Zcash Community Grants Meeting Minutes 6/10/2024

Below please find the latest ZCG meeting minutes and Public Dashboard link.

Attendance:

  • Amber
  • Brian
  • GGuy
  • Jason
  • Michael
  • Alex (ZF resource)
  • Dan (ZF resource)
  • Deidra M (notetaker)

Key Takeaways:

Open Grant Proposals

  • Decentralized Campus Scooter Rental - Jason summarized this grant. This proposal is from Onose Oghenevwogaga from Wittyhub. He is asking for $50,000 to integrate Zcash payments into decentralized campus scooter rentals. He says this will lead to increased user adoption since people will be paying for their rentals with ZEC.
    • The committee had previously spoken about this project during their brainstorm session and voted to reject this grant as it was outside the scope of projects they want to fund.
  • Assistance with Legal Compliance Costs - Jason gave background on this grant. Qedit is asking for access to a “retainer” of $100,000 that can be used to cover fees for legal and compliance costs related to their ZSA project. When QEDIT receives an invoice from a law firm, they can draw down on these funds and get reimbursed up to $100,000.
    • ZCG voted to approve this grant.
  • Qedit: Stablecoins for ZSAs - Jason recapped this proposal. QEDIT’s 2024 proposal focuses on enhancing Shielded Assets (ZSAs) with stablecoin compatibility, user control, and exchange compatibility. Key initiatives include developing enhanced viewing keys for stablecoin issuers using verifiable encryption, enabling transaction approval by recipients, and analyzing identity for fine-grained disclosure. Their goal is to improve regulatory compliance while maintaining user privacy.
    • Qedit has amended their proposal to limit it to milestones related to early research for comments, ZIP design, and implementation. They’re asking for $1.33 million, with $880K paid up front over the first two months to cover overhead like hiring a team of 9 people, etc. They’re also asking for a firm “commitment” from ZCG to cover the remaining $870K not covered by this grant.
    • ZCG members shared their opinions on the QEDIT grant. Brian, initially opposed to the $2.2M proposal, became supportive due to the reduced cost and saw it as a high priority for ZSA integration into Zcash. Amber appreciated the cost breakdown but felt that without ZCG committing to the second part of the grant, funding the first alone would feel like a waste of resources if the second was then not funded. Therefore breaking it into two separate grants that still covered the exact same proposal in the end did not feel like a true difference to the original proposal. Michael believed ZSAs needed to launch and work before expanding and that heavy investment in research without usable results wasn’t wise. Jason is also concerned about spending half the treasury on this proposal, stressing a need for conservative spending given the low ZEC value. GGuy emphasized the importance of ZSAs for the community and acknowledged the grant’s potential positive impact but agreed there should be no commitment for the second part.
    • ZCG agreed that committing to cover the remaining funds for the second part of the QEDIT grant was not feasible due to multiple unknown factors. These included potential new ZCG members and their opinions/votes, the cost of ZEC, other grants on the docket, and the uncertainty of the dev fund.
    • Michael said he would not vote for the grant unless QEDIT delivered some ZSA features. Brian understood from previous Arborist calls that QEDIT had delivered features, but Zcash was not ready due to dependencies. Michael agreed, emphasizing that rejecting the grant would send the right message to QEDIT and the entire community that everyone must be accountable for their part in successful deliverables and that ZCG’s priority regarding engineering is getting new features into mainnet.
    • ZCG (Jason, Amber, and Michael) will meet with Jonathan and Vivek from QEDIT to discuss possibly putting this grant on hold due to current uncertainties or slimming the overall grant cost.
      • On Wednesday, June 12, Jason, Michael, and Amber met with Jonathan and Vivek to discuss the above feedback on their $1.33M grant revision and let them know that the version of the grant did not have sufficient committee support for approval. QEDIT proposed an additional revision for a total of $650,000 that would cover the following milestones related to research and ZIP writing: (1) Research: Verifiable Encryption, Enhanced Keys ($200,000), (2) Report: Transaction Acceptance ($100,000), (3) ZIP: Enhanced Viewing Keys ($200,000), and (4) ZIP: User Control ($150,000).
      • On Friday, June 14, ZCG voted to approve the grant by a vote of 4 to 1 with Jason, Amber, Gguy, and Brian voting to approve and Michael voting to reject. QEDIT had requested the $650,000 be paid upfront; however, ZCG decided the funding would be allocated as follows: (1) $216,666.66 paid upfront, (2) $216,666.67 paid 30 days after the first payment, (3) $216,666.67 paid once the ZIPs have been reviewed by the ZIP editors and moved from “Draft” to “Proposed” status.
  • Zcash Browser Wallet Library - Jason summarized this grant. Bryant from ChainSafe has submitted a proposal for $150,000 to expand the Zcash ecosystem by building developers a browser-compatible library that offers essential primitives for web wallets and browser plugins. This project would be a precursor for a metamask snap.
    • This grant was recently submitted, so it was too early for ZCG to vote on it officially, but the members gave their initial thoughts.
      • Jason said he might be more inclined to approve the proposal if the treasury was stronger. He acknowledged the proposal’s benefits. Brian, Mike, and Amber leaned toward rejecting it due to poor timing despite its merits. GGuy supported it, seeing it as a priority and noting that there is a reasonable chance that a Zcash Snap could achieve greater than 1000 downloads which would put it into contention for the most downloaded Zcash mobile wallet.
      • Zooko put Jason in touch with Dan Finlay from MetaMask. ZCG wants to explore the possibility of co-funding the MetaMask Snap project with MetaMask.
      • Dan added that he viewed this grant as positive. Based on Kit’s comment about the ZavaX bridge needing a Snap, Dan said this grant could fill that need. Dan will contact Kit to get his opinion on this potential partnership.

Brainstorm Session Follow-Up

  • ZCG Election - Seven people, including current ZCG members Brian and GGuy, are running this election. It is the most competitive election since 2021, when nineteen people ran. It should be interesting!
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The QEDIT proposal remains open or was it approved?

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Good Q, thanks for catching this ambiguity. We probably should have updated “Key Takeaways”, but have been waiting for final edits on the grant. It’s now approved after edits - this is the approved grant for $650k: Gallery View: Zcash Community Grants Program

Funds are more likely to be used when supporting POS development.

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