Below please find the latest ZCG meeting minutes and Public Dashboard link.
Attendance:
- Amber
- Brian
- Gguy
- Jason
- Michael
- Alex (ZF resource)
- Dan (ZF resource)
- Jack (ZF resource)
- Deidra M (notetaker)
Key Takeaways:
- Open Grant Proposals
- Nym: Network Privacy For Zcash - This grant needs to be revised before ZCG can vote.
- Zcash SDK Implementation [JS/TS] - The Chainsafe team will edit this proposal before the committee can vote.
- Hybrid GRPC & Tor Network Connectivity for Light Wallets - This proposal is to be withdrawn by Hanh.
- Zenith Full Node Wallet - This grant will remain open as further discussion and information are needed.
- Zcash Wallet Community Developer 2024 - ZCG unanimously approved this grant for three months.
- Coin Voting / Shielded Airdrop / Proof of Balance - This grant is too early to be voted on.
- Brainstorm Session Follow-Ups
- Budget - The committee reviewed with Jack how the ZCG treasury is hedged.
- Underperforming Grants - ZCG is reviewing inactive or underperforming grants in order to cut costs.
- Process for confirming milestone completion - The committee asked for clarification on how ZF determines whether milestone deliverables are completed.
- 2024 Priorities - ZCG will focus mainly on coin holder voting, the Ecosystem Security Lead role, and DEX support this year.
Open Grant Proposals
- Nym: Network Privacy for Zcash - This grant is from Nym, who is applying together with the NightHawk and Zingo teams (as passthrough grants) to integrate the Nym mixnet into Zcash wallets to provide Zcash network-level privacy. The current ask is for $670,000. ZCG has been in touch with Harry and the Nym team are willing to make concessions to get the cost down to something more reasonable.
- The committee had a call with the Nym team on Jan.12 and a follow-up discussion via Signal last week, and they explained to them that ZCG liked the idea of mobile wallets having network-level privacy. However, because of the budget, the committee needs to get the cost of the grant down.
- The Nym team will reduce the grant’s scope to approximately $100,000 and focus on a lightwalletd and possible Zashi integration.
- The committee asked them to edit the grant to scope it down and revise the budget, post the revised grant to the Discord R&D to get feedback from the core engineering teams, and then repost the revised proposal and budget to the forum. Once that is complete, ZCG will proceed with the regular review process.
- Zcash SDK Implementation [JS/TS] - This proposal is from Chainsafe. They’re asking $300,000 to implement and maintain a TypeScript SDK to enable more Zcash capabilities in-browser. They say that this project should provide groundwork and serve as a feasibility test for the development of a Zcash MetaMask Snap as well as a Web wallet that would utilize the Metamask Snap as a secure enclave for user keys. Their goal is to give the millions of MetaMask users access to Zcash, which will help grow adoption and usability.
- ZCG had a call with the Chainsafe team last week. The committee raised some concerns about the project’s viability, namely that a few different teams have tried to build a similar browser tool and failed, so they asked them to submit a smaller, exploratory grant to investigate whether the solution they are trying to implement is possible. ZCG also explained the budget situation to the Chainsafe team and that, currently, ZCG is only funding essential projects.
- ChainSafe understood the situation and plan to submit a much smaller grant.
- Dan is working with them to open their proposal in Submittable for editing, and they’ll revise it from there. In the meantime, ZCG will keep this grant open.
- Hybrid GRPC & Tor Network Connectivity for Light Wallets - Hanh is asking for $150,000 to improve network privacy by enabling wallets to connect to lightwallet servers via TOR. The issue this solves is Light wallets currently connect to servers using GRPC, which gather information about their users, like IP addresses and TXIDs.
- The committee reached out to Hanh privately. Amber messaged him on the forum and asked him to submit a proposal for coinholder voting since ZCG has limited funding and said coinholder voting would be a high-priority project for 2024.
- ZCG asked him to withdraw this Tor grant but said that they would be open to this project in the future, depending on finances.
- Hanh submitted a grant for coinholder voting over the weekend, and now ZCG is waiting for him to withdraw this Tor grant.
- Dan and Deidra M will work with Hanh on the backend to ensure his grant is withdrawn properly.
- Zenith Full Node Wallet - Jason summarized this grant. Rene (aka Pitmutt) is asking for $124,800 to create a modern full-node wallet with support for Unified Addresses, Unified Viewing Keys, payment URIs, and a built-in address book to run alongside a zebra full node.
- The committee asked Rene to get feedback from the Zcash Foundation’s Zebra team before ZCG decides. Rene attended the Aborist call on January 11 and is now in contact with Pili, who offered to arrange a call with the Zebra team if they have any questions.
- ZCG is not ready to vote on this grant yet and will keep it open for discussion at their next brainstorm session.
- Zcash Wallet Community Developer 2024 - Jason gave the background for this proposal. This grant is from Pacu, who served as the Zcash Wallet Community Developer from September to December 2023. This grant is a continuation for the next three months at a rate of $15,000 per month. He originally applied through November, but the committee asked him to make it for three months, given the current budget situation, and ZCG would assess continuing it from there.
- Pacu will continue to help ecosystem wallet teams like NightHawk and Zingo with their development initiatives. He will host the Light Client Working Group calls, and he’ll also be helping out on the Binance issue, specifically about working with wallet developers and exchanges to implement the necessary updates.
- ZCG discussed this grant at their brainstorm session and agreed to approve it for three months. Jason asked the committee members to get their votes/thoughts on record. Michael said he thinks Pacu’s efforts have been tangible and a great resource to ZCG and other teams and voted to approve. Brian agreed, said he felt Pacu had made himself an essential asset in the ecosystem, and voted to approve. Amber, GGuy, and Jason agreed and voted to approve.
- Separately, ZCG agreed to fund Pacu’s attendance at Zeboot. This funding is not a part of this grant but will be expensed from ZCG’s discretionary budget. He’ll book everything himself and then submit an invoice to Danika for reimbursement.
- Coin Voting / Shielded Airdrop / Proof of Balance - Jason outlined this grant. This is the proposal Jason referred to in the Tor grant submitted by Hanh. It’s for $200,000 and allows holders to prove they own a certain amount of coins without revealing their holdings or transaction history. Proof of balance has several applications, including shielded airdrops and coinholder voting.
- Hanh posted this grant and a video presentation to the forum over the weekend.
- The committee will discuss this grant in detail during the next brainstorm session.
Brainstorm Session Follow-Ups
- Budget
- Earlier this year, ZCG put the Global Ambassador Program on hold and cut the Outreach Coordinator role. They are also reviewing specific grants that are inactive or underperforming.
- Jason asked about how ZF hedges with their treasury also being in Zec and any advice. Jack said there are two key ways that ZF handles this:
- ZF hedges into USD in case so that if a worst-case scenario happens (e.g. the entire cryptocurrency market collapses to zero), ZF would still have some runway so it could continue to function in the short-term and shut down in an orderly manner if that became necessary.
- ZF also hedges into Bitcoin in case specific action is taken that affects Zcash but not the wider cryptocurrency sector, like a ban on privacy coins.
- Jack told the committee that he and the original ZOMG committee discussed hedging options back when the committee first started making grants, and the approach that has been taken ever since is to hedge into USD to ensure that ZCG will always be able to cover its outstanding grant liabilities.
- Jack referenced the Zcash Community Dashboard to show how ZF does this. When a grant is approved, ZF sells ZEC for USD so that the amount of USD held in the treasury roughly matches the amount of outstanding grant liabilities. When milestones are paid out, this may lead to a USD surplus, in which case ZF may buy back ZEC to reduce the surplus.
- Jack said that he and ZF pay close attention to the ZCG minutes to get a feel for what grants are coming down the pipe and might be approved in the near future to avoid buying back ZEC unnecessarily just to sell it again. He also said he is available if ZCG has other questions about this topic.
- Jason said the committee would discuss the strategy of keeping the USD as is, from the recently canceled grants, or buying back Zec and applying it to the upcoming grants ZCG may want to approve soon.
- Jason suggested that ZOMG’s approach of hedging out all outstanding liabilities should continue. Jack and the remaining ZCG committee members agreed.
- Underperforming Grants
- ZCG is reviewing underperforming grants that have yet to materialize or are inactive in order to cut costs. Earlier this year, ZCG put the Global Ambassador Program on hold and terminated the Outreach Coordinator role.
- Two grants have already been canceled, Shielded Dialogues and halo2 docs improvement. Their remaining grant milestones will not be paid out.
- Other grants on ZCG’s radar to be canceled are the halo2 Community Manager grant and the Zcash Thorchain Integration Grant.
- Halo2 Community Grant - Ying Tong may be willing to withdraw this grant altogether as this turned out differently than expected. Amber will follow up with Ying Tong about this cancellation, and then Dan will provide support if any steps are needed in the Submittable grants platform.
- Zcash Thorchain Integration Grant - This grant has had little traction since 2021. Adi has not been responsive to ZCG’s outreach to understand the current roadblocks the Thorchain team may be facing and an update in general. Jason posed a question to ZCG: Given the current budget, the urgency around having DEX support, and Maya’s eagerness to support shielded ZEC, how should the committee move forward?
- ZCG recognizes the urgent need for DEX support given the Binance issue and recent delistings from exchanges like OKX. ZCG has been communicating with the Maya Protocol team, who are interested in integrating Zcash. ZCG considered two options: either request the NH team to switch their focus from Thorchain to Maya, utilizing the existing code, or find a new team for the Maya integration. ZCG attempted to contact the NH team for an update and to discuss the potential shift to Maya. However, after two weeks, they were unable to establish significant contact or arrange a meeting. Considering the critical need for DEX support and the NH team’s slow progress with Thorchain integration since 2021, ZCG believes the NH team is not suitable for leading this project. ZCG is looking for other developers to achieve Maya integration promptly. As a result, ZCG has decided to terminate NH’s grant in order to expedite the DEX integration process.
- On Friday, Michael posted to the forum: “After several attempts to communicate with Adi and the Nighthawk team over the past two weeks, with no meaningful response, and in light of the slow progress on the Thorchain grant since its approval in November 2021, the Zcash Community Grants committee has unanimously decided to cancel the remaining milestones of this grant, which total $103,304.ZCG recognizes the urgent need for DEX support for Zcash and is committed to exploring alternative solutions to meet this need.”
- Process for confirming milestone completion
- The committee wanted clarification on how ZF determines milestone deliverables are completed.
- Jack confirmed that he evaluates and approves the milestones for each grant. He said he looks at what the grantee is expected to deliver and then looks for evidence that they have completed it. If he doesn’t feel that the milestone has been delivered as per the grant, he would escalate to the committee.
- Jack added that when it comes to software development, ZF does not have the capability to compile and test code for each milestone. Demos can be used as evidence that work has been completed, or, if there is no demo available, Jack looks for evidence that the work has been done, such as the existence of code or pull requests in Github.
- The committee wanted clarification on how ZF determines milestone deliverables are completed.
- 2024 Priorities
- ZCG wanted their 2024 priorities on record. The main foci are the Ecosystem Security Lead role, DEX support, and coin-holder voting.
