The Zcash Foundation's Strategy

[Dodger]

@dontbeevil

Thanks @Dodger for putting this up for community.

1. I would like to see ZF’s sole focus to be everything about Zcash — currency, network, protocol & community. Ideally the mission statement for ZF looks like this:

The Foundation’s mission is to be a public charity dedicated to serving the users of the Zcash protocol and blockchain.

instead of

@Dodger

The Foundation’s mission is to be a public charity dedicated to building Internet payment and privacy infrastructure for the public good, primarily serving the users of the Zcash protocol and blockchain.

Our mission statement is based on the Description of Activities attached to our form 1023 application for 501(c)(3) non-profit status. More context can be found in this blog post.

You may find it informative to compare our form 1023 with that of ECC’s parent organisation, the Bootstrap Project.

@dontbeevil

2. What percent of dev resources are currently directed at Zebrad?

We don’t have a precise percentage number for that but I’d estimate it at >80%.
You can find an overview of our spending broken down by program in our transparency reports. For example, here’s the breakdown for Q4 2021:

@dontbeevil

3. At which point do you think dev resources will be diverted to other efforts?

I hope that Zebra will start to approach feature parity with zcashd by Q1 2023, at which point we’ll start exploring adding new features and functionality. However, I expect that Zebra will be the default underlying platform for such work.

Outside of Zebra, we’ll continue to work towards getting FROST ready for adoption by wallets, exchanges and custodians.

@dontbeevil

4. How high is programmability in the list of priorities? It’s not clear what ZF is going to tackle in the near term, at-least for 2022.

Programmability is a long-term priority. For 2022, we’re focused on Zebra and FROST.

@dontbeevil

5. Any plans for ZEC Wallet?

We did have plans to put out an RFP after NU5 activates, for a team to take over the ZecWallet project from @adityapk00.

However, we’ve had put those plans on hold pending resolution of the questions and uncertainty around license compatibility that have been raised by ECC’s adoption of the BOSL license for Orchard.

See my post in the BOSL or MIT thread for more context,

@dontbeevil

6. Can ZF be more hands on with Ledger shielded support?

We’ve been talking with Zondax about implementing Ledger support for Sapling transactions in Zecwallet Lite.

@dontbeevil

7. What plans does ZF have to onboard new users to Zcash & bring growth to shielded transactions?

Let me ask you a couple of questions.

Firstly, do you think that ZecWallet helped onboard new users to Zcash and bring growth to shielded transactions?

Secondly, what more do you think ZF should be doing?

[Souptacular]

I don’t see @Dodger indicating that. He basically said (in my opinion) the value (price) of ZEC will prosper in a healthy ecosystem that has maximal utility to use the token, so they are focusing on that. Makes perfect sense.

I’d rather have a crypto asset with a solid technological and community underpinning for long term growth than a coin where the foundation is doing nothing but trying to pump the price all day through overt partnerships and marketing (both of these things are important, but at this stage of Zcash’s growth getting the tech and ecosystem correct trump that).

[dontbeevil]

@Dodger

Firstly, do you think that ZecWallet helped onboard new users to Zcash and bring growth to shielded transactions?

I didn’t mean to say ZF did nothing. Should’ve worded my question differently.

100% Zecwallet was a reasonable, probably only large consumer interface for Zcash. So, the numbers we see on blockchain can be partially attributed to Zecwallet.

@Dodger

Secondly, what more do you think ZF should be doing?

Something I love for all Zcash organizations to do, dedicate good amount of time in identifying things that bring more users to Zcash with honest messaging. ECC promised they are going to work on a wallet (users might consider this as first party Zcash wallet & start using it vs other 3rd party wallets). ZCG is putting RFPs to make it easy for users to run Zcashd / Zebrad.

To answer your question, What more can ZF do? (what would I do if I have full autonomy at ZF)

1. Solve “Optional Privacy” myth about Zcash. I seriously think Zcash will see more usage if we move needle in this dimension.
2. Increased alignment with ECC. An example: ECC is onboard with PoS but ZF is not because it wants to explore other consensus approaches. It is hard to change consensus algorithm of a working network (Ethereum PoW to PoS) even if all client teams are onboard, it is even harder / would delay the deployment timeline when both client teams don’t agree with each other.
3. Continue proactively influencing Zcash ecosystem partners to get big ticket items done. Ledger is a good example. Sometimes ecosystem needs little push, escalation & follow up.
4. While ECC is focused on wallets that auto shield, I would like to see exchanges adopt latest shielded pool. Want to see ZF take concrete actions on this. Side note: I’m not sure if FROST is actually a blocker as most exchanges uses some kind of MPC based solution for custody (so the address type won’t matter?). I would reach out to Custody solution providers like Zero Hash, Fireblocks, Anchorage, Coinbase Custody to onboard them to Orchard pool. This makes exchanges easily onboard to shielded pool with a push of a button!

Let me think of more things & share it with you.

Thanks!

[David_Heisenberg]

One thing that just came to mind is the fact that if programmability and other more “smart” features are a basic research problem and therefore don’t warrant a fully fleshed-out roadmap, why were several ZF board members expressing such dismay at the lack of user-facing innovation from Zcash (presumably the ECC)? I suppose I would add the things @secparam @Matthewdgreen @tromer and others were advocating for to the list, if we are putting in requests.

Even if those ideas were “quashed” at the time by ECC, there’s no reason they can’t at least be aspired to be done still. Again, 96% of the world hasn’t touched crypto. It’s not too late.

[dconnolly]

This tool has been so helpful that @conradoplg set it up for the ZcashFoundation Zebra and FROST implementation repos (note that the FROST repo is just tracking changes for our Rust code and does not capture the work we are doing on the FROST IETF specification). Major kudos to @str4d for this tool, I hope that something like it makes its way into project tracking tools elsewhere someday

EDIT: I just saw that Dodger already mentioned this

[Dodger]

@Souptacular

I don’t see @Dodger indicating that. He basically said (in my opinion) the value (price) of ZEC will prosper in a healthy ecosystem that has maximal utility to use the token, so they are focusing on that.

Well put, Hudson! I’m totally going to borrow that language!

[anon2011871]

I’d rather have a crypto asset with a solid technological and community underpinning for long term growth than a coin where the foundation is doing nothing but trying to pump the price all day through overt partnerships and marketing (both of these things are important, but at this stage of Zcash’s growth getting the tech and ecosystem correct trump that).

This is such a poor false dichotomy, seriously low level of discourse. ZF and ECC need to internalize something simple: they are funded by ZEC holders, and they’re judged on results, not on efforts. The asset has performed abysmally, and this needs to be said because we are in the competition for becoming money.

ZF and ECC had a shot at being autonomous, but now comes the era of activist governance. They must give back control to the people that own the network, and actually embrace their functions of stewards. They work for the benefit of the ZEC holders.

I am extremely tired of meme scientific partnerships that end up pushing Zcash a little more into irrelevance. ZK R&D is a huge thing now, the world doesn’t need us to be martyrs. ZF/ECC would be x10 bigger if they had their priorities right and had met some success in the market. Putting ZEC holders (aka the taxpayers) back in control will yield far better outcome for everyone, including the mission, and the citation count of the scientists with conflicts of interests.

[Souptacular]

What would you suggest as the best way to make your vision a reality? My comment was posted in light of the fact that “ZEC taxpayers” are not people who are currently organized into a meaningful group that can direct decisions as far as I know. There are definitely people who claim to hold a lot of ZEC on the forum, but to go through and prove people’s holdings while also correctly weighing a person’s influence based on their holdings would be near impossible and even if it weren’t I am doubtful anyone would step forward to do that. I’m happy to be proven wrong and want to know if you have a plan that would build the necessary organization around ZEC holders as a group making collective decisions.

[noamchom]

One example quickly comes to mind. ECC has spent a running 9% per quarter in a bucket called something along the lines of Growth, Outreach, Marketing, or Education.

Transparency into what that has tangibly been, and how good or bad outcomes are measured (are they measured at all) would be a good start.

Another case study comes to mind, Zcash content on YouTube. Both of Zcash Media and Hanu Dixit recently provided excellent Zcash content and each have driven more than 100,000 views, but the costs paid by ZEC holders were massively different $50,000 vs $500,000

I feel both efforts were a Win for Zcash, but neither proved to be a win for ZEC holders. So have we learned anything? How would the community of ZEC holders conclude to best spend the next $550,000?

[aiyadt]

I’m working on a mechanism to organize ZEC holders in an anon group that can direct decisions. Will share it with the community soon.

[Souptacular]

Amazing! Looking forward to seeing it.

[gottabeJay]

1.When you say ‘neither proved to be a win for ZEC holders’, what do you mean by that?
2. What is ‘a win for ZEC holders’ in your opinion?
3. How do you define ‘win’?

[GGuy]

@noamchom

How would the community of ZEC holders conclude to best spend the next $550,000?

Marketing idea: MrBeast - Spend $1,000,000 of crypto in 60 seconds ?

[tokidoki]

@noamchom

provided excellent Zcash content and each have driven more than 100,000 views, but the costs paid by ZEC holders were massively different $50,000 vs $500,000

I should point out that 100k views on a 3 mins song is different to 100k views on 15 mins documentary. Both efforts are great but be careful with comparing impacts based only on numbers without providing any context to it.

[joshs]

Impact tends to be more powerful when cumulative.

[noamchom]

I conceptually agree with you, but in an empirically measured qualitative sense we have no way to know which sort of view is more positively impactful. Does @ZcashMedia have some analytics that could demonstrate X% of all views stayed for duration >95% of the full video length? Does Hanu have some way to know how much click-through to Zcash Media his 110,000 views generated?

@gottabeJay a win is very simple for ZEC holders. Coin price moves up and stays there. To that definition, the only cohort of ZEC holders who are nominally winning are those who acquired coins between November 2018 to December 2020

Note that in contrast, Developer wins (production of new software features to mainnet) have almost nothing to do with Price. ECC and ZF are both near the finish line for their biggest win since the creation of the network back in 2016, but if I was trying to deduce that from the coin price it would be impossible.