The Cambrian Interface Explosion

[dismad]

@daira

I was not aware that a USD 600,000 grant was being considered. Frankly, that seems an absurdly high amount for the work proposed, even aside from the critical privacy objections (which I’ll expand on below). I would have expected that given the size of the grant, the obviously controversial subject matter, and the protocol complexity issues, that the ZCG Committee would have sought input from the protocol designers and full node implementors at ECC and ZF. Speaking for myself, I consider it a failure of governance that they did not.

@ZcashFoundation

ZCG (Jason, Amber, and Michael) will meet with Jonathan and Vivek from QEDIT to discuss possibly putting this grant on hold due to current uncertainties or slimming the overall grant cost.

• On Wednesday, June 12, Jason, Michael, and Amber met with Jonathan and Vivek to discuss the above feedback on their $1.33M grant revision and let them know that the version of the grant did not have sufficient committee support for approval. QEDIT proposed an additional revision for a total of $650,000 that would cover the following milestones related to research and ZIP writing: (1) Research: Verifiable Encryption, Enhanced Keys ($200,000), (2) Report: Transaction Acceptance ($100,000), (3) ZIP: Enhanced Viewing Keys ($200,000), and (4) ZIP: User Control ($150,000).
• On Friday, June 14, ZCG voted to approve the grant by a vote of 4 to 1 with Jason, Amber, Gguy, and Brian voting to approve and Michael voting to reject. QEDIT had requested the $650,000 be paid upfront; however, ZCG decided the funding would be allocated as follows: (1) $216,666.66 paid upfront, (2) $216,666.67 paid 30 days after the first payment, (3) $216,666.67 paid once the ZIPs have been reviewed by the ZIP editors and moved from “Draft” to “Proposed” status.

Can @ZcashGrants clear up any misunderstandings? This seems important.