Below please find the latest @ZcashGrants meeting minutes and Public Dashboard link.
Attendance:
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Brian
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Burns
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Jason
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Michael
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Jack Gavigan (ZF resource)
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Alex Bornstein (ZF resource)
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Daniel Wolande (ZF resource)
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Deidra M acting as notetaker
Key Takeaways:
- Treasury
- Overview: The current value of our treasury is approximately $4.26M
- Grants past milestone deadlines: The committee decided to cancel the open grants where the grant recipients have been inactive and use those funds to cover the unhedged liability.
- Open Grant Proposals
- Algorithmic Anthropometry: The committee voted to reject this grant and refer the applicant to the Minor Grants Program.
- Zcash KaiOS Wallet: ZCG decided to reject this proposal.
- Arculus Cold Storage Wallet: The applicant has yet to post to the forum, so no decision has been made.
- Zcash at Blockchain 360: The committee decided to reject this proposal and to refer him to the Minor Grants Program.
- Birdcalls: ZCG will get further clarification from the developer on some asks before voting.
- Shielded Support for Ledger Hardware Wallets: No decision has been made, but ZCG will schedule a call with Zondax soon.
- User Education Grant: Too early to vote on, so ZCG will give the community more time to weigh in.
- Brainstorm Session Follow Ups
- Global Ambassador Program: Ksenia’s trial has not been extended.
- Communication Guidelines: ZCG is putting more action into encouraging more constructive feedback on the forum by establishing communication guidelines.
- ToDeFi sponsorship: The conference will happen next month and will promote ZCG to its attendees with provided materials.
- 37L Agreement: David from 37 Laines asked about removing the monetization section of the agreement.
- Conferences: Several conferences are coming up that some ZCG members plan to attend.
Notes:
Treasury
- Overview
- Based on the dashboard Danika sent out on Friday and adjusting for the price of ZEC. We hold 138,617 ZEC * 39 = $5.4M - $1.15M in unhedged liabilities means that the current value of our treasury is approximately $4.26M.
- The committee wanted to go through and cancel some of the open grants where the grant recipients have been inactive.
- Dan put together a spreadsheet with inactive grants and outstanding milestone payments.
- Jack stated that when hedging, he takes any upcoming milestone payouts and startup payments.
- Jason said that if the committee does indeed cancel the listed grants, they could buy back the ZEC at $39. Jack clarified that instead of buying back ZEC, the unhedged amount would be reduced (which has the same effect).
- Grants past milestone deadlines
- Alex clarified that OMR would resubmit in the summer once they work out the work visa issues.
- Alex said that ZCG could post whatever language and added that it should be very clear in their communication post that they can resubmit if they choose to and to be preemptive in answering any questions grant recipients might have. Dan will post it, and Alex will have an email ready to send out immediately afterward. Alex added that the email would also link to the forum post for anticipated audit processes.
- Dan said that those grants will get deleted on the old grants platform, and after the notification/email is sent, that will close all loops on this matter.
- Dan will draft up communication to the grantees that will have their grants canceled and send it to ZCG via their brainstorm group for approval. Jason will contact Fireice on the forum, and the rest of the grantees can be notified via email.
- Jack reminded ZCG that the committee could ask for the monies to be sent back from grant recipients who have already received some payouts. Alex reiterated that per the ZIP and per the language in the grant agreement, ZCG would be within their rights to do so if they choose.
- Jack also pointed out that the committee could approach larger grants with longer timelines as separate grants for more flexibility for the grantee.
- The committee will send out these communications very soon.
Open Grant Proposals
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Algorithmic Anthropometry
- Jason summarized the grant proposal. This proposal is from Tilmar Goos from Switzerland, asking for $29,750. This proposal aims to help raise awareness of privacy in the digital age and widen the footprint of Zcash. He plans to produce four research papers, grow the Zcash community, host three workshops, and host meetups.
- The committee discussed this proposal during their brainstorm session and thought it was outside the scope of a project ZCG wants to fund.
- They voted to reject this proposal and will refer Timar to the Minor Grants Program.
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Zcash KaiOS Wallet
- Jason recapped this grant. This proposal is from the Kai Foundry. They’re asking for $40,000 to build the first KaiOS non-custodial wallet for Zcash. The team says KaiOS is the world’s third largest OS with 160 million+ active devices, particularly from continents like Africa, Asia, and South America. They also say there’s a great opportunity to onboard these users into the Zcash ecosystem and empower them with Zcash payment solutions.
- ZCG discussed this during their brainstorm session and decided to reject this proposal because they would like to focus on current wallet efforts, are not sure there is demand for Zcash support on KaiOS, and think there may be an option for developers to leverage other wallets like Ywallet to rebuild on new target operating systems.
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Arculus Cold Storage Wallet
- The committee decided to skip discussing this proposal as the applicant has yet to post to the forum as of 3/6/2023.
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Zcash at Blockchain 360
- Jason summarized this grant proposal. This proposal is from Mucu, who is a former ambassador from Uganda. He recently completed his three-month trial period, and we decided not to continue him as an ambassador because ZCG did not think he was effective. The committee emailed to let him know, and noted that Mucu did not respond to their email. He did, however, post this new grant to sponsor the Blockchain 360 conference in Kampala, Uganda, for $1,500. He says that in return for the sponsorship, Zcash would be advertised on marketing materials for the event, Zcash would have a mainstage speaker slot, the Zcash logo would be featured on the event cover banner, and a booth would be available for Zcash.
- The committee rejected this grant and will refer Mucu to the Minor Grant Program.
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Birdcalls
- Jason outlined this proposal. Birdcalls bills itself as the internet phone booth. It allows peer-to-peer, fully-encrypted video calls similar to Zoom. However, you don’t have to create an account to use it, and it’s completely private, similar to Jitsi. Birdcalls is a fork of Jitsi. They’re looking to implement Zcash as its native form of payment and will use BTCPay server for the integration. They’re asking for a total of $265,600, which breaks down to $200,000 for a senior developer for 6 months, $5,000 for audit and accounting, $60,000 for legal, and $600 to cover cloud server costs.
- The committee discussed this during their brainstorm, and there needed to be more clarity about why $200,000 in 6 months for integration is necessary when using the BTCPay server. Jason reached out to Sunny on the forum, and she responded that two implementations must occur:
- Implement BTCPay module for themselves
- Auditing, testing, fixing where necessary, expanding on, documenting and maintaining the BTCPay Zcash module so that iit can be easily implemented by other companies.
- Michael said this grant had a fair amount of uncertainty and found the 6-month full-time developer component hard to swallow. Cody stated that BTCPay integration was $100,000, so it would be odd to pay twice that 2 years later. Cody also added that Zgo could be a swappable option for the BTCPay server, and this grant could wait for Zgo to be developed and would solve that issue.
- ZCG will set up a call with Sunny’s developer to get clarification on a few questions and see if they would be open to Zgo instead of BTCPay.
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Shielded Support for Ledger Hardware Wallets
- Jason summarized this grant. This proposal is from Hanh and is for $300,100. He wants to bring shielded Sapling & Orchard pools to Ledger’s popular series of Hardware Wallets (NanoS+ and above). He says these wallets are popular, affordable, and have a secure element chip making them a highly secure solution for storing Zcash.
- Brian stated that, ultimately, this discussion on this grant aims to get shielded hardware wallet support into the hands of the community. He said that one way of doing this is to get Zondax, Hanh, ZCG, and ZF on a group call to discuss the milestones necessary to get this done.
- Jason asked for clarification from Jack’s communication to ZCG about how long Ywallet integration may take and if ZF is still considering funding or if Jack would want ZCG to fund.
- Jack said that he had organized a meeting with Hanh and the Zondax team to discuss a potential Ywallet integration, and that the assumption was that relatively little work would be required on Hanh’s side.
- Jack said that Hanh’s grant application to ZCG came completely out of the blue, and hadn’t been discussed or agreed with Zondax. The amount Hanh quoted for the integration with Ywallet ($100,000) was far higher than Jack had expected, although this may be due to the fact that Ywallet is a multi-coin wallet. Therefore, it may be more cost effective to progress with Zecwallet or the fork of Zecwallet that Zondax created for their Zcon demo to get the Ledger app approved.
- Jack suggested to the committee that since they have spoken privately to Hanh and will be speaking with Adityapk, it would only be right to discuss this matter with Zondax as well since they have the track record and have put in a lot of time and effort into this.
- Jack also pointed out that this project highlights the clear benefits of working with a team like Zondax versus relying on an individual, which has been an underlying theme for ZCG when deciding on proposals.
- Jack added that the goal was for Zondax to not only create the Ledger app but also provide the necessary libraries for wallet integration so that any wallet developer who wants to integrate Ledger support can do so. Whoever builds the Ledger app must be prepared to work with other wallet developers.
- Brian said that Jack’s post to the forum was constructive in understanding certain complexities and interdependencies that go into things of this nature. He added that more forward communication about the progress of these types of app projects would help ZCG and the community understand and make better decisions. Jack stated that although that is a fair ask, he feels reluctant to call out individuals publicly on the forum if they have not been responsive or are taking longer to respond than expected.
- Cody asked for clarification if Hanh is doing this as Ywallet’s deliverable for this quarter, that Zondax still owns the Ledger app, and that Hanh would be building on top of that.
- Jack stated that, in Hanh’s grant application, as part of the 2nd milestone, Hanh’s seems to be declaring his intent to take over Zondax’s library, and add Orchard and UA to it.
- Jason summarized the next steps forward:
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- ZCG to schedule a call with Zondax later this week or early next week. Jack to provide contact.
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- Talk with Adityapk, which has already been scheduled, and will ask him about accepting the PR.
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- Communicate with Hanh so that he is not left waiting while all these moving parts happen, and ZCG will reach out to him after speaking with Zondax.
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- Jason added that there has been a lot of concern voiced on Twitter and Telegram about not having hardware support for shielded ZEC.
- Zydeco1 mentioned on the forum that they know someone on the executive team at Ledger, so should ZCG reach out to them to ask how we can get shielded support on Ledger? Jack said that ZF is in touch with Ledger to discuss the need for them to run a Zcash node to support Ledger Live, and clarified that there’s no indication Ledger don’t support adding shielded support - they just need the new Ledger app to be working with a user-facing wallet before they’ll approve, which is what ZF and Zondax have been trying to achieve.
- CPO from Trezor reached out to ZCG on Twitter and the forum. Should we reach out to him? Dan stated that ZF has been in touch with Trezor for a different reason, and ZCG could use this opportunity to request a call with them.
- Michael said that this grant is very important, and hardware support has been over three years in the making. He added that he prioritized “getting the ball to the end zone” on any type of shielded hardware support. He is not interested in adding more complexities to this with Orchard/UA and supports moving forward with Sapling first. Michael also voiced concern about recent issues that users have had with the Ledger Live Zcash app.
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User Education Grant
- Jason outlined this grant proposal. This proposal is from GetBlock, which is a blockchain-as-a-service provider experienced in infrastructure building and maintenance. They are asking for $6,000 to create two educational pieces on the topic of T-addresses vs. Shielded/Unified addresses. They say the articles would be 2 long-read articles (8,000-10,000 symbols each). There would also be 3-5 infographics that give an overview of the content in the articles, social media announcements, and FAQ sessions on Twitter and Reddit.
- The grant was recently submitted, and therefore, ZCG did not vote. However, the committee is leaning towards rejecting this proposal and will refer the applicant to ZecHub bounty.
Brainstorm Session Follow Ups
- Global Ambassador Program
- Ksenia’s trial period ended on February 28th, and ZCG decided not to extend her contract. The meetup that was supposed to happen last month in Berlin never happened. She has not received any stipend for the past 3 months.
- The committee will email her to inform her that she will not continue as an ambassador. ZCG will use Brian’s email as a template.
- Communication Guidelines
- The committee is following up with establishing guidelines for communication. Michael composed a nice blurb for when people troll in the forum, but this new guideline Jason wrote will give community members suggestions on how to interact with grant applicants and how to provide constructive feedback. ZCG values the forum as a place for applicants to receive feedback. This will be posted to the forum in the next week or so.
- Jack reminded the committee that they could and should use the report button and pin comments in the community grants section so that Dan and ZF can support ZCG in this effort.
- ToDeFi sponsorship
- Dan is in the process of compiling resources, including marketing materials like the poster, the logo, and other ZCG digital images.
- Jason will try to find those images in his email and bring this up at the next brainstorm to close the loop.
- 37L Agreement
- Jason said that David sent a message via Signal and said there was one term he did not want to agree to, which is the monetization clause.
- Alex reminded the committee that the section states ZF (acting on behalf of ZCG) needs to provide written consent for 37L to monetize their channels.
- Jason asked if ZCG is still protected by other provisions in addition to this term from grantees doing things in bad taste. Alex answered yes, because of the trademark agreement and other clauses in the grant agreement, but it is still good to retain the right to approve. Alex said that retaining the right would not be detrimental to either 37L or ZCG/ZF, but ultimately it’s ZCG’s decision on whether to include it or not because it’s not what would be considered a required clause.
- Jason will inform David to follow up with Alex on the monetization clause.
- Update: On March 8, ZCG confirmed that they are okay with the monetization clause being removed from the agreement and notified ZF and 37L.
- Conferences
- Jason and Brian will book Consensus 2023 within the next few days before ticket prices go up.
- Zcon4 will take place in Barcelona at the end of July.
- Zcon Vozes Brasil is on March 18
