# Tom Howard for ZCG (December 2025) **URL:** \ **Category:** ZCG Elections\ **Created:** [November 21, 2025, 4:52am UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/tom-howard-for-zcg-december-2025/53294 "2025-11-21T04:52:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 1
**Author:** ![thowar2](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/zcash/user_avatar/forum.zcashcommunity.com/thowar2/32/39745_2.png) [@thowar2](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/u/thowar2)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2025, 4:52am UTC](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/tom-howard-for-zcg-december-2025/53294/1 "2025-11-21T04:52:58Z")
I am Tom Howard and I am running for ZCG on a platform of ZEC maximalism and tax efficiency. About Me: - Multi-functional background starting in computer science leading to Entrepreneurship and a history of building and investing (as a VC) in the general crypto ecosystem since ~2017. - As a builder, founded Mosendo DeFi smart wallet, contributed to Maker, UMA and Synthetix. Founded PowerTrade crypto options exchange (backed by Framework, Nascent, CMS). - As a seed investor have overseen ~300 investments across various L1s and within BTC, ETH, and SOL ecosystems. - Active in the Network State ecosystem as an event organizer and writer. - Currently Head of Strategy at CoinList where I occasionally work with political groups to promote pro-crypto and pro-privacy policies in US government. - [Twitter](https://x.com/_TomHoward). [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/thowar2/). Conflict of interest disclosures: - My work at CoinList generally does not cross with anything Zcash related. - Via my investments and CoinList I likely have economic exposure to other privacy tools or L1s. As far as I know they do not meet the standards for store of value asset as I define for Zcash below. - I have no formal role or economic interest with any Zcash related organizations. - I hold ZEC. My contributions to Zcash: - Vocal Zcash advocate [on Twitter](https://x.com/search?q=from%253A_TomHoward%20zcash&src=typed_query). - Hosted a few well attended Zcash events: [May ‘25](https://luma.com/wmt156mx), [June ‘25](https://luma.com/szvpwqrx). - Have personally been onboarding various “crypto natives” to Zashi and have actively pitched ZEC to crypto funds and institutional investors since the beginning of this year. My vision: - Zcash is the self sovereign store of value Satoshi envisioned but never completed. Full privacy of money is required to have true separation of money and state. ZEC is the natural successor to BTC as money. - Fork based consensus is required to ensure sovereign money is never corrupted by a formal governance. Therefore I lean against things like proof of stake or formal voting on consensus changes. - Exogenous assets typically break fork based consensus, therefore I lean against things like Turing complete scripting, ZSAs, oracles, or other mechanisms that can be used to subvert ZEC as money. Though [c-node has recently convinced me](https://x.com/_TomHoward/status/1989077019167191478?s=20) of scenarios where they may be compatible. My priorities: - We need to scale ASAP. Support tachyon. Support consensus work that maintains sovereign security and improves scale. Support all the surrounding infra. - We need to fix infrastructure decay. The Zcash ecosystem is full of bitrot. Projects that were built on old versions of Zcash no longer work. There is no functional full featured open source wallet. There is no full featured explorer. RPC nodes are centralized and may not be private. - We need the Zcash tax (aka dev reward) to be effectively serving token holders through stronger means of error correction and strong accountability on grantees. This means a priority on token holder voting for dev rewards so that inefficiency can be swiftly corrected. - Quantum compute is coming faster than we expected and the Zcash system naturally lends itself to [quantum resistant cryptography](https://x.com/_TomHoward/status/1991544753821790401) where Bitcoin does not. - We need to focus on results for Zcash, not tech for the sake of tech. Nailing the core private money system, improving general ecosystem user experience, and focus on user growth must come first. An R&D budget is important as a fraction of spend but should not be the primary use of dev rewards. R&D needs to be accountable to scoped experiments and defined results. Why I want to serve on ZCG: - I strongly believe that Zcash is our best chance at self sovereign money. - I also believe that inflation/tax is theft, unless everyone paying the tax benefits. - I do not believe that committees, non-profits, or foundations are a good way to spend a tax or a treasury as they lack accountability in various ways. - My goal is to eventually deprecate ZCG to be replaced with onchain token holder votes and delegates. - I am aware that the ecosystem has undergone various interpersonal dramas and bear market doldrums. I am new here since about a year, I don’t care about the past, I am direct, I don’t hold grudges, and I think I am will suited to judge grants based on overall merit for Zcash. I understand my platform may be controversial and I only ask for voters that agree with my platform. I am not interested in representing a different platform. I have made best effort to provide the principles with which I am reasoning from and may change my conclusions when presented with better evidence. I understand the responsibilities of ZCG Members. I am running to ensure we all win. --- _[View the full topic](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/tom-howard-for-zcg-december-2025/53294)._