Zcash Community Grants Meeting Minutes 4/17/23

Community Grants Community Grants Updates
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Below please find the latest @ZcashGrants meeting minutes and Public Dashboard link.

Attendance:

  • Amber
  • Brian
  • Burns
  • Jason
  • Michael
  • Alex Bornstein (ZF resource)
  • Daniel Wolande (ZF resource)
  • Deidra M acting as notetaker

Key Takeaways:

  • Open Grant Proposals
  • Brainstorm Session Follow Ups
    • Michae2xl promotional merch request - ZCG funded the request for promo items for Michae2xl to attend and promote at the Web Summit Rio 2023 conference.
    • ElectrumZ - This grant has been canceled due to no KYC on file.
    • KYC Deadline - ZCG to add a 30-day turnaround for all approved grantees to be KYC’d.
    • Qedit - Qedit requested to adjust their final two milestone deadlines slightly.
    • Old Grants Platform (History) - Alex added the attached link to the Submittable homepage of the old grants so that the ZCG and the community have access.
    • Zcon4 - The committee submitted RFP for the ZCG panel for this year’s conference.

Notes:

Open Grant Proposals

  • Birdcalls
    • Jason recapped the grant and summarized the actions in place. The grantee broke the grant into 2 phases, exploratory and integration, at the committee’s request.
    • The grantee requested $6,000 for the work they have completed as a part of phase 1. Dan confirmed that BirdCalls received the startup funding payment. The remainder of the money will be given after the exploratory phase.
    • This grant will remain open until ZCG decides to approve or reject the 2nd part of the integration phase once phase 1 is complete.
  • Zcash Elastic Subnet Bridge on Avalanche
    • Jason recapped this grant. ZCG discussed this project in previous meetings. The applicant has now posted a formal grant proposal asking for $210,433 for part one of their overall vision, which is to create bridging software that uses a permissionless Subnet on Avalanche and deploy a production-ready, fully-functional version of this software with a GUI to the Avalanche and Zcash testnets.
    • The committee had a call with the applicant, Kit, during ZCG’s Brainstorm session on April 7, and they gave an overview of the project. Afterward, the committee summarized the meeting and compiled a list of follow-up questions. Burns will post this on the forum so the community can discuss this proposal.
    • This grant will remain open as more information is obtained.
  • Zondax: Shielded Support for Ledger
    • Jason summarized this grant. This is Zondax’s proposal for shielded support for Ledger hardware wallet, which includes maintenance and Ledger Live integration. The Zondax team is asking for $282,900. Their primary objective is to get the Zcash Ledger app with shielded support approved and released by Ledger. The second part is to include Orchard and Unified Addresses and then integrate the app with Ledger Live.
    • The committee can not vote on this proposal because it is too early for a vote, but ZCG did discuss it during the last brainstorm session and is leaning toward rejecting this grant.
    • Reasons for rejecting: primarily because the committee recently funded Hanh’s grant Shielded Support for Ledger Hardware Wallets (NanoS+, NanoX) and he is making good progress on his efforts.
    • Update: On April 20 via Signal, ZCG unanimously voted to reject this grant.
  • ZcashFlow: Analytics Dashboard
    • Jason outlined this proposal. ZcashFlow provides insights & metrics to track activities of the Zcash ecosystem and its associated open-source projects for $38,000. The applicant provided a demo dashboard, and it basically just summarizes GitHub activity. Jason added that in the demo link they provided, you can change the coin name in the URL to something different, and a demo would come up. It seems like a copy/paste grant proposal that went to several other cryptocurrencies.
    • It’s too early to vote on this, but the committee discussed this grant during their brainstorming session, and the committee thought it was too expensive for what this grant does. This service is comparable to something like Alphaday, which is a high quality platform ZCG funded for just a few thousand dollars, and therefore ZcashFlow doesn’t seem worth it.
    • ZCG will leave this proposal open for community feedback and vote on it in the next meeting.
  • Halo2 Docs Improvements
    • Jason recapped this proposal. This grant was just posted to the forum on April 17th. The applicant is asking for $24,000 to write user documentation to fill the missing sections of the halo2 book to match the style of the rest of the docs, including working examples where appropriate.
    • This proposal will remain open so the committee can adequately review the grant application and for community feedback.

Brainstorm Session Follow Ups

  • Michae2xl promotional merch request
    • Michae2xl was the Brazilian Ambassador who submitted a grant last year to fund his independent team and projects. This grant is supposed to cover many initiatives; however, he is asking for money to cover promotional merchandise.
    • The committee favored funding his request for $2,044.94 USD to cover promo and two Web Summit Rio 2023 conference tickets from their discretionary budget with the caveat that, in the future, grantees should consider all the conferences and asks they would like to attend within their grant proposal before submitting. This case would be an exception, as technically, Michae2xl is a grantee and not an ambassador program member anymore.
    • Jason will reach out to Michae2xl to inform him of the approval.
  • ElectrumZ
    • ZCG will cancel this grant due to no KYC on file.
  • KYC Deadline
    • The committee wants to add a rule for all future grantees on the KYC protocol.
      • All grantees must submit their KYC within a month of approval. The grant will be canceled unless this is completed in a month. If the grantee has a legitimate reason for delaying the KYC requirement, they must inform ZCG/ZF, so their grant will not be canceled.
    • Jason asked Alex if ZCG could implement this rule into the grant agreement with some flexibility. Alex answered, yes, and that it can also be tracked and live on the grants dashboard.
  • Qedit
    • The committee wanted to memorialize an agreed-upon adjustment. Qedit requested to slightly adjust their final two milestone deadlines, which is not an economic change. Dan said he opened the grant for editing and sent an email.
  • Old Grants Platform (History)
    • ZF has updated links to the old grants platform. All links now point to a PDF of past funded grants. All grants submitted on Submittable are searchable through the platform.
  • Zcon4
    • The committee submitted an RFP for the panel they plan to do. Jason asked if there were any additional attendance forms ZCG needed to complete individually. Dan said ZF would inform the committee of any forms, links, and other relevant information after May 1st.
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