Zcash Community Grants Meeting Minutes 12/22/25

Community Grants
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Grants Dashboard

Zcash Community Grants Committee Google Meet Meeting: December 22, 2025

[Minutes taken by FPF]

Attendance:

  • Artkor

  • GGuy

  • Jason

  • Zerodartz

  • Decentralistdan

  • Alex (FPF resource, notetaker)

Key Takeaways:

Open Grant Proposals

  • Zcash Nigeria 2026

    • This project aims to deepen Zcash awareness and adoption in Nigeria by delivering accurate, localized education on financial privacy, strengthening community engagement, and expanding real-world usage. Building on recent growth across social platforms, the initiative will produce culturally relevant content, host meetups and AMA sessions, collaborate with Web3 and fintech communities, and support merchants in accepting ZEC. By addressing misinformation, limited resources, and low privacy literacy, the project seeks to empower Nigerians with practical knowledge, foster a vibrant and sustainable Zcash community, and promote the long-term adoption of privacy-preserving financial tools. Applicant is requesting $68,600.

      • Artkor: It’s encouraging to see Zcash Nigeria to start a YouTube channel and we hope it will be actively used to produce regular community oriented content and good luck in the new period.

      • Gguy: ZCG has seen an increase in community grants funding for 2026. So we’ve taken an approach to review some of these grants at the 3-month point to give the new committee members in 2026 the ability to review these grants as well.

      • Jason: I’ll say I’ve been impressed with the Zcash Nigeria team and happy to see them continue in 2026. ZCG has decided to do a three-month check-in to make sure that the team is still active and meeting expectations. This isn’t specific to Nigeria, but also applies to any of the other community teams.

      • Decentralistdan: approve, the Zcash Nigeria team has been very active and growing, and I am glad to see them continue to expand their vision and continue work in 2026

      • Zerodartz: They have shown good growth in their community in 2025, organized multiple local events with new people learning about Zcash. In 2026 I want to see them level up their work and get more local businesses to accept shielded ZEC. Also making sure there are more localized information easily available about Zcash would be great addition.

      • Approved

  • ZIG : Zcash Integration Guardrail

    • ZIG (Zcash Integration Guardrail) is a small CLI and CI-ready tool that helps teams safely migrate between Zcash node stacks by automatically comparing a project’s existing configs and RPC usage against versioned compatibility profiles for a target setup. Instead of relying on manual document review and trial-and-error upgrades, ZIG quickly identifies breaking or obsolete configuration options and unsupported RPC methods, producing both human-readable and machine-consumable reports. This reduces migration risk, standardizes compatibility checks across the ecosystem, and provides an extensible foundation for future Zcash upgrades. Applicant is requesting $25,000.

      • Gguy: I don’t see much interest from the community and I don’t see us having a specific need with what they offer.

      • Artkor: I reject this proposal, because Pacu already publishes regular updates on the Zcash infrastructure transition and developers have access to a dedicated status page on the Zcash website covering deprecated and supported methods. In this context the proposal seems unnecessary. Maintaining and updating the existing documentation is preferable to introducing additional intermediary tooling.

      • Zerodartz: I also think that the upgrade from Zcashd to Zebrad will not be that difficult hopefully and with good documentation it should be doable for everyone.

      • Declined

  • ZecHub 2026

    • Over the past three years, ZecHub has grown into a key open-source education hub for the Zcash ecosystem, onboarding 232 new contributors, building active multi-platform communities, forming cross-project partnerships, and delivering a steady stream of tutorials, events, governance support, and ecosystem communication. This proposal seeks to expand that impact in 2026 by strengthening ZecHub’s visual brand identity, launching a dedicated ZEC bounties platform, enhancing its newsletter and educational content, advancing DAO-based governance and FROST-enabled operations, and deepening collaborations across privacy-tech communities. Planned initiatives include expanded tutorials and podcasts, ecosystem workshop participation, dashboard and Arborist call management, election voting-authority operations, two developer-focused hackathons, merch store operations using shielded payments, continued Namada validator activity, and stewardship of the “My First Zcash” project. Through these efforts, ZecHub aims to improve community understanding, support contributor onboarding, test and document emerging infrastructure, and provide a reliable, global hub for education, coordination, and engagement across the growing Zcash ecosystem. Applicant is requesting $419,361.

      • Zerodartz: Strong team and they have massively improved their work in 2025, their wiki has gone through major upgrades and it’s a core place for Zcash information now and also many community members have built up their skills doing weekly tasks and helping Zcash grow.

      • Decentralistdan: the ZecHub team is a staple of the Zcash community and IMO an essential team who collaborates with many parts of the ecosystem.

      • Approved async.

  • Zcash Brazil 2026

    • This proposal seeks to strengthen global Zcash privacy education and ecosystem support through an expanded Zcash Brazil initiative. In 2026, the team will provide full-time development, maintenance, and user support across 11 existing products while adding a junior developer and a motion-focused designer to increase capacity. Responding to rising financial surveillance, new Brazilian regulations, and accelerating global interest in private digital payments, the project advances a strategy centered on education, peer-to-peer adoption, and advocacy. By coordinating with core Zcash organizations and international communities, maintaining cutting-edge tools such as ZebraPi, and demonstrating real-world shielded ZEC use cases, Zcash Brazil aims to serve as a key hub for talent, testing, outreach, and localized resources—positioning Zcash as an essential instrument of financial privacy and sovereignty in Brazil and beyond. Applicant is requesting $344,989.

      • Jason: I think this team has done a great job, Michael is an effective leader and I’m looking forward to seeing them continue in 2026. The new committee will review at the three month point.

      • Zerodartz: They’re a good team and they’re doing much more than just Brazil. They have many projects coming up and they’ve already accomplished a lot of small projects like Discord bots etc. I’m hoping for more IRL events they can attend in 2026. Their budget has grown a lot since last year, so there are also expectations for better results and more adoption numbers in 2026.

      • Artkor: This is a large grant and the committee met with the Zcash Brazil team to discuss expectations and plans. Based on that discussion, it became clear that reserving additional funds to cover ongoing expenses is necessary. The main increase in the grant amount is driven by this. At the same time, the committee expects these expenses to be pre-approved and advanced and later confirmed.

      • Jason: I’ll second what Zero said about them doing a lot more than just Brazil focused stuff. They provide a lot of community resources that I think are beneficial. They’re a good team and I’m interested to see what they do with more resources.

      • Decentralistdan: The Zcash Brazil team is another longstanding essential team who is making substantial contributions to the Zcash ecosystem

      • Approved

  • OrchardZSA Finalization

    • QEDIT seeks funding to complete the remaining core-protocol work required to finalize OrchardZSA and TxV6 for NU7 activation. This effort will resolve outstanding review-driven changes in the orchard crate and propagate them consistently through librustzcash, zebra, and related tooling, while completing Zebra’s TxV6, serialization, and global-state logic. The project also delivers reliable cross-implementation test vectors and ensures alignment among all consensus-critical components. By closing gaps created by parallel development and ensuring coherent, reviewed, and fully tested implementations, QEDIT will provide an end-to-end, NU7-ready OrchardZSA core-protocol baseline that reduces reviewer burden and mitigates risks of divergence or regression. Applicant is requesting $276,600.

      • Jason: This is essential work that needs to be completed if the community wants to get ZSAs into the protocol. There will be some polling on NU candidates that may change things, but despite that for the time being we want to move forward with this so it’s ready to go if needed.

      • Artkor: I have no further comments on this proposal and would prefer to see this work fully completed.

      • Gguy: I approve.

      • Zerodartz: I also approve but I have some concerns whether ZSAs will make it into the protocol fully and activate with NU7, but it makes sense to finish the ZSAs since we don´t know the future, we don’t want to see potential delays.

      • Decentralstdan: approve, I want to see this multi year project get to the finish line.

      • Approved contingent on updates being made to grant as per GitHub comment

  • BTCPayServer Zcash Module Project Review

    • They propose an independent review of the BTCPayServer Zcash plugin to assess progress made since their 2023 analysis, which previously found the module unusable for non-technical merchants. With reports of at least seven successful merchant integrations in 2025 and a goal of expanding adoption and transaction volume, they plan to verify what has been built, identify remaining gaps, and recommend architectural directions for future improvements. To ensure neutrality and focus on strengthening the Zcash ecosystem, they will not pursue paid development work on any follow-up tasks they propose. Applicant is requesting $15,500.

      • Artkor: I am hesitant to move forward as it is not clear whether this work constitutes a formal audit or an advisory review, nor how the proposed evaluation would meaningfully account for protocol-level and architectural constraints.

      • Zerodartz: Just reviewing the BTCPayServer Zcash module is not time critical right now. I would wait for more community feedback and Hanh’s perspective on this grant in near future.

      • Remains open

  • Zcash Global en Espanol 2026

    • This proposal seeks to sustain and expand Zcash en Español as a full-time education, community, and outreach initiative across Latin America and Spain from January to December 2026. Building on work initiated in 2022, the project addresses persistent misinformation, language barriers, and lack of awareness about financial privacy among Spanish speakers, despite growing regional adoption of cryptocurrencies for remittances, payments, and savings. Through coordinated digital operations, online education, and in-person events, the project will strengthen an established Spanish-language ecosystem while launching new initiatives to deepen understanding and adoption of Zcash. By positioning Zcash as a privacy-preserving financial alternative aligned with the economic realities and human rights needs of Latin Americans, the project aims to close the gap between rising crypto usage and the critical, unmet demand for private digital money in the region. Applicant is requesting $111,100.

      • Artkor: This proposal requires more discussion and clarification before a decision is made.

      • ZCG to review which community members appear on more than one grant, applicable to all open and proposed community grants

      • Remains open

  • Bringing Shielded ZEC Payments to 90,000 VPN Users on Telegram

    • V ERA POWER proposes to integrate native Zcash shielded payments into its Telegram Mini App to address the critical financial-privacy gap faced by users in high-censorship regimes. As a leading DePIN VPN constructor with over 90,000 monthly active users, V ERA POWER enables censorship-resistant internet access through a no-code VPN factory, but current payment options rely on transparent ledgers or fiat rails that expose users to surveillance and risk. The project will implement a lightweight Zcash payment gateway within the @verapower_bot ecosystem, allowing users to generate unified addresses, pay privately from shielded pools, and activate VPN subscriptions seamlessly without leaving a financial trace. By leveraging light-client infrastructure for server-side verification and promoting ZEC as the recommended privacy-preserving payment method, this integration delivers a real-world, high-frequency use case for Zcash while safely onboarding a large non-crypto audience to shielded transactions. Applicant is requesting $54,400.

      • Jason: We’ve discussed this proposal and believe it is out of scope for something ZCG wants to fund.

      • Artkor: This proposal appears to be a VPN service aggregator for Telegram. However, users typically discover such services through Telegram’s native search, which limits its practical usefulness. I do not see sufficient value here and therefore reject this proposal.

      • Decentralistdan: out of scope for funding

      • Zerodartz: The website doesn’t build trust with missing links to documentation, privacy and support. VPNs have to be very secure for them to be integrated in any way with Zcash.

      • Declined

  • Zproof

    • ZProof is an open-source, Zcash-native cryptographic library that provides developers with a standardized, privacy-preserving primitive for proving data existence and integrity without revealing the underlying data. It enables local generation and independent verification of cryptographic proofs that attest a piece of data existed at or before a given Zcash block height and has not been modified, addressing a current ecosystem gap where developers rely on ad-hoc hashing or external timestamping solutions. Delivered as a lightweight developer library with a reference CLI, documentation, and test vectors, ZProof focuses solely on proof generation and verification, serving as a reusable foundational building block that reduces duplication, improves developer ergonomics, and supports trust-minimized, privacy-preserving experimentation across the Zcash ecosystem. Applicant is requesting $25,000.

      • Artkor: I’m ready to reject this proposal, given the number of similar proposals we recently reviewed during the hackathon. I do not see sufficient justification for funding this work.

      • Gguy: I’ll give the community a few extra days to respond but it doesn’t look like there is much interest.

      • Zerodartz: There was already a similar project posted on the forum also that says they have a MVP working on Zcash testnet: zOpenTimestamps: Zcash Blockchain Timestamping

      • Remains open

  • Zcash Arabia - Q1 2026

    • Zcash Arabia is a community initiative focused on expanding awareness, adoption, and development of Zcash across the Arabic-speaking MENA region by delivering localized education, community engagement, and developer support. The project provides Arabic-language learning resources through an online academy, articles, videos, and interactive content, alongside events, AMAs, and partnerships to grow real-world usage and wallet adoption such as Zashi. In parallel, it supports developer growth through workshops, technical training, documentation, and planned hackathons, addressing the current lack of Arabic resources and low regional participation. By building a sustainable Arabic-speaking Zcash community, the initiative aims to drive long-term, organic growth and strengthen Zcash’s presence in a rapidly expanding crypto market. Applicant is requesting $7,500.

      • Remains open for community feedback

  • ZKAV Club 2026

    • The Zero-knowledge Audiovisual Club (Zk Av Club) proposes to operate as privacy-first media infrastructure for the Zcash ecosystem in 2026 by preserving and publishing community knowledge as durable public goods. The project will complete and archive ~80 recordings from 2025 on the Internet Archive, coordinate three volunteer-led Recording Station activations (including Zcon7), support on-site interviews with ZecHub at a Z|ECC Summit, and launch a Zcash-focused PeerTube instance hosting the Zcon HD archive and community clip contests. Complementary community-led workshops and a small support fund will address accessibility, documentation, and publishing gaps, creating a consistent, consent-first pipeline that turns decentralized community conversations into discoverable, remixable, and long-lived resources. Applicant is requesting $228,545.

      • Remains open for community feedback

  • Zcash Turkey (Q1-Q2 2026)

    • This project seeks to sustain and expand Zcash’s privacy mission in TĂĽrkiye during the first two quarters of 2026 by increasing awareness of financial privacy and building a strong, localized community around privacy-focused technologies. Leveraging TĂĽrkiye’s high interest in cryptocurrencies, the initiative addresses the current lack of understanding, educational resources, and community engagement related to financial privacy and Zcash. Through regular social media content, monthly in-person events, women-focused privacy initiatives, and the development of educational materials, the project aims to bridge knowledge gaps, foster a privacy-oriented culture, and encourage broader adoption of Zcash. Active since late 2024, the team will continue its disciplined efforts throughout 2026 to establish lasting impact and sustainable community growth. Applicant is requesting $26,400.

      • Zerodartz: From my view they have been one of the best new smaller communities. Maybe less active lately but still active compared to some others. I’m leaning positive. Hoping to see more feedback also from other community members.

      • Gguy: My historical view is that funding this team has been very economical in the past and I think we get a net benefit for the small amount of funding we’ve provided. I’d like to see this team continue to grow and make an impact.

      • Remains open

Brainstorm Session Follow-Ups

  • Chainsafe Amendment

    • ZCG is working with Chainsafe to amend the last three months of their approved grant to account for work required for NU 6.1.

    • ZCG got the opportunity to review Zypherpunk hackathon entries and a lot of them utilized WebZjs libraries so the committee sees a lot of value in this work.

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