ZCash Angels

Technology zcashd client
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Just finished Ryan Watkins’ Decentralizing ZCash
https://messari.io/article/decentralizing-zcash

My post is in response to one sentence in Watkins’ piece: “The only outstanding item the community needs to agree upon is whether the ZEF should have independent authority to verify grants or if a new grant review committee should.”
I will make a case for the latter – > I believe it is crucial for a new grant committee to oversee the verification of grant. I refer to this new group as ZCash Angels

5 reasons why ZCash Angels should lead investment decisions:

  1. At least initially, we want a small group of experienced crypto thought-leaders to make investment decisions on behalf of the entire ZCash community. I will not mention names yet - but I have my list (and you’ve heard of these names). A small group of crypto thought-leaders (with skin-in-the-game) will efficiently evaluate top engineering teams that can bring real value to the ZCash ecosystem.
  2. Although there will be many forms of public blockchain governance in the future, at this moment in time ZCash has the advantage of seeing what hasn’t been working… community voting (1coin/1vote kind of thing) has not been working and has proven to mis-allocate resources… terribly inefficient. We want a small, nimble group at the helm that can run a tight ship and allocate resources into the most talented teams and engineers.
  3. Most of the ZCash Angels will be people who already lead cutting edge blockchain companies and crypto investment firms. We want these people to be integral parts of the ZCash community because they have strong networks and ties to both traditional finance and academia. They can help with not only enhancing technological advancement, but also institutional and retail adoption.
  4. We need a small, lean group of people who have experience structuring term sheets and operating agreements with new companies. The companies that are funded by ZCash block rewards need to be contractually bound to building leading tech products/services for the betterment of the ZCash protocol. It is crucial that terms are structured correctly before making an investment (aka wasting block rewards).
  5. The ZEF and ZCash community at large does not know what is best to invest in at this early stage in crypto – just like you would depend on a doctor’s advice if you were sick, we should depend on the advice and experience of ZCash Angels to make investment decisions on behlaf of the ZCash protocol and community.

I will wait to see if there is positive response to this post before putting forth my list of people for ZCash Angels. I have 10 names in mind.

Thank you.

3 Likes
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Hi @defiwoof and welcome to the forums!

There is currently much conversation on the major grants portion of the development fund in a existing thread, I would suggest first start reading there to see where things are at: Major Grants committee - #117 by zooko

Feel free to communicate your ideas in that thread as well :wink:

(Oh, and P.S.: it’s spelled Zcash not ZCash)

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Thank you - just pasted this post on that thread.

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I was actually going to post at the time when I read this article that ZEF is a typo, it implies Zcash Foundation but that’s not the right acronym (ZF or ZFND)
And furthermore the question also implies that it’s not answered which it is
That’s all I have to say about this