Zcash Community Grants Meeting Minutes 10/12/2026

Community Grants Community Grants Updates
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Grant Dashboard

Openzash

Zcash Community Grants Committee Google Meet Meeting: October 12, 2026

Attendance:

  • Artkor

  • Zerodartz

  • Paul

  • Hanh

  • Gguy

  • Alex (FPF resource, notetaker)

All votes this week were unanimous.

Key Takeaways:

Open Grant Proposals

  • P2P Cash-to-ZEC Onboarding via Bank CDMs

    • Applicant requests a grant to build a cash-deposit-machine (CDM) based P2P ZEC on/off-ramp for India — physical cash at bank kiosks paired with shielded ZEC payouts to unified addresses, using NEAR smart contract escrow, a $10,000 bootstrapped liquidity pool, and a ZEC buyback treasury funded by protocol fees. Requesting $40,500.

      • Artkor: We have another proposal on today’s agenda, 0xramp, which addresses a similar problem and is already further along in development. I’m leaning toward supporting 0xramp. I understand this proposal focuses on a specific problem in India and takes a different approach, but at this stage, especially given the legal uncertainty, I don’t think we need parallel solutions before we’ve seen real results in this area. So I would respectfully decline this one.

      • Paul: I share the concerns around the banking aspect and the legal feasibility. I agree this is not something we should be funding at this time.

      • Hanh: the applicant proposes to operate atm machines to dispense and accept cash. They don’t mention what agreement and license they have. As it is, it looks unregulated.

      • Zerodartz: Overall I would like to see more on and offramps. I agree with Artkor that this project seems to be in very early stages. Right now it’s a decline from me.

      • Declined

  • Bitcointalk Signature Campaign & ZEC Community Engagement

    • Applicant requests a grant for a 3-month Bitcointalk signature campaign — 40 high-rank accounts (Legendary, Hero, Sr. Member) carrying a Zcash banner for 12 weeks (~14,400 banner-carrying posts), plus three monthly ZEC price prediction contests ($1,000 prize pool each, entries requiring a shielded address). Requesting $90,000.

      • Artkor: This type of signature campaign used to be extremely popular, and many of the projects promoted that way later turned out to be scams. That’s exactly why I feel so negative about this type of advertising, and I definitely don’t want to see Zcash promoted this way.

      • Zerodartz: I also don’t see the value of this in 2026. Decline.

      • Gguy: Yup, agreed.

      • Hanh: This would make ZEC appear like one of these pump & dump sh*tcoin.

      • Declined async

  • Zcash Africa Privacy Engineering Residency Pilot

    • Applicant proposes a 6-month Zcash Africa Privacy Engineering Residency Pilot — a staged funnel from online discovery (150+ applicants → 75 foundation) through technical academy (40), physical residency in Lagos (25), build challenge (10–15 teams, 5–8 prototypes), and 3 months post-residency support — targeting privacy-preserving payment use cases for African contexts (mobile money, remittances, merchant payments, aid). Requesting $49,000.

      • Artkor: I think we’ve already funded similar initiatives in this region. It’s hard for me to judge how successful they’ve been in growing Zcash adoption and awareness, because these things take time to develop. But I don’t think we can fund every similar proposal that comes along. So I’m leaning toward declining this one.

      • Paul: I’m generally very much in favor of supporting local initiatives. This is interesting, but I would need high confidence in the team and their track record, and I don’t have that yet.

      • Zerodartz: I also haven’t seen any community feedback, which I would like to see, since there are people in this region already doing work and nobody has responded on the forum. I would like to see this team’s track record on a small scale before funding anything larger like this project is.

      • Hanh: No track record and little information about the team

      • Gguy: Agreed.

      • Declined

  • Independent Recomputation of the Zcash Supply Ledger, including the NU7 NSM Reserve

    • Applicant requests a grant to build an independent NSM reserve and supply accounting tool — a command-line recomputer fed only raw block bytes (getblock 0), reconciled height-by-height against Zebra and Zakura, with test vectors for ZIP 259’s open “Add reference implementations and test vectors” issue, a full-history ledger, Testnet/Mainnet NU7 block-by-block reconciliation, and a proposal to run daily verification after Zebra’s weekly Mainnet sync. Requesting $50,000.

      • Artkor: I think this proposal is far too expensive these days. I believe Astra could write an algorithm like this and verify Zcash’s entire issuance in just a few minutes. I decline.

      • Hanh: They don’t validate blocks or transactions. They just tally up the funds that go through the turnstiles. That’s quite easy to do.

      • Zerodartz: Ask is big and I haven’t seen any feedback that would say this is needed. Decline from me.

      • Declined

  • Mexico Tech Week October 2026 - Zcash México

    • Applicant proposes a ~50-person masquerade-themed Zcash community event on October 31 as part of México Tech Week — introductory talk, expert privacy panel, ZEC quiz with prizes, live music, costume contest, networking with food/drinks, and ZEC distribution to attendees — pre-approved on the México Tech Week calendar pending venue confirmation. Requesting $6,380.

      • Artkor: Palmar has been an active member of the Zcash community for years. He was building the community in Mexico long before he received any grant funding. I definitely want ZCG to support people who show this kind of commitment and initiative.

      • Zerodartz: Team has proven track record and it’s a growing region for Zcash. I’d like to see feedback and lessons learned after the event. Approve from me.

      • Approved async

  • Zcash Privacy Ecosystem Mapping & Adoption Data

    • Applicant requests a grant to close the measurement gaps explicitly flagged in the June 2026 summit edition — live wallet testing on real devices with real funds (time-to-first-shielded-transaction, proof generation time, sync behavior, error rates), reproducible derivation of the shielded adoption figure, and an updated ecosystem mapping — published as standalone open datasets under CC BY 4.0. Requesting $5,000.

      • Paul: I see so many great analytics tools for Zcash popping up almost every week these days, and I’m not sure I see the need for this additional effort. More is better and I’d love to see more, but I’m not sure ZCG should be funding more given what is already available.

      • Artkor: I agree. I declined this proposal because I think this kind of work should be handled entirely through ZecHub and funded through its bounty program.

      • Hanh: The previous report wasn’t particularly impressive. It was rather superficial with overall statistics. You’d get better data on Zechub.

      • Zerodartz: I think there could be some value in this but I agree it seems it is more aligned with what ZecHub already does in some ways. A bigger bounty work or many small bounties for different tasks of this might be better there.

      • Declined

  • Zcash Türkiye University Tour 2026 — ZCG Grant Proposal

    • Applicant proposes a 10-university pilot campus tour (~3,360 km across Istanbul, Bursa, Kayseri, Elazığ, Muş, and Van over ~30 days) — Zcash 101 presentations, Zodl wallet setup with first shielded transaction, starter ZEC incentive, quiz, networking, and a Campus Representative selected from each university with a follow-up online event within 30 days. Requesting $27,000.

      • Artkor: I believe this is a good initiative. We received additional confirmation from Batuhan that the team had put a lot of work into preparing it before coming to ZCG. I wish them all the best and look forward to seeing the results of these university events.

      • Gguy: I’m really excited to see this. We haven’t had a team go to this effort of promoting Zcash at multiple universities like this. This team has a good track record so I’m excited to see how it goes.

      • Zerodartz: I think it will be great to see the results afterward. Since this team has delivered consistently on the different projects they have done. University students are a good target audience for this.

      • Paul: I concur with all the positive comments. I’m convinced this target market of universities and students interested in cryptocurrency is extremely valuable for our ecosystem. These individuals are at a time when they are soaking up lots of information, which makes it a perfect time to onboard them. I would love to see more of this kind of activity.

      • Approved async

  • Zcash Global Community & Marketing Operations

    • Applicant requests a 4-month grant for ecosystem-wide community and marketing operations support — campaign planning, content distribution, cross-community collaborations, partnership outreach, KPI establishment, and documentation — working with existing Zcash projects rather than building a competing community. Requesting $12,000.

      • Gguy: I don’t think this is something Zcash should be investing in right now.

      • Zerodartz: This could be useful, but it would need a lot of pre-work with other communities first, and I’m not sure it’s realistically possible. I’m declining this one, but I could see potential in something similar in the future. We do need more synchronizing between communities on what they do and should focus on. But still keep it decentralized so that each region and group can add some local customization on top.

      • Artkor: Six months ago, I was still concerned about Zcash marketing because I was worried that the attention around Zcash might fade quickly. But clearly, that hasn’t happened. I think Josh’s regular storytelling is probably some of the best marketing Zcash could have in the entire crypto space. Today, I think Zcash has reached a level of recognition and credibility where community-funded marketing could actually damage how people outside the ecosystem see it, and we need to be careful with that. So I respect the applicant’s experience, but I would decline this proposal.

      • Hanh: I think marketing is a much bigger undertaking than $12,000, and I don’t think they can accomplish anything with this budget. I don’t want to give the impression that ZCG is against marketing; this proposal is just too weak.

      • Gguy: I agree. It’s the form of marketing that is leading me to decline today.

      • Declined

  • 0xramp: ZEC payments and wallet integrations

    • Applicant responds to the five specific September 14 objections — reducing scope from $206K/12 months to $45K/16 weeks, dropping hires, adding itemized milestones, documenting the Zcash-specific PAY function (ZEC-only, ZIP-321 handoff, Noir Wallet integration), publishing risk disclosures, and naming Zingo Labs as a co-building partner on the SDK integration — with 357 completed orders and $25,533 USDC settled volume as of September 27 across 12 corridors. Requesting $45,000.

      • Artkor: These are developers we know well. They already have a working product, an open-source SDK under development, and a clear plan to expand testing in Brazil. I have confidence in this team, and if the project succeeds, other teams could build on their work in different markets. I support the proposal.

      • Gguy: Congratulations on this team coming back with a stronger proposal and addressing a lot of our concerns. I think this is a really good value proposal.

      • Zerodartz: Onramping and offramping is a crucial part of getting more people comfortable investing in and using Zcash. I like that they are already operating in multiple regions. While I still have some concerns about multiple risks, this proposal has reduced some of the risks that were there previously. I’m ready to approve and would like to see risks very visible to end users when starting a swap.

      • Approved

  • zswap by stalllion labs

    • Applicant requests a grant to produce a specification and testnet proof-of-concept for an adaptor-signature-based atomic swap over RedPallas — using orchard::pczt::Action::apply_signature as the integration hook, with cross-curve secret compatibility and lock/reveal ordering formally proven before any production implementation is requested. Requesting $50,000.

      • Artkor: Our committee discussions have mostly focused on the technical side, and we also tried to understand whether there’s real demand for atomic swaps when we already have convenient swap services with available liquidity and prices very close to market rates. After that discussion, I wasn’t sure if we should support projects like this in general. But in this particular case, I’m leaning toward declining because I’m not convinced this team has the experience needed to deliver it; from what I found, the team members are mostly involved in programming courses, web3 training, and hackathons.

      • Gguy: I’m very bullish on atomic swaps and their usefulness going forward. But as we’ve seen throughout cryptocurrency history, just because the tech exists in some form doesn’t mean it leads to adoption or is the right solution for the problem at hand. There are many layers beyond delivering on the technical problem, and with the solution proposed in this application I don’t think most of them will be addressed here. I have to decline.

      • Hanh: There are two factors. One is the market need and how to provide sufficient liquidity, especially compared to solutions like NEAR Intents, which are nearly at par with centralized exchanges. The other is that the applicant used AI to get a sense of how to do this but didn’t fully understand the problem, and when challenged the answers were not good. It reads like a melting pot of different articles that doesn’t tie together, and there are flaws that are not solved at all. You would need a solid white paper. There are too many red flags.

      • Zerodartz: It’s a decline from me, since the applicants even mention in the risk section that the team’s background does not explicitly demonstrate private and applied cryptography delivery. This reduces my trust in this team close to 0.

      • Declined

  • Nozy Sync Engine public

    • Applicant requests a grant to harden and operate a public-ready CompactTxStreamer endpoint built on the already-landed Phase 1+2 work — adding TLS termination, bind hardening, rate limits, health endpoints, remaining RPC methods needed by Nozy/Zeaking/mobile clients, production monitoring with uptime evidence, and a zero-indexer integration or explicit deferred-gate with honest IP privacy disclosure. Requesting $45,000.

      • Artkor: Honestly I’d like to support this independent developer, but I don’t think we’d be funding anything fundamentally new here. I agree with declining.

      • Gguy: When I review proposals like this, it comes down to what added value we are providing to the Zcash community and its users, and I haven’t found that articulated in this proposal. I’m declining today.

      • Zerodartz: I respect this developer and would like to see them continue working on different Zcash projects, but this proposal doesn’t seem unique or important enough for Zcash right now.

      • Paul: I decline as well for all the same reasons.

      • Declined

  • Zcash Privacy Payment Rail & NFC Programmable Cards

    • Applicant proposes a grant to build open-source shielded Zcash payment infrastructure — diversified Orchard addresses per checkout, zec-watcher monitoring mempool/chain for note detection, confirmation tracking with reorg/underpayment/overpayment/refund handling, merchant-configurable ZEC retention vs. fiat settlement via aggregated treasury swaps, viewing-key-based selective disclosure, and an open-source NFC component for ZEC Tap Cards. Requesting $150,000.

      • Gguy: We’ve received a few proposals similar to this in the past, and it’s very hard for us to fund proposals like this.

      • Artkor: We already reviewed a proposal from Blink back in May, and at the time I voted to decline because I couldn’t verify their adoption numbers and the product was at a very early stage. I can see they’ve changed the approach, but now they’re asking for $150,000 instead of $100,000, including $50,000 upfront. Most of the increase is in developer compensation, and I’m not convinced that this is justified here. To me, this feels a bit like paying to put a product on a store shelf. But I’m not even sure there’s a shelf here, because I still don’t see enough evidence of real demand. So my position hasn’t changed. I decline this proposal.

      • Hanh: There’s not much difference between this one and CipherPay or BTCPay Server. When they were challenged to explain the difference, they turned around and said they are like Stripe or PayPal, which is a huge scope. I don’t think they’re going to make it. It’s not clear at all, since they don’t provide any information.

      • Zerodartz: The main problem for me is that it relies too much on third parties, and the NFC card part is not secure enough and doesn’t use Zcash directly from a user controlled wallet but goes through multiple hoops before landing the merchants. Decline.

      • Paul: I love the idea. But for it to be successful it would need an exceptionally influential team with a track record that gives a clear likelihood of success, and I don’t have that sense with this project.

      • Declined

  • ZKP-cryptography course

    • Applicant requests a grant for an intensive ZK cryptography course in Belgrade targeting math/CS students and olympiad-level high schoolers, followed by an open Zero-Knowledge Hackathon — with 150+ prior completions over three years, positioned as the only dedicated ZK cryptography program in Southeast Europe. Requesting $5,000.

      • Gguy: We’ve seen similar things before. It’s very niche, and it’s hard to see where this will be useful to the community broadly for any significant amount of time.

      • Artkor: I believe this proposal comes from a really impressive team of experienced lecturers, and we can all agree that $5,000 is a reasonable amount. But this is a general cryptography course, not a Zcash course. Zcash is only mentioned in the last lesson and there are no specific outcomes for our ecosystem. It’s a very good educational program, but we are a bunch of die-hard Zcash fans here at ZCG, so please forgive me, I will decline.

      • Hanh: I would like to see a solid course that leads to Tachyon, or at least to Halo. This one takes a massive detour through technologies that we don’t use. The ZK domain is very large and there are new developments quite often, so something targeted for Zcash could easily fill a 10-week course. I would approve it if it were building Halo from scratch.

      • Zerodartz: I agree with others. It’s a decline.

      • Gguy: To clarify, as Hanh said, if this proposal focuses less on historical ZK tech and leaned more into more recent ZK advances I would definitely be more interested. Bridging the gap between the broader zero-knowledge proof and more relevant proving systems like Tachyon would be very interesting.

      • Declined

End of Part 1

2 Likes
Grant Application - Tells: a privacy checkup for Zcash wallets
Hito Zcash: Stable Firmware, Internal Security Review, and Maintenance
Grant Application - Zcash Shielded Payments: An English/Korean Research Report
Travel Support for Devcon 8 Mumbai — Speaker, Curator, Performer (ZK-Music)
ZSwap: A Shielded Atomic Swap Specification for Zcash — Grant Application & Request for Review
Grant Application: Zcash Global Community & Marketing Operations
Grant Application - Independent Recomputation of the Zcash Supply Ledger, including the NU7 NSM Reserve
Grant Application - Zcash Africa Privacy Engineering Residency Pilot — Web3Bridge
Grant Application - P2P Cash-to-ZEC Onboarding via Bank CDMs
Grant Application: ZKP & Cryptography Course – 4th Edition
Grant Application - Fixing & Updating of Zcash Documentation (https://zcash.readthedocs.io/en/master/index.html)
Grant Application — VKX Wallet: Native Shielded Zcash Integration & Open-Source React Native Module
Grant Application - Zcash Privacy Ecosystem Mapping & Adoption Data
Grant Application — Nozy Sync Engine: public CompactTxStreamer in front of Zebrad
Grant Application - Zcash Privacy Payment Rail & NFC Programmable Cards
Zcash Community Grants Application VaihtoFX: Shielded ZEC On/Off-Ramp via M-Pesa & Airtel Money in Kenya
Grant Application: Build Buddies x Zcash — Privacy Education and Community Adoption in Latin America and Asia
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Part 2

  • VaihtoFX: Shielded ZEC On/Off-Ramp via M-Pesa & Airtel Money in Kenya

    • Applicant requests a 6-month forward grant (December 2026–May 2027) to build an open-source shielded ZEC orchestration layer connecting to Kenya’s M-Pesa and Airtel Money via existing swap infrastructure (ZEC→USDC) and a licensed fiat conversion partner — delivering ZIP-321 payment requests, idempotent transaction state machine, webhook verification, refund/failure handling, reconciliation, and modular adapters — with a CipherPay merchant demonstration, Swahili/Somali educational materials, and two Nairobi workshops. Requesting $132,092.

      • Paul: I’m very concerned about the first hurdle being regulatory classification. I think that is unlikely to turn out positive, and I’m not interested in spending our funds to find out in Kenya.

      • Artkor: I agree. I like the practical focus of this proposal, and the team has real experience in fintech and payment systems. But based on what I’ve read, I don’t think the proposal is developed enough at this stage to give us confidence that it will get past the regulatory stage. They also don’t have a confirmed currency conversion partner yet, which is a very important part of making this work. I don’t think ZCG should pay for a private company’s licensing preparations before they can show that the project is actually feasible. I decline.

      • Gguy: If there were more certainty and a higher likelihood of success I’d be more in favor, but there are a lot of hurdles to overcome and we’re not ready to fund something this uncertain.

      • Hanh: For this kind of project, the baseline they should demonstrate first is the ability to receive USDT or USDC, or any crypto, and convert it to local currency, without users losing funds or being locked out. Once we know that works, we can integrate Zcash. Zcash is not the main difficulty; that conversion is the bottleneck.

      • Zerodartz: Seems like a very new project and new team without any strong track record. Decline.

      • Declined

  • Fixing and Updating of Zcash Documentation

    • Applicant requests $40,904 over 12 weeks to fix, update, and rebrand zcash.readthedocs.io — repairing ~60 dead links out of 262 external URLs, updating outdated references (some pointing to 2019/2020 projects), rewriting documentation, adding agentic handover documents (llm.txt, agent.md), and updating UX/UI to match current Zcash branding.

      • Artkor: I think the idea itself is very good, but many of these broken links are due to the transition to a new generation of nodes, and even after a full update I think this documentation will quickly become outdated. The budget also seems too high for this kind of work in the AI era. Reject for me.

      • Hanh: I think the plan for the ZODL team is to take it down and point toward newer documentation.

      • Zerodartz: Yea since Zcashd is deprecated this documentation is not used anymore as I understand. Also the budget seems on the high side for this kind of work. I have seen core teams improving other documentation recently for Zebrad and other projects. Decline.

      • Declined

  • Build Buddies x Zcash: Privacy Education and Community Adoption in Latin America and Asia

    • Applicant requests $10,000 over 3 months to deliver 20 in-person privacy education events across Latin America and Asia (up to 510 verified attendees) — standardized curriculum, optional wallet onboarding, at least 2 developer/technical sessions, and a reusable Activation Kit — powered by Build Buddies’ existing network of 500+ events across 9 countries.

      • Artkor: I encourage this team to connect with ZecHub and local Zcash communities in those regions first, maybe organize a joint event or a small Zcash workshop, share their experience with validators and DeFi, and get more involved in our community. I decline this proposal in its current form, but I think a future proposal would be worth considering once they’ve gained some experience working with Zcash.

      • Gguy: Agreed.

      • Zerodartz: It’s a bit too early for this applicant, since they don’t have yet a proven track record with Zcash yet. Otherwise budget would be quite reasonable. If they start small and prove themselves first, they could come back later.

      • Hanh: The one thing I’m interested in is the reusable activation kit, a package we can reuse to onboard new communities. I also find it strange that they picked Latin America and Asia, which are pretty far apart geographically, and I wonder how they would organize these events. A good-quality reusable guide that they contribute to ZecHub, or build with ZecHub, would be valuable. It seems every meetup or local community designs its own materials. We could have one solid package and just have it translated.

      • Zerodartz: I don’t think so. We definitely should have something like that to get started fast for new people.

      • Gguy: Right, we can follow up on that.

      • Declined

  • Tells: a privacy checkup for Zcash wallets

    • Applicant requests $24,000 over ~6 months to harden a working privacy checkup tool for Zcash wallets — a Rust crate (tells-core) with pre-flight warnings before transparent/TEX sends, browser scanning via WebZjs, entry-side crowd size counting, and a weekly aggregate mainnet linkability measure — built on an existing TypeScript prototype with live page and demo video.

      • Artkor: Having a viewing key versus not having one makes a huge difference to how successful this kind of analysis can be. That’s why I don’t believe this tool can provide meaningful conclusions about what an outside observer could actually see. The privacy recommendations for moving between shielded pools and transparent addresses are already well known, and I believe wallet teams took them into account when implementing their migration to Ironwood. For example, if I have a viewing key for an account that went through the migration, I can see its transaction history in detail, while someone without that key sees a completely different picture. I don’t see the value in this proposal. I reject.

      • Gguy: There is a good lesson in this proposal: the power of viewing keys, the value in using them and the associated risks when exposing one. There is probably value in educating new users about how revealing a viewing key affects the users privacy. I don’t think that needs this project, but it’s something I may follow up on because I think it’s an important topic that doesn’t get enough attention.

      • Hanh: The applicant quotes a study from 2017, when the transparent pool held 90% or more of the coins. I don’t think you can link 31% of the coins using this method today. It would be interesting to have an update to this study, but there is a part of this that uses old statistics to make people afraid. I also agree that asking for the viewing key defeats the purpose.

      • Zerodartz: Agree with others that a separate tool seems unnecessary. Decline.

      • Declined

  • Hito Zcash: Stable Firmware, Internal Security Review, and Maintenance

    • Applicant requests $88,000 over ~16 months to replace the flash-constrained Slint UI with hito-ui, complete iOS integration, conduct internal security review, release, and maintain the Hito Zcash hardware wallet for 12 months — with prior $50,000 grant (#280) fully completed and paid, all three milestone repos public.

      • Hanh: I would reject this one. They have to demonstrate that their product works and has a sufficient number of users before they come and ask for a grant of this magnitude. I don’t understand why you need to optimize when you don’t even know it’s working for users. It’s pretty expensive for optimization, and at the end of the day it doesn’t improve that much.

      • Zerodartz: I think it’s a good hardware project, but the ask is on high side currently. Decline based on how the current application is but open to something different, since I can see potential in this wallet. Although I have become much much more sceptical about all hardware wallets because of the many different weaknesses and supply chain attacks in recent news about other projects.

      • Hanh: It’s just UI, not even the core. The UI library they use now is not made for that device, so it takes a lot of space and time. They are writing their own UI library for their own device. It’s not even for Zcash, and the UI is not that important.

      • Gguy: I’m finding it hard to understand how this project is going to deliver this wallet. When I go to the website, the buy button is currently not working. I’m not sure how this project is gadging user interest without allowing users to join a waiting list, preorder, or buy their product.

      • Hanh: It’s a very strange grant. They are basically asking us to fund development of a new UI library for their embedded device, because their choice of the current UI framework, Slint, takes too much memory and resources.

      • Declined

  • Zcash Shielded Payments: An English/Korean Research Report

    • Applicant requests $20,000 over 8 weeks to publish one original 15–20 page research report on Zcash shielded payments, in English with a full Korean edition. The report would compare 2–3 documented wallet and payment paths, aimed at Korean blockchain professionals and analysts, and would be distributed through Applicant’s existing X and Telegram channels.

      • Artkor: I wouldn’t approve this grant as it is. It’s basically two things: research and Korean translation. And honestly, I only see value in the second one. We already have plenty of good research in English. Maxim’s Mastering Zcash is a great example. So I’d support Korean localization, but for a much smaller budget, especially with AI making translation much easier these days.

      • Hanh: A 10 to 20 page research report, in these days of AI and with all the material that’s out there, needs to be of extremely good quality, and I don’t know this person. I don’t see the value of making something that is at best for the Korean market.

      • Paul: It’s just too easy to generate these kinds of research reports. The value is not there in my opinion.

      • Zerodartz: Similar thoughts. Decline.

      • Declined

  • VKX Wallet: Native Shielded Zcash Integration & Open-Source React Native Module

    • Applicant requests $48,000 over about 6 months to add native, shielded-by-default Zcash to VKX Wallet, its live multi-chain wallet for Android and iOS built in Brazil. The scope covers Unified Addresses, shielded send/receive, memos, ZIP-321 payment requests and a Portuguese/Spanish/English UI. Applicant would also release the Zcash integration as an MIT-licensed open-source React Native module that other wallets can reuse.

      • Hanh: He doesn’t say anything about how he’s going to do it. If he can do it, it would be fairly interesting, because I don’t think we have any wallet written in React Native. These days they are all either fully native with UniFFI or written in Flutter. React Native was an older choice for wallets; maybe Zingo is the exception. It’s not the easiest path and is a bit old tech too.

      • Zerodartz: This wallet seems to have quite low user count based on wallet downloads. Because of that it doesn’t have that much value for Zcash.

      • Declined

  • Travel Support for Devcon 8 Mumbai — Speaker, Curator, Performer (ZK-Music)

    • Applicant requests $1,000 as a one-time travel stipend to attend Devcon 8 in Mumbai in November 2026. Applicant will be a Music Hub curator/steward, speak at the Agentic Hub, and premiere DIFFUSION Opera, a 5-act sound piece on ZK privacy and biometric sovereignty. The $1,000 splits into $500 for round-trip flights and $500 for 5–6 days of living costs.

      • Zerodartz: This one seems out of scope since there’s no direct Zcash involvement. I think creative art projects are cool and could be funded in the future, but this one doesn’t check all the boxes for me.

      • Gguy: Personally I love expressional stuff like this, but unfortunately it’s just not something ZCG is able to fund.

      • Declined

  • Zcash Private Receive Bridge

    • Applicant requests $38,000 over about 10 months to harden and release “Private Receive Bridge,” a local Rust service that sits between an unmodified desktop Zcash wallet and a remote lightwalletd server. Instead of letting the wallet ask the server for specific transactions, which reveals which ones it cares about, the bridge downloads every full transaction in a block range and serves the wallet from a local cache. Funding covers wallet qualification, daemon hardening, a Linux release, an $8,000 independent review and 6 months of maintenance.

      • Too early to vote

Announcements

  • We recently opened up the V12 credits, which ZCG is now offering to open source developers within the ecosystem. If you’re interested, please apply.
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