Zcash Community Grants Meeting Minutes 5/15/23

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
  • Daniel Wolande (ZF resource)
  • Deidra M acting as notetaker

Key Takeaways:

  • Open Grant Proposals
  • Brainstorm Session Follow Ups
    • Global Ambassador Program
      • ZecMec: Promotional merchandise request - The request is on hold until June 30 for further consideration.
    • RFPs - ZCG decided on which RFP ideas to move forward with.
      • Zcash Memo Field Secure Messaging Extension
      • Idea: Add REST endpoints to lightwalletd
      • Idea: Shielded messages
      • Idea: Transferring claims
      • Idea: Russian video content

Notes:

Open Grant Proposals

  • Birdcalls

    • Jason recapped the grant and summarized the actions in place. Bird Calls bills itself as an internet phone booth. It’s a fork of Jitsi that allows peer-to-peer, full-encrypted video calls similar to Zoom.
    • Birdcalls has completed its exploratory phase. ZCG approved this phase for a total of $14,600. $6,000 has been paid out; therefore, the Birdcalls team can request the balance of $8,600.
    • The Bridcalls team sent the committee a draft of the second phase of the project – the integration phase. The major takeaways from the second phase are:
        1. They feel there is zero chance a user without significant IT/dev experience will be able to get the current Zcash module for BTCPay working without new documentation/changes to the code. Therefore, more than what Hanh provided would be required.
        1. The previous timeline suggested in the original proposal is more than justified.
    • The total amount they’re going to request is $245,600 for the second phase.
    • Dan will contact them to submit the second part of this proposal to the grants platform.

  • Halo2 Docs Improvements

    • Jason recapped this grant: 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 worked examples where appropriate. Jason reached out to YingTong to get her feedback on this grant, and she said that these docs are very much needed and offered to review and coauthor them, if helpful.
    • The committee discussed it during the brainstorm session and wanted to approve it. Brian agreed.
    • ZCG voted to approve this proposal.

  • Jinsei Blockchain Analytics

    • Jason summarized this proposal and their goal: “Accounting for personal gains and fair market value income events Zcash is generally a terrible experience. Often, users manually classify transactions in Excel, hire a CPA, or pay a lot of money to learn tax software. All of which can be a headache and yield imperfect results.”
    • Because this has nothing to do with Zcash, ZCG voted to reject this grant.

  • Zcash Shielded Assets - Asset Swaps and Beyond

    • The proposal outlines the QEDIT ↔ Zcash roadmap for 2023-24, focusing on two significant developments:
        1. Enabling ZSAs on the Zcash main-net.
        1. Adding Asset Swaps.

  • There is a slight discrepancy with the budget, so Jason contacted Jonathan from QEDIT to request that they make the appropriate changes to reflect $150,000 monthly for 12 months to equal $1.8M USD.

  • Dan to follow up with Jonathan and ask him to revise the grant on the grants platform.

  • The committee unanimously approved this grant proposal.

  • Zcash UniFFI Library Addenda

    • Jason summarized this grant. This proposal is from meerkatdev of Eiger, and he’s asking for $192,000 for the second phase of the Zcash UniFFI Library project.
    • In this grant proposal, they intend to:
        1. Move the UniFFI-supported library closer to the original library,
        1. Create a small demo of a wallet showcasing how to use this library on Android and iOS, and
        1. Add Go to the list of supported languages on UniFFI.
    • Dan set up a meeting with ZCG & meerkatdev this Friday to get clarification on their questions on this proposal and their response to the RFP on Zcash memo Field Secure Messaging Extension.

  • Giveth and Zcash

    • Jason summarized this grant. Giveth is a community focused on Building the Future of Giving using blockchain technology. They intend to support and reward the funding of public goods by creating open, transparent, and free access to the revolutionary funding opportunities available within the Ethereum ecosystem. Jason added that Giveth is very similar to Gitcoin.
    • The applicant is looking to integrate Zcash and is asking for $35,000 to develop this project and 500 ZEC to incentivize projects to onboard on Zcash.
    • This grant has only been open for five days, so it’s too early to vote on it, but Jason asked for the committee’s initial thoughts on the proposal. Amber said she would like to see a more precise budget breakdown. Michael said he was skeptical that Giveth coin could do well, just as Gitcoin’s performance. Burns said he would like to see more community feedback before voting. He added that this did not feel authentic at the moment. Finally, Brian echoed Michael’s sentiments but added he would thoroughly read the proposal to give it more thought.
    • This grant will be left open to allow ZCG to discuss at the next brainstorm session and will vote at the next meeting.

Brainstorm Session Follow Ups

  • Global Ambassador Program
    • ZecMec, the ambassador from France: Promotional merchandise request:
      • 840€ for a beer dispenser
      • 800€ for T-shirts and mugs
      • 600€ for courses and a license to be able to host physical meet-ups on his property
    • Although the committee enjoys and appreciates the communication and interaction with ZecMec, ZCG decided to wait (as a matter of formal policy) to approve this request until his trial is over on June 30th and confirm his contract extension.
    • Jason to follow up with ZecMec.
  • RFPs
    • Zcash Memo Field Secure Messaging Extension
      • Meerkatdev responded with a $500,000 proposal. ZCG to meet with him on Friday.
    • Idea: Add REST endpoints to lightwalletd
      • Michael said he did not see it as a priority, and the committee agreed.
    • Idea: Shielded messages
      • This response is similar to the RFP that Amber is currently working on.
    • Idea: Transferring claims
      • ZCG thinks this issue is interesting and will discuss it further on Friday at the next brainstorm session.
    • Idea: Russian video content
      • The committee agreed that this is not a proposal ZCG would write an RFP for, but the applicant could put a grant in for this in the future.
    • Dan will reach out to reject the other RFP ideas for:
      • Rest Endpoints
      • Shielded Messages
      • Russian Video Content,
        • Dan will ask if they are interested in joining the AV club because multilingual work is already happening on that front.
  • Difference between an RFP and a Grant
    • Amber brought up that the community needs clarification about the difference between RFP and Grant submissions. Amber will develop messaging to put on the website.
      • When to write an RFP vs. a Grant, with examples:
        • The difference- A community member can come up with an idea, but they may not have the technical knowledge to do it, so this person would not submit a grant; instead, they would propose the idea for someone else to work and build upon it.
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DevOps skills are required: proficiency with the command line, edit config files, build and install. That is in line with Btcpay, a self hosted payment gateway, and other plugins.
You don’t need to change the source code.

Is there a public link to the proposal?

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Adding @ZcashGrants

I’m curious about the design of the security features, such as forward secrecy…

Thanks,
–h

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The proposal has not yet been posted to the forum. It was a response to an RFP that was sent to grants@zfnd.org. @MeerKatDev may be able to answer the questions you have about the design of security features.