Below please find the latest @ZcashGrants meeting minutes and Public Dashboard link.
Attendance:
- Aditya
- Brian
- Burns
- Jason
- Michael
- Alex Bornstein (ZF resource and notetaker)
- Daniel Wolande (ZF resource)
- Danika Delano (ZF resource)
- Deidra M acting as notetaker
Key Takeaways:
- ZF introduced Deidra, the new Operations and Events Coordinator who will be supporting ZCG by taking minutes in addition to other administrative support.
- Open Grant Proposals
- ToDeFi: Torino Decentralized Finance - Grant unanimously approved.
- Orchard and UA for YWallet - Grant proposal approved as is on majority rule.
- Creating HQ content for UKR/RUS Auditory + Creating strong community -This was rejected and will be referred to the Global Ambassador Program.
- Partnership with CryptoMondays to Spread the Word about Zcash - The Committee needs to know if we can get copies of the recordings and if they are sharable; Jason to reach out.
- Brainstorm Session Follow Ups
- Global Ambassador Program - 3 candidates are lined up for review/voting for the final ambassador spot.
- ZCG committee member hours/compensation - Still in process; Jack will reach out to remaining ZCG members.
- @ZcashGrants forum distribution group - Hudson’s name has been removed.
- ZCG confirmed that Taylor will wait to request his first milestone payment as September was focused on admin tasks.
- Tor(Arti) Community Call - Dan asked if ZCG members would like to be a part of the call tentatively scheduled for Thursday, Oct 27th 17:00 UTC. Dan will also invite ECC to participate.
- ZCG fliers for conferences - fliers are done and Danika will take the next steps. ZCG also shared that they liked the new circular ZCG logos that Alex shared and have updated their website.
Notes:
Operations and Events Coordinator, Deidra M, Intro
- Danika introduced a new team member, Deidra. She will be assisting the Operations and Events Coordinator at the Zcash Foundation. Danika will still handle all finances and HR responsibilites and Deidra will be supporting ZCG by taking the meeting minutes and sending the milestone updates before each meeting. Danika will continue to attend ZCG meetings until Deidra has the context required for taking minutes on her own.
Open Grant Proposals
-
ToDeFi: Torino Decentralized Finance
- Jason summarized that the applicant has requested $2,500 to sponsor a conference in Torino next year. Jason said ZCG spoke to the applicant about the conference, the institution’s experience holding conferences, and how ZCG wants the grants program to be promoted. ZCG believes this would be a good first conference to sponsor. Jason clarified that ZCG is making a pledge to partially fund this conference, once the applicant acquires all other funding commitments, then ZCG will send them the $2,500. If they don’t receive other funding and the conference can’t be held, ZCG won’t send them the $2,500. Jason will write a few sentences to send to Dan to inform the applicant of the contingency.
- All members approved.
-
Orchard and UA for YWallet
- Jason stated that this grant is asking for $114,400 to add orchard and unified addresses to the YWallet mobile and desktop apps. The committee had some questions for Hanh about the cost, which were communicated on the forum. Hanh’s response to those concerns is that he is a high quality developer.
- Aditya reviewed the forum posts and was not satisfied with the applicant’s reply in entirety. Aditya shared how supporting different pools with UAs need to be discussed with the community and wallet developers(supporting sub-accounts, diversified addresses and best practices) before delivering a solution that results in the best UX for end users. Aditya expressed that he didn’t feel comfortable voting to fund now, with the unknowns. Brian asked if Aditya’s reservation on the cost was based on the applicant’s commitment to cooperate and their commitment to Unified Address support. Aditya answered, yes and added more details on how unified addresses will work with Ywallet and other wallets.
- Jason stated that he was comfortable with the cost and Hanh’s response. Jason agrees Hanh is a high-quality developer and that a higher hourly rate is fair. Jason stated that he understands Aditya’s concerns regarding unified addresses, but does not think that warrants holding off on voting now. Jason voted to approve.
- Aditya voiced that the ZCG has recently released a large number of funds as a retroactive grant, showing the commitment to funding deserving projects. In the past, the committee has raised questions relating to the follow-up grant of adding Orchard support to the Zcash-featured wallet, Ywallet. During the review of the retroactive grant, the developer was requested to contribute feedback to the ongoing work of improving the fee structure change in ZIP-317 which requires developer community efforts. But we have not seen any activity or commitment to adopt the proposed improvements. He believes that this grant could be a retroactive grant as well as the committee showing their belief in the capability of the solo developer. He would like to see the ZCG maintain the balance of releasing community funds going to a single developer.
- Burns stated that the committee has done their part. Burns added that this grant has been in the public for comment and the community hasn’t been adverse. He felt comfortable funding.
- Michael stated he felt no need to rush on decision and that they gave negotiating a shot. However, Michael is not surprised Hanh didn’t change his mind. Michael added that it would be great to get an implementation out there. He voted to approve.
- Brian said there were good points raised about standardization; Hanh is delivering well for the community. Brian voted to approve today.
- ZCG approved by majority vote.
- Alex asked if the proposal was accepted as is. The committee said yes.
- Aditya asked when the members should expect Ywallet to have UA. Burns replied that Dec 1 is the date for milestone 1 and other milestones in 2023. Dan added that Ywallet 2.0 is 2/15/23 so that may be the estimated date.
-
Creating HQ content for UKR/RUS Auditory + Creating strong community
- Jason summarized that this grant is for community building and content creation focused on Ukraine and Russia. They are asking for $9,000. Jason spoke to Artkor, Zcash’s Russian ambassador, and he confirmed that there might be some overlap and that the ask is too high. The committee unanimously voted to reject the grant and refer the applicant to the Global Ambassador Program.
-
Partnership with CryptoMondays to Spread the Word about Zcash
- Jason summarized that CryptoMondays is a social organization working to onboard more mainstream users to crypto through weekly in-person events with Web3 industry speakers. They have chapters in 60+ cities around the world and believe they can provide value to Zcash by spreading the word about Zcash through many of our chapter’s events. The grant amount is $50,000.
- Beth from ECC chimed in on the forum saying she had spoken at events and found the group to be knowledgeable. Beth also reported that there were 100-150 attendees present. Jason said they would not vote on it today in order to give the community time to comment and the CryptoMondays team time to answer questions on the forum. Jason asked for committee members’ initial impressions.
- Michael stated he was not blown away by the online footprint, and that $50,000 is a lot. Jason agreed that $50,000 seems high, and also questioned how it compares to the ambassador program. He stated that ZCG should speak to the applicants to get a sense of what the community is actually getting and how it would benefit Zcash as standard meetups can be hit or miss.
- Burns said he was okay with the price and that Zcash needs more marketing. Burns asked how close to the ECC can this group be without a conflict of interest. Alex answered there isn’t a concern regarding COI if ECC is also funding. Learning about a potential grantee’s other funding sources is about full disclosure rather than regulation.
- Aditya added that the proposal says it has no external dependencies. He also posed the question: What do they know about Zcash and how do they plan to promote it across their chapters around the world?
- Brian stated that this group would do 15 webinars and that would cost about $3,300 per webinar. He questioned if they have the resources to execute. Brian added he thinks it would be worth it to have a conversation with them and that they need to respond to questions on the forum.
- Jason stated that the Committee needs to know if the meetups are video recorded, and if so, if recordings are sharable. ZCG will reach out to them to set up a time to speak.
Brainstorm Session Follow Ups
- Global Ambassador Program
- The Program currently has 9 paid ambassadors and Jason stated that ZCG’s goal is to cap it at 10 for now. There are three candidates up for consideration from Uganda, Zimbabwe & Berlin. Jason mentioned that Ryan Taylor would document and create shareable videos for the one candidate from Berlin.
- ZCG committee member hours/compensation
- This is still in progress. Jack is setting up individual meetings with remaining committee members.
-
@ZcashGrants Forum Distribution Group
- Jason stated that the distribution group still included Hudson. Dan replied that Jack removed his name earlier that day.
-
Taylor’s status
- Dan asked about the reasoning as to why Taylor did not request his 1st milestone. Jason responded that ZCG had a quick call with him and that the first month was focused on Taylor getting prepared and taking care of administrative tasks so it did not make sense to invoice for September but he will invoice in October.
- Danika asked if we should shift all milestone dates back a month and the committee agreed to wait until the end of the month to decide.
- Arti Community Call
- Dan informed ZCG that he is organizing a community call with Al from Tor, which will take place late next week about Arti and invited ZCG members to join the call. Brian said he had no strong preference either way but asked what the agenda would be. Jason added that it was valuable to have Deirdre on the previous call and also encouraged Dan to reach out to ECC because they had expressed interest in attending the last event. Dan said he would bring it up to them and invite engineers.
- ZCG fliers
- Dan informed the committee that design for the fliers are done and Danika will send them to ZCG so they can be distributed at conferences. Aditya suggested cutting the cost on the quality of the paper from the last run as the glossy prints were difficult to transport and handout.
- Alex asked the committee for input on ZCG logos. Jason said ZCG is happy with the logos and informed him that Michael had added one of the updated logos to the ZCG website.
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