Zcash Community Grants Meeting Minutes 11/24/25

Community Grants Community Grants Updates
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Grant Dashboard

Zcash Community Grants Committee Google Meet Meeting: November 24, 2025

[Minutes taken by FPF]

Attendance:

  • Artkor

  • GGuy

  • Jason

  • Zerodartz

  • Decentralistdan

  • Alex (FPF resource, notetaker)

Key Takeaways:

Open Grant Proposals

  • ZEC-NAM Shielded Airdrop Protocol

    • This project will implement the ZEC-NAM shielded airdrop protocol, enabling Zcash holders to privately claim NAM tokens on the Namada blockchain without revealing their identities or creating cross-chain linkages. Using zero-knowledge proofs and cryptographic nullifiers, the protocol allows users to prove ZEC ownership at a specific snapshot block while preserving full privacy on both chains. The deliverables include a new ZK circuit, on-chain verification and nullifier tracking systems, and user-facing claiming tools—creating the first production-ready, privacy-preserving cross-chain airdrop framework. By eliminating the tradeoff between verification and privacy, this project strengthens the strategic Zcash–Namada alliance and advances practical privacy infrastructure for interoperable blockchain ecosystems. Applicant is requesting $150,000.

      • Gguy: With previous grants of this nature, we have sometimes started with a design phase first and given something more concrete to review to see if it fits with the ecosystem’s needs. I would recommend that this is a grant that might benefit from an upfront design to ensure we end up with a reusable library beyond this use case. I mention it this time because this grant, as the milestones are written, is to be worked in parallel. There may not be any intermediate milestones to review.

      • Jason: Any thoughts on this? I’m fine either way. We can approve it now and advise them on the design; they’re a known team and will work closely with us. Or we can ask them to provide the design first and hold off voting on the grant until then. Since the funding is milestone-based, the risk is limited either way.

      • Gguy: My concern is it explicitly states that all milestones will be worked on in parallel, which means they could claim multiple milestones at the same time.

      • Decentralistdan: For the design-first path forward this would be them tweaking the grant or editing the grant to include this before moving forward? And then a follow-up question, would we then look at the design and evaluate it before moving forward?

      • Gguy: Yeah, it sounds like wallets might have to integrate some sort of library to allow for this functionality to occur. That usually means we might want them to work with a wallet provider or at least make a useful addition. Also that might mean we need the right SDKs to make that happen. For example, in the best case scenario Zashi wants to integrate at some point it might mean that they need to provide support for iOS and Android devices.

      • Jason: Do we know that any wallet will want to integrate this?

      • Gguy: No, we don’t know.

      • Jason: Agreed. So let’s vote.

      • Artkor: I support this proposal. And I vote to approve. Because I hope the experience gained from this work would not only be useful for this specific airdrop, but could also provide shielded mechanisms for ZSA and support future efforts to responsibly deprecate the Sprout pool in a user-safe way.

      • Zerodartz: I also support it. But we would have to get some details still sorted out, but the mechanism and code can be worth it.Jason: I approve, and we can work with Equillibrium to sort out the details.

      • Gguy: I abstain. I’m not ready based on the information provided.

      • DecentralistDan: I vote to approve and continue to work closely with the Equilibrium team to flesh out any details and milestones. I am glad to see the Equilibrium team proposing to work on something in the ecosystem again, and excited to potentially see this longstanding airdrop proposal make its way to production and potentially be a useful tool/library beyond just the NAM airdrop.

      • Approved.

  • ZEC Quest

    • ZEC Quest is a gamified learning app designed to onboard new Zcash enthusiasts through an engaging, structured pathway of seven interactive modules covering privacy fundamentals, Zcash history, zero-knowledge proofs, wallets, and community topics. Each module includes quizzes and achievement badges that reward learners and track progress, turning education into an interactive quest. While ZecHub serves as a comprehensive reference for advanced users, its depth can overwhelm beginners; ZEC Quest bridges this gap by translating ZecHub’s knowledge into guided, game-like lessons that build understanding step-by-step. The MVP app is already live with a working framework and three draft modules, demonstrating proof of concept. Grant funding will enable the completion of all modules, UI refinement, localization (Spanish and Chinese), user testing, and a full ecosystem rollout — transforming ZEC Quest into a comprehensive, motivational onboarding platform for the global Zcash community. Applicant is requesting $13,600.

      • Artkor: It will be more effective to support community run quests on established platforms rather than fund a new one.

      • Jason: Agreed

      • Decentralistdan: agreed with arktors points, reject.

      • Rejected

  • ZonChain

    • Zonchain is a cloud-native analytics platform designed to make Zcash blockchain data accessible and actionable. In Phase 1, the project will build a production-grade data platform running on Kubernetes, integrating with managed Zcash node providers to index blockchain data into time-series and relational databases. The platform will expose real-time and historical transaction metrics through REST APIs and a basic web dashboard, addressing the current lack of advanced, programmable analytics tools for Zcash. This foundational phase will enable developers and researchers to build data-driven Zcash applications, with a planned Phase 2 to expand into advanced dashboards, custom analytics, and GraphQL support. Applicant is requesting $20,700.

      • Zerodartz: We have a lot of dashboards already and this one doesn’t seem to do anything new. ZecHub could easily add any features the community wants so there is no point in another dashboard right now.

      • Jason: We appreciate these kinds of proposals, but projects like this are extremely common, and many people already build similar tools without needing a grant. Given that, it makes sense to reject the request. If there are specific analytics or features the community finds valuable, we can always reach out to ZecHub or others to see if they can incorporate them.

      • Zerodartz: Also the post doesn’t have any community feedback or support.

      • Decentralistdan: I view this proposal as out of scope for funding currently because as noted we currently have dashboards in the ecosystem and would prefer to see those improve and add new features.

      • Rejected

  • Threshold Shielded Signing Kit (TSSK) - FROST-powered multisig for Zcash

    • The Threshold Shielded Signing Kit (TSSK) delivers true multisignature support for Zcash shielded addresses through an open-source, production-ready integration kit. It includes a FROST-based Rust SDK for N-of-M key generation and signing, an operations-hardened relay for secure signer coordination, and a reference command-line tool (Vault CLI) demonstrating full end-to-end shielded multisig flows. TSSK enables wallets, custodians, and organizations to manage shielded ZEC with quorum-based control—eliminating single-key risk, aligning with Zebra and lightwalletd, and requiring no zcashd dependencies. By filling a long-standing gap in shielded multisig infrastructure, TSSK unlocks institutional and community use cases for private, policy-compliant Zcash custody and transactions. Applicant is requesting $25,000.

      • Jason: We took feedback from the community and ecosystem engineers, and it isn’t clear that what this provides isn’t already in some of the Zcash Foundation toolkits for FROST.

      • Reject based on feedback from ZF and community on usefulness.

      • Rejected

  • Brave Global Privacy Campaign

    • Brave proposes a three-month global Zcash marketing campaign (Dec 2025–Feb 2026) leveraging its 100M+ privacy-focused user base to drive education, awareness, and wallet activations. The $750,000 campaign will feature 15 premium New Tab Takeover (NTT) days—each delivering ~24 million daily impressions—and localized notification ads generating ~62.5 million impressions with a 2–4% CTR target. Brave will match every NTT day focused on Brave Wallet Integration with an additional NTT day at no cost, doubling exposure for that pillar. The campaign will highlight four key areas: Zcash Core, NEAR Intents, Zashi Wallet, and Brave Wallet Integration. With turnkey management, weekly performance dashboards, and a final impact report, this initiative will significantly boost global visibility, understanding, and user engagement with Zcash’s privacy technology and ecosystem. Applicant is requesting $750,000.

      • Jason: We spoke with Carlos last week and are currently gathering feedback from several ecosystem participants, including ECC, before casting our votes.

      • Remains open

  • Education Initiative For Latin America

    • Zcash EduLATAM is a bilingual educational and hackathon initiative designed to integrate Zcash, privacy, and cryptography education into the accredited university system across Mexico and Latin America. Building on our proven NortEdu platform—which successfully awarded university credits to over 300 students for web development courses—we will relaunch and adapt it for Zcash-focused learning. Through partnerships with universities such as the University of Colima, Universidad de Guadalajara, Tec de Monterrey, and UNAM, students will earn official credits for completing online courses on blockchain, privacy, and Zcash development, supported by high-quality bilingual content and an AI chatbot for 24/7 assistance. The program will include on-campus talks, student-led Zcash clubs, and regional hackathons with prizes to foster real-world projects and developer engagement. By leveraging existing accreditation frameworks, Zcash EduLATAM will create a sustainable, scalable pipeline of educated, privacy-conscious developers and community leaders across Latin America, significantly increasing Zcash awareness, education, and ecosystem growth in the region. Applicant is requesting $60,000.

  • Bootstrapped & Deterministic Builds a la StageX

    • We propose to strengthen the Zcash ecosystem’s core software security by establishing fully bootstrapped, deterministic, and reproducible build environments using StageX—our security-first, open-source Linux distribution designed to eliminate entire classes of supply-chain attacks. Distrust.co brings deep expertise in verifiable security, with a track record that includes high-impact disclosures (e.g., the 2023 Milk Sad vulnerability) and work with leading organizations such as BitGo, Optimism Labs, and Unit410. While Bitcoin and Monero rely on Guix, StageX provides a stricter, more hermetic, multi-party-signed foundation that avoids non-deterministic components and reduces attack surface. By integrating StageX into Zcash’s build pipeline, we address systemic risks such as those demonstrated in the SolarWinds, XZ Utils, Codecov, and XcodeGhost compromises—attacks enabled by tampered build environments or pre-generated artifacts. Verified reproducible builds create a cryptographic audit trail from source to binary, providing defenses endorsed by the Linux Foundation and enabling Zcash to set a new best-in-class standard for supply-chain security across the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Applicant is requesting $48,000.

      • Gguy: It looks like the PR in Zebra for that work has not been merged and was recently closed. Other repositories have merged their PRs though. I’m happy to fund this team for the merged portions.

      • Jason: We could leave it open for now. We could talk to the applicant and ask to amend their proposal based on the feedback we received.

      • Gguy: Milestone 2 acceptance criteria is not less than three not more than six PRs will be opened on ecosystem repos. So I guess the question to ask would be how we compensate when repos don’t merge. I’ll reach out and ask. So long as there are other ecosystem repositories that you’ll be reaching out to and then if there are then I think maybe the rate that they’re asking for is okay. I’m not ready to vote on this yet.

      • Jason: Okay, it sounds like none of us are. So, let’s leave it open.

      • Remains open

  • Sentinel Grid

    • Sentinel Grid is an AI-powered resilience platform that integrates with Zcash to predict, prevent, and mitigate failures across critical infrastructure systems such as energy, transport, and communications. By combining real-time predictive analytics with Zcash’s privacy-preserving, tamper-proof verification, the platform detects early signs of cyber threats, equipment degradation, or operational anomalies and records all events immutably for secure auditing. Sentinel Grid addresses the weaknesses of centralized monitoring—where delays, data manipulation, and single-point failures can trigger widespread outages—by offering a decentralized, transparent, and privacy-respecting resilience layer. The result is improved situational awareness, reduced downtime, and a practical demonstration of how AI and secure blockchain architectures can work together to protect modern infrastructure and enhance the safety and reliability of smart cities and national systems. Applicant is requesting $45,000.

      • Jason: It’s not clear how this benefits Zcash, and for that reason we decided to reject it.

      • Decentralistdan: agreed, out of scope due to lack of clarity on benefit to Zcash ecosystem at this moment.

      • Rejected

  • ShieldHash

    • ShieldHash is a mining-as-a-service platform that makes Zcash mining accessible by letting users purchase fractional hashrate as Solana NFTs that map directly to real miners operated by ShieldHash, with daily shielded ZEC rewards paid to a non-custodial address generated client-side. Designed to lower barriers such as hardware cost, electricity pricing, and technical complexity, the system broadens participation while intentionally directing hashrate toward smaller, community-aligned pools to strengthen network decentralization. Phase 1—the focus of this grant—delivers a testnet MVP including a live miner, NFT mint with kH/s metadata, private address-binding, automated daily shielded distributions, and transparent attestations. By converting hashrate into verifiable “digital miners,” ensuring user custody of keys, and providing reliable, privacy-preserving payouts, ShieldHash aims to improve onboarding, increase hashrate under management, and measurably shift mining capacity toward underrepresented Zcash pools. Applicant is requesting $2,000.

      • Artkor: I reject this proposal because the value is unclear for me. I think it is not about mining

      • Zerodartz: It’s super risky. Virtual mining things in the past never worked out for anyone.

      • Gguy: Why would we fund something that’s potentially trying to be profitable?

      • Zerodartz: It’s not something we should fund.

      • Rejected

  • HoudiniSwap

    • HoudiniSwap is a top-ranked, non-custodial cross-chain liquidity aggregator—supporting 80+ networks, 4,000+ tokens, and millions of trading pairs—that enables compliant private swaps, no-wallet-connect swaps, and standard cross-chain exchanges through a single unified interface. With a proven revenue track record and an upcoming major product upgrade, the platform integrates DEXs, bridges, and non-custodial centralized providers to offer secure, flexible transaction routing for users and developers alike. By bringing Zcash into its hybrid architecture—spanning anonymous swaps, standard cross-chain swaps, and wallet-free swaps—HoudiniSwap aims to eliminate the complexity of moving assets into and out of Zcash, improving onboarding, enhancing interoperability, and positioning Zcash as a first-class privacy layer within a broader, multi-chain ecosystem. Applicant is requesting $50,000.

      • Jason: I’ve had multiple conversations with them, and they’ve already moved ahead with the integration work and are exploring co-marketing opportunities. In my view, we can’t fund every integration request. One of the reasons we’re bringing on a DeFi Specialist is to identify which DeFi opportunities are truly worth prioritizing.

      • Zerodartz: Do we have any data on fees generated?

      • Artkor: I don’t support funding this proposal. Because this service is not decentralized protocol and its centralized flow routing model carriers sign significant higher legal and compliance risks for the ecosystem if funded by ZCG. Actually, if Houdini swap wants to integrate Zcash, they are free to do so without requiring grant funding in my opinion.

      • Gguy: I’ll also add that the community doesn’t seem very interested in funding this grant. I reject this application.

      • Zerodartz: I reject it since the integration gets paid by swapping fees.

      • Jason: I think something must have changed for them to go from saying they wouldn’t do the integration without funding to completing it and then requesting retroactive funding. Of course, we know what that was: the price increase and surge in demand for Zcash. They had a financial incentive to proceed with integrating Zcash, and they’re likely earning meaningful fees now, which motivates them to list Zcash regardless of the outcome of this grant proposal. So, in my opinion, applying for a grant is a low-risk move for them. They had already prepared the proposal and completed the integration, and even if we reject the request, they’re incentivized to continue listing Zcash anyway.

      • Decentralistdan: Reject based on the precedent of paying for listings, and the fact that they already added Zcash support. I also agree with arktor’s points.

      • Rejected

  • Auto Failover Toolkit V2

    • Never-Down Zcash is a flexible, MIT-licensed reliability layer that delivers fast, configurable failover for any Zcash lightwalletd client, targeting p95 failover under three seconds without introducing lock-in or key custody. Instead of forcing developers into a single architecture, the project provides three interoperable adoption paths: a plug-and-play JS/TS SDK for instant reliability, a lightweight HTTP/JSON Directory API that selects the best available endpoint by region or latency, and fully transparent DIY templates for teams needing complete customization. This approach addresses long-standing outages, degraded service, and the high cost of each team reinventing its own failover logic—issues that affect wallets, bots, merchant integrations, explorers, and educational tools alike. With a signed endpoint registry, open scoring formulas, and self-hostable components, the system remains resilient even if the API is offline, ensuring developers can build dependable Zcash applications without Rust expertise or heavy infrastructure investment. Applicant is requesting $39,500.

  • Proposal: zec-go Node Client

    • zec-go is a clean-room, production-grade Zcash full node client written entirely in Go, designed to strengthen the network’s resilience, decentralization, and security by introducing a third independent implementation alongside zebra and the soon-to-be-deprecated zcashd. With the network at risk of over-reliance on a single client, zec-go reduces systemic vulnerability by providing a high-performance, memory-safe alternative built on Go’s strong concurrency model and broad developer ecosystem. This Phase 1 grant delivers a fully operational node—capable of full chain validation, mempool management, block production, and network gossip—while de-risking cryptographic correctness through an FFI integration with the audited librustzcash library. The result will be a modular, service-oriented, open-source client with binaries for major platforms, comprehensive documentation, and conformance with the Ziggurat test suite, materially improving the robustness and antifragility of the Zcash network. Applicant is requesting $864,000.

      • Jason: This person is oversimplifying building a node implementation; it’ll likely take significantly more time. If they’re interested in this project, they should start a conversation with the core engineering teams in the Zcash R&D Discord or attend an Arborist Call.

      • Gguy: Go as a language has use cases but there wouldn’t provide significant benefits to the Zash ecosystem.

      • Zerodartz: Yeah, the node implementation is unrealistic at this budget and timescale.

      • Decentralistdan: reject, we as an ecosystem decided to move away from multiple node implementations, and based on feedback from ecosystem engineers, it seems this team is unlikely to be able to execute in the proposed time without pulling engineering resources away from the current core dev teams.

      • Declined.

  • Qubit Wallet

    • QuBit Wallet is a self-custodial, quantum-resistant wallet that performs all cryptographic operations locally on the user’s device, eliminating server-side vulnerabilities and metadata exposure. Designed as a future-proof, privacy-first vault for multichain assets—including future Zcash integration—QuBit uses a locally derived and encrypted master seed to generate keypairs without relying on cloud services or external infrastructure. By isolating key generation, signing, and encryption completely offline, the wallet provides long-term protection against both current threats and emerging post-quantum risks. QuBit addresses critical gaps in today’s wallet landscape by offering an open-source, modular engine that strengthens user privacy, eliminates centralized attack vectors, and aligns closely with Zcash’s mission of secure, decentralized, and cryptographically sound privacy preservation. Applicant is requesting $45,000.

      • Jason: We’re not interested in funding any more wallets. It doesn’t appear there is strong demand for product either.

      • Zerodartz: Instead of making the wallet quantum resistant, actually the coin network should be quantum resistant instead. And Zcash already is quantum resistant at some levels when you don’t publicly share your address.

      • Rejected

  • Monitoring and Observability Platform for Zcash Nodes

    • The proposed project aims to develop a comprehensive, production-ready monitoring platform for Zcash nodes, designed to support infrastructure operators, exchanges, mining pools, and service providers with professional-grade reliability. Despite the availability of metrics in both zcashd and Zebra, the ecosystem currently lacks a unified and documented monitoring solution, leading to preventable incidents such as the Nighthawk app shutdown, ViaBTC’s 51% mining pool dominance, and a decline in full node count without clear diagnosis. This project will introduce a unified metrics exporter compatible with both clients, a suite of standardized Grafana dashboards, pre-configured alert rules for operational and security risks, and thorough deployment documentation. By addressing a five-year tooling gap relative to Bitcoin and Ethereum, this initiative will significantly strengthen Zcash’s infrastructure during the critical zcashd-to-Zebra transition and enable operators to manage their systems with transparency, resilience, and professional observability. Applicant is requesting $48,500.

  • ZGo 2025 Retroactive

    • (Retroactive request) The ZGo point-of-sale application currently depends on the soon-to-be-deprecated zcashd node, putting its long-term viability at risk. This project modernizes ZGo by migrating its infrastructure to the newer, more robust Zebra node and integrating the Zenith wallet’s RPC server as a replacement for the embedded zcashd wallet. By updating ZGo to operate fully on Zebra and Zenith—including support for NU6.1—this work ensures the application can continue serving the Zcash community beyond 2025 while improving overall reliability and performance. Applicant is requesting $138,800.

      • Jason: I reached out to Pitmutt to ask about the ZGo roadmap and long-term vision and what can be done to improve UX and ease of integration. He’ll respond on the Forum thread with his answers.

      • Artkor: I made a post with questions and so we’ll wait until making a decision.

      • Zerodartz: It would need a lot of implementations by merchants to be worth it and it’s not easy so I’m kind of leaning negative on it right now but I’ll wait for more details.

      • Remains open

Brainstorm Session Follow-Ups

  • Ledger

    • Ledger has indicated they will post their grant to the Forum and GitHub shortly. ZCG will continue to follow-up.
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Thank you for the review; I really appreciate the feedback. I look forward to connect with the core engineering team to discuss and receive further feedback on our proposal to revise more accurate estimates for time and effort.

– Prasad, zec-go

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Thank you for the feedback! I’m happy to make adjustments as you see fit for the Bootstrapped & Deterministic Builds a la StageX project. My plan was to also do GitHub - zcash/lightwalletd: Lightwalletd is a backend service that provides a bandwidth-efficient interface to the Zcash blockchain and I am trying to address some of the feedback the zebra team came back with to see if I can meet their criteria as I think it would be a big win to switch to StageX. I wrote a bit more about that here: Bootstrapped and deterministic builds a la StageX - #5 by antonleviathan

If the milestone criteria don’t make sense, we can adjust them, my main objective is to upgrade all key zcash repos (that are aligned with the idea), in the least intrusive manner and to continue to support as necessary so that to remove any blockers or issues that may arise.