u15h4jya3yjhzjx8kgps9ahc8mrkne7evwrjpw2vljph4448e8vwekdm8pl8em7fwphktq0nguynnu3kdsp9uqny0xknz3ltgqmf5qlr9d64lzqj595g5xxuajzfnw3va4wkj8dj72wue5p05qtgts4z3nsjxvya7zn55n5dkfqgg94vmd
  • Funding Deadline: August 15th
  • Requested Funding: $3.5k USD

This workshop and hands-on learning experience is specifically designed to serve at-risk and marginalized communities whose livelihoods actively depend on the freedom to transact privately and is currently facing a wave of financial discrimination from fiat currency systems. I know this community understands the vital need for privacy-preserving payment alternatives (Zcash!) and so I’d like to spearhead this new effort to build bridges towards the many non-technical communities whose survival depends on this technology. The overwhelming majority of Tech Learning Collective students over the years, as well as the target participants of this workshop, exactly match this description, including undocumented immigrants, sex workers, political activists, LGBTQ+ individuals, and more groups facing systemic discrimination. These are the people who are relying most heavily on cash transactions to avoid surveillance, maintain their safety, and provide for their livelihoods today, and they are among the people most motivated to pick up and use privacy coins like Zcash and who, for good reason, to date have resisted making use of non-private cryptocurrencies.

As mainstream payment platforms increasingly require extensive identity verification and make transaction data visible, these communities are being pushed further to the margins. This workshop will teach participants how to confidently use Zcash, positioning it as the the privacy-focused cryptocurrency of choice, while debunking pervasive security and privacy myths around transparent ledgers like Bitcoin. It will also offer a safe environment to practice real-world transactions that protect financial privacy—empowering attendees to use cryptocurrency as it was originally intended: like digital cash.

To make this workshop accessible to NYC’s most vulnerable populations and deliver maximum impact to both them and the Zcash community, I’m seeking community support for:

  • student tuition assistance ($50 × 30 students = $1,500 USD)
  • hands-on learning funds in ZEC for practical exercises ($50 per student = $1,500 USD in ZEC)
  • venue costs in Manhattan (expected $500 USD)

I am pleased to be partnering with the Tech Learning Collective in this endeavor, as it has 10+ years of experience in cybersecurity and technology education. Tech Learning Collective is unique in that it specializes in apprenticeship-based technology education for Information Technology and cybersecurity, and their existing workshop curriculum includes unparalleled hands-on practice for critical tools like Tor and Signal Private Messenger, among other privacy technology topics. TLC focuses on practical and solution-oriented education rather than theoretical certification programs, and their teachers are themselves meticulously briefed and chosen from the very same communities that they serve, which is how they’ve maintained such a stalwart reputation for serving those same marginalized communities in their courses and workshops.

Every participant to this workshop will leave understanding how to make use of a self-custody wallet (Zashi!) and having acquired the practical knowledge to transact safely while protecting their privacy.

This is more than just education—it’s building the foundation for broader Zcash adoption by onboarding already-motivated would-be users who understand why privacy matters in financial transactions and who are already seeking to learn the tools for their daily survival and safety. Your support would directly enable people to experience firsthand why Zcash’s shielded transactions represent the future of private digital money and provide them with critical financial privacy tools they cannot access elsewhere.

  • Donation Address:
    u15h4jya3yjhzjx8kgps9ahc8mrkne7evwrjpw2vljph4448e8vwekdm8pl8em7fwphktq0nguynnu3kdsp9uqny0xknz3ltgqmf5qlr9d64lzqj595g5xxuajzfnw3va4wkj8dj72wue5p05qtgts4z3nsjxvya7zn55n5dkfqgg94vmd
  • Funding Deadline: August 15th
  • Requested Funding: $3.5k USD

Thanks everyone for your time, attention, and support!

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Do you have a syllabus/map of which Zcash topics in particular will be discussed? Is Zashi the only wallet you will use? I’m confused if students will learn for free or have to pay to access these resources.

I was looking on Tech Learning Collective for example workshops from the past, and it seems most ended around 2022. Will these new Zcash workshops be availble so others can learn? I see some foundational material but I can’t get the modules to work, what are the requirements to use?

In theory I love the setup but its hard to see what will be discussed. It’s also hard for me to know if knowledge talked about is accurate/well suited if I cant find any examples from the past.

Look forward to your responce and good luck with your project :student: :shield: :heart_suit:

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Thanks to those who already donated, I’ve received about $1.5k already.

To clarify, this workshop covers four broad areas of learning:

  • Zcash privacy fundamentals (shielded vs. transparent addresses), Blockchain ledger differences (transparent versus opaque ledgers, etc)
  • Hands-on wallet setup, and basic understanding of addresses, wallet apps, custodial differences between apps and services, maybe even some discussion of the math behind stuff like how hierarchically deterministic wallets work but this will be light.
  • Practical shielded transactions; actually using the technology to make transactions.
  • Operational security (Tor, Trocador, password managers, coinflow analytics and Blockchain explorers, etcetera)

We won’t be talking about cryptocurrency as a store of value, only a medium of exchange. This is because most people in the world are poor, they don’t need investment strategies and they don’t really care about volatility metrics. What matters to us is that we need a way to pay and get paid without government surveillance or risking being de-banked. So this workshop focuses on real-world privacy needs (private digital cash) rather than investment/trading aspects.

Regarding wallets and tools, I’ve talked to some friends at Edge Wallet and they’ve given TLC a special link for tracking wallet download metrics, without keeping personal student data. (No, we won’t be taking class photos outside the venue….) Though we’ll also cover Zashi and discuss wallet options, securing keys/passphrases, etc.

Regarding student access, they will be attending for free with tuition assistance hopefully covered by grants or donations such as the ones I’ve asked for in my original post. Each participant will further receive up to $50 worth of ZEC for the practical, hands-on learning portion, depending on how much we can raise from efforts like these. An apprentice carpenter needs wood, a budding crypto student needs ZEC.

You’re right that TLC’s public workshop calendar dropped of but they’ve continued education work with a focus on in-person events via word of mouth for communities that we hold near and dear to our hearts. I see how this looks sketchy, but you can imagine that a gathering of vulnerable community members don’t want their event date/location publicly announced. :wink:

TL;DR: Most of the work that matters in actually making headway to a freer society does not have or need permalinks.

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Out of curiousity will your curriculum include running nodes and lightwallet servers? I am also a fan of getting your hands dirty and I would be surprised if you didn’t include this as part of the education.

I am a core contributor to ZecHub and would love if you could add our wiki / tutorials / videos as a reference if needed. All our work is open source and free to use as needed. :student:

Thanks for your time, and good luck :shield:

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I like this project a lot and I understand the logic here. That said optimal privacy comes from storing value in the form of shielded ZEC - transferring in and out of shielded ZEC can offer “good enough” privacy in many scenarios, but the anonymity set is vastly expanded with long term storage, both on an individual and collective level. Might be a point worth making for those most concerned about opsec rather than dismissing the SOV issue out of hand. SOV isn’t just about invest-y or “change-the-world-y” stuff, there is a real practical privacy/security component too.

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what’s left I’ll cover it

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I’ve received about $2,700 USD of the $3.5k USD requested so far.

Thank you for offering, @zaylor. :heart:

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We reached our funding goals! Thanks to everyone who donated!

The journey of a thousand zcashers, starts with a single ZEC. Thank you for supporting the education and growth of the ecosystem, and in particular for investing in the secure digital future of some of our most vulnerable members.

Our hope and expectation, given the strong demand for this first run of this workshop, is that we’ll repeat the workshop and continue to iterate on its content as the ecosystem progresses. We’ll also be exploring ways to be a bridge between technically savvy parts of the community and those with less experience in this area.

We really appreciate your support and I am looking forward to seeing the positive impact this opportunity makes possible for us all.

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Workshop followup

Hey :waving_hand: Zcash Community!

Thank you all for your incredible support of this workshop! I’m excited to report that the event was a tremendous success.

Results

We had a total in-person headcount of 14 dedicated students participate in our first session. The small group allowed for personalized attention and meaningful hands-on learning. Although more than this originally RSVP’ed, the drop-off in final attendance is not super unusual and it was still a promising group to start off with.

Numerous students had never touched cryptocurrency before, so to be on-boarded directly onto privacy-preserving options is a massive win.

Key Outcomes:

  • 100% wallet setup success - Every participant left with a configured self-custody wallet. (Most acquired Zashi and/or Edge; there were also some people who already had wallets but didn’t have privacy coin support in them.)
  • 100% transaction completion - All students successfully made their first Zcash transaction by receiving the funds we sent them.
  • 75% advanced participation - Three-quarters of the class completed a currency swaps in Tor Browser via Trocador, demonstrating real confidence with the technology.

Real-world impact

The workshop revealed exactly why this education is so desperately needed in our communities. Several students shared that they had previously accepted Bitcoin from clients and customers but didn’t know what to do with it. They left the workshop knowing how to swap Bitcoin into ZEC for enhanced privacy, and how to off-ramp with either ZEC directly or to swap back into Bitcoin to new wallet addresses. (By discussing auto-rotation of shielded addresses in Zashi, students learned a lot about address clustering and why short transaction graphs out of exchanges help improve their privacy on transparent ledger systems.)

Even more importantly, multiple participants told us they had turned down clients and customers in the past because they didn’t know how to accept cryptocurrency payments. Now that they are equipped with practical knowledge, working wallets, and confidence in how to use these technologies in more private ways, these students can serve customers who prefer crypto payments, directly improving both their businesses and their financial lives. One participant literally told me, “I’ve always said no to clients who ask about cryptocurrency, but now I’ll say yes and ask for Zcash, or swap into it immediately if they only want to pay in Bitcoin.” This was probably my personal highlight of the entire workshop.

What’s next

Thanks to your generous funding for ~30 students, we’re excited to announce that we’re already looking at hosting a second workshop partly using the remaining resources from the first workshop, likely in about a month or two. (We will have more venue costs but are working out details of this for later.) This allows us to serve even more community members who need these critical financial privacy tools. This will also allow us to reach students who had RSVP’ed to the first workshop, but couldn’t actually make it.

Word of the workshop also spread surprisingly fast within this community, and so we’re also looking at partnering with other more established organizations in this space. No details on this are finalized but there is buzz. People who couldn’t make the first workshop but who heard about it have been contacting me via Signal in order to get pre-vetted to reserve their spot for the second. That’s a great sign.

It’s clear that the first workshop proved our methods work and that there’s genuine demand for practical cryptocurrency education in these marginalized communities where risks of being de-banked is a clear and ever present danger. Your support is directly translating into real people gaining real financial sovereignty in ways that materially empower their day-to-day working lives.

Gratitude

I want to be very loud about my gratitude, and I feel confident speaking as a proxy on behalf of those without the privilege of being as loud about this on the Internet as I can be about their gratitude, to everyone who contributed. The Zcash community’s commitment to privacy, education, and empowering vulnerable populations made this possible. You’re not just funding workshops, you’re really building the foundation for broader adoption by creating a vanguard of informed, dedicated, early adopters who understand why privacy matters and have their own established networks of colleagues and customers to evangelize the importance of financial privacy to.

Thank you for believing in me and supporting this community outreach work.

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did second workshop happen is this still happening?

why not apply for a grant why ask only for donations I am curious as to philosophy of this

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Hi @zaylor , et al. I have a lot of updates to share. Thank you for the nudge.

The second workshop literally just happened this past weekend. It was larger than the first; we had 23 students this time (compared to 14 the first time). We also coordinated with a second local non-profit called Sex Work Survival Guide (NSFW but feel free to Google if you are curious). They were very complimentary and welcoming!

This workshop took a little longer to put together because of the additional coordination but also because we incorporated Zashi’s recent Crosspay feature into the exercises and needed to update handout materials. However I’m pleased to report that this was a major usability improvement, and made the workshop much easier to teach. Thank you to the developers for implementing Crosspay! It’s a BIG win!

We didn’t have to go to Tor separately (because we used Tor built-into Zashi), however I strongly urge developers to prioritize ensuring that Tor is used for all third-party connections such as communicating with the NEAR DEX. I also strongly desire ephemeral t-addrs because static transparent addresses for refunds from the DEX when realized slippage is lower than slippage tolerance creates a privacy leak that is extremely hard to explain to inexperienced users. PLEASE make this a priority as soon as is possible.

Future news:

  • We have not one, not two, but now THREE upcoming workshops in the works. Demand for this is skyrocketing in my circles. Some feedback we’ve gotten:
    • “I’m confused only about how I don’t feel confused about crypto anymore.”
    • “This was amazing, and I feel…hope for the future?”
    • “Literally the next day, I got a brand new client to use crypto to pay me. It was so easy now that I know how to walk someone else through it. Thank you!”
  • I have begun doing open-to-the-public workshops that are ticketed, based on the same material I’m using for at-risk/high-risk populations but using different specific examples that are more relevant to a general audience.
    • The next one of these will be in NYC on this upcoming Sunday, October 19th and is hosted by the NYC Resistor hackerspace. (We are not asking for donations for ticketed events but I would not turn donations for these down, of course.) See: NYC Resistor Eventbrite: Transacting Privately with Cryptocurrency.
    • If you’d like to donate to support our work here, you can use this Orchard address:
      u1nsamtfvc2pmzxdf5ulkhhwc280f5pnlpt2kjq0kqhk8p8gjhjxgt6k8y5wxkhjxy66rjmuvzxwn5wmf4znch67y5wlhsdw3ly5thzz6j
  • We still have some funds to cover part of the upcoming planned workshops from our original crowdfunding success (and then the rise in Zcash’s coin exchange rate). However, I would love to grow the buffer for this, especially as I am giving away ZEC at each workshop for at-risk participants as mentioned in the original post in this thread. Plus, I am donating a lot of my time to post-workshop support:
    • Each workshop creates a Signal Group where participants in the cohort are connected to each other and can continue to learn together, ask questions of each other. This has proven to be an effective way to continue peer-to-peer support and maintain an active practice/habit of using Zashi a bit like a crypto credit card/checking account to help new users on and off-ramp additional funds after the workshop is over. This support for high-risk populations does not end when the workshop they attend ends.
    • Questions asked in the group(s) get incorporated to future materials, I personally disemminate useful updates across cohort Signal Groups; this structure helps maintain inter-workshop privacy for participants but gives them access to the knowledge gained from other workshop runs.

Finally, you ask:

why not apply for a grant why ask only for donations I am curious as to philosophy of this

Bluntly, very simply, we would do both, but have only done the one because it is simpler to accomplish and provides more immediate impact.

If you would like to continue to donate to these efforts, please do so using the following Orchard address:

u1nsamtfvc2pmzxdf5ulkhhwc280f5pnlpt2kjq0kqhk8p8gjhjxgt6k8y5wxkhjxy66rjmuvzxwn5wmf4znch67y5wlhsdw3ly5thzz6j

Thank you for your interest and continued support!

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respect the professional detail response, what you are doing is real.

we are surrounded by people asking for million dollar coinholder subsidy grants. you actually are onboarding real people on to zcash thank you. really important work

doubling down on my contribution love this

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Thank you kindly for your donations! <3 <3 <3

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Hi, everyone.

I wanted to pop back onto this thread to let you all know that two of the three scheduled workshops for at-risk populations and vulnerable communities that I talked about in my last update have now occurred. The third one is still in the process of being finalized.

Both previous workshops also went very, very well! Between the two workshops I was able to guide an additional 25 new users to install Zashi, receive ZEC from me, and many of them then went on the make their first Crosspay payment!

I’ve now been explicitly invited to Chicago, Seattle, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh by an extended network of contacts to run more of these same workshops. I’ve met with social workers, adult industry performers, adult game developers, various gig workers, and people of other descriptions who are all interested in “crypto as cash” instead of “crypto as investing.” I would love to continue to iterate on the workshop material and run more of these workshops.

After some of them, participants who are comfortable doing so have begun posting about their experience on social media. This includes the aforementioned Sex Work Survival Guide group, but now also includes individuals. Here are a few recent examples from Bluesky.

Additionally, I attended an adult industry convention (sort of on a whim, honestly) and ended up organically on-boarding an additional 9 or 10 people, including two vendors, at that convention as well. @readymouse and I have started collecting selfies with people who are willing to let us take some with them and we have a growing collection of some incredibly fun moments. Here’s one of my favorites from the adult convention. (The entire quote thread is worth a look, too.)

As I write this, I am now on my way with @readymouse to Buenos Aires to meet some more members of the Zcash team personally and attend parts of DevConnect. When we return, we’ll continue to finalize the details for the last already-funded workshop.

I’m extremely heartened to see how receptive so many people in these communities that I’m speaking with have opened up to this and intuitively understand the power and importance of self-sovereign financial independence and privacy. It is absolutely something most people understand if the message arrives in a form they can relate to via a messenger they can trust. I’m honored that I can be one such messenger!

As usual, donations for the continued funding of these workshops and perhaps these likely future ones in both nearby and further away cities would be absolutely amazing and appreciated!

After the final already-in-the-works workshop for NYC, which would be the FIFTH(!) one in New York City, I would like to go to Poughkeepsie, as we are already in discussions with a venue that could host us and is safe for the at-risk students up there for a date sometime in late January or early February.

As before, we are aiming for:

  • $50 USD student tuition assistance per student
  • $50 USD student starter stipend
  • ~$500 USD for venue rental (highly variable but it’s proven to be a decent estimate)

Total estimate per workshop = $3,500 USD

Additional travel costs, per workshop = $3000 USD (lodging, airfare, as needed)

(Workshops outside of NYC will also require travel time, costs, and possible additional funds for lodging.)

To summarize, we’ve been asking for about $3,500 USD per workshop in NYC or approximately $6000 USD per workshop with reasonable estimates for workshops that we must travel to.

All of the above addresses should still work as donation deposit addresses should anyone still be excited about offering their support to continue these efforts. This additional unified address should work, too:

u16g8x7f3ug6j3z68h94yfgzzyjhvn799sewwyt5eczvmm4c2nst9w9cgnuyvcjty5thdyfr37cszwcnzs6zrm5xwar7ygnjz252gp9uenqtgrzxfgu242mta2fkw9pne7wey3c7rhqkcskd752ks4faqjxvvxv4nh7cxdwxuseumjtwg3

Finally, please say hi if you see me (or @readymouse ) in Buenos Aires this week! <3

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