Zcash Community Grants Meeting Minutes 10/12/2026

Community Grants Community Grants Updates
2

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12 weeks to fix, update, and rebrand zcash.readthedocs.io — repairing ~60 dead links out of 262 external URLs, updating outdated references (some pointing to 2019/2020 projects), rewriting documentation, adding agentic handover documents (llm.txt, agent.md), and updating UX/UI to match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.
3 Likes