Zcash Community Grants Meeting Minutes 7/8/2024

Community Grants Community Grants Updates
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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

  • Zcash Browser Wallet Library - Jason recapped this grant. Bryant from ChainSafe 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.
    • The committee is still waiting to hear back from Dan Finlay from MetaMask before voting.
  • Zcash Global <> Zcash Brasil - Jason recapped this grant. This is the Q3 2024 proposal for the Zcash Brazil team. They’re asking for $16,800 for the quarter to expand Zcash’s presence in Brazil and run the Zcash Global Discord channel. The Zcash Brazil project focuses on Zcash adoption through community outreach, educational activities, and the development of tools like Discord bot and educational materials.
    • The committee discussed splitting the grant cost with FPF, and Alex said that the FPF board was in favor of financially supporting this grant.
    • Alex said that FPF will donate half the funds, which amounts to $8,400, in a donation to ZCG.
  • Dream Machine: A Series of Educational Videos - Jason gave background on this proposal. Dream Machine Studio proposes to create a series of educational videos aimed at enhancing understanding of Zcash technology through dynamic 3D animations. They’re asking for $42,500 to produce high-quality, visually engaging videos that explain Zcash technology in detail. Their goal is to demystify Zcash, promote adoption, and foster community engagement through clear, accessible educational content.
    • The committee had previously discussed this project during their brainstorm session and voted to reject this grant as it is out of the scope of projects they currently want to fund.

Brainstorm Session Follow-Ups

  • Zcash Media - The committee discussed their initial impressions of the latest Zcash Media video released on June 30.
    • ZCG discussed this topic during their brainstorm session last week. Jason said it seems that the response has been relatively lukewarm, with just above 1k views. GGuy expressed concerns on the slow start but noted that according to Social Blade, Zcash Media’s channel had over 8k daily views on Sunday. He expressed optimism, hoping the numbers would continue to grow in the coming days. Brian said he agreed with Jason about the lukewarm response but was optimistic about the Brave partnership. Michael and Amber agreed that the traffic on Zcash Media’s channel, even with the help of the Brave collaboration, was disappointing.
    • Jason tweeted the video from the Zcash X account and also sent it to a Web3 privacy group he is a part of, but there was no meaningful engagement from them. He also reached out to the ZK AV club and ZecHub this weekend to see if they had any feedback about the release. ZCG wants to hear more feedback from the community.
    • ZCG will continue to watch the numbers over this month.
  • FPF/ZecHub Bounty Grant
    • ZCG voted via Signal to approve 550 ZEC (500 for program, 50 for admin fee) for FPF to administer the ZecHub bounty program.
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First, I’m trying to figure out how to say this in a constructive way. edit: Maybe I fail at that but I’m sure you’ll let me know.

I admittedly haven’t watched all of the new videos. After 10 years of making videos deep in this field, I’m much too close to the content to get excited about or really into these and they aren’t really shareable. As in, it’s not useful for me to share any of them with, well, anyone I know.

On a positive note: The editing is something special. Way to go Eli James!

But where are the hot new interviews and fresh takes? Also, and probably more important to this audience, where’s Zcash?

To speak frankly, from the perspective of a 10-year veteran content creator on YouTube, looking at the Zcash Media channel and distribution strategy, it looks like they don’t have much experience with running a YouTube channel. To make matters worse, it looks like their distribution strategy hinges on YouTube and the Brave deal.

Because the view counts and channel metrics seem to be what’s being valued here, are there specific numbers that y’all are expecting?

There seems to be some confusion as to who the target audience is. This is very surprising to me because I’ve always been told that the first rule of media is: Know your target audience.

If people outside of this crypto bubble are the target audience of these videos then Zcash, Brave and web3privacy now are not the target audience.

This is all evidence, to me, that this grant is a failure and the last milestone shouldn’t have been paid without more community feedback.

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Quite a few of us already expressed concern about the video release timing… frankly put, stupid.

ZEC is trading near all-time lows, so what other than lukewarm engagement could anyone expect - even from quite high quality content like ZM provided (?)

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The real question is what the objective is with the videos… I’ve watched the ones released. Yes, high production quality and interesting story, but it doesn’t make me want to turn around and engage with Zcash. I showed them to some friends outside of tech and got the same response. There’s no “call to action” that focuses on Zcash. They feel more educational in nature about broad topical areas than edu-marketing to drive users to want to use ZEC.

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<sarcasm-warning />

At least someone is finally tackling the most important and underreported story of 2024: Cambridge Analytica. If it wasn’t for CA and their ~$15 million in revenue in 2016, imagine the utopia we could be living in.

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Hi Skylar,
Can you try again without the sarcasm? Although i do appreciate the warning, i don’t know what you are trying to say.

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Greetings to all!

I don’t usually comment on ZCG meetings, but I see that the topic you are commenting on is about ZM and his recent video, a topic that stole our attention in recent months.

Good audio/visual quality, there’s no denying it. But those of us who know a little about multimedia, saw in the video many resources or elements that are in free video banks. Which makes us wonder: requesting such an expensive grant to end up using elements that you can get on Unsplash or Pixabay? Surely many of you didn’t see those details.

The lukewarm reception of the video is because it’s aimed at people in the crypto ecosystem in general, not new users, not people who need a 0 approach to Zcash or its technology. And with such a poor delivery schedule, it will be hard for those numbers to go up.

At the end of the day I think we’re only going to measure views and plays… because adoption or new users, that’s certainly not something we’re going to see thanks to Zcash Media.

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I don’t want to spend too much time on this topic and I don’t want to be mean. But, I didn’t like the ZM video at all. In short: it wasn’t (very directly) relevant to Zcash. In particular, using Cambridge Analytica as a prime example revealed a political bias that I found distasteful. This company lasted from 2013 to 2018 and had a total revenue for it’s entire life of maybe $30-50 million. It’s a spit in the wind from ancient history. There are so many more examples that are bigger, more relevant, and recent.

I don’t buy that surveillance capitalism is the biggest problem with web2 and I don’t buy that web3.0 or web3 are the answers. I didn’t like the definitions of web3.0 and web3 presented. I could go on and on but I’ll leave it at that.

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Hi there, Roosevelt. Thank you for sending feedback. I wanted to point out that some of these things were already accounted for in the intent of the proposal.

This was the subject of original negotiation on the grant. The lower price we landed on from the initial, higher proposal was agreed to with the understanding that they would not be able to fund the same level of original animations as the previous grant.

I’m not a video expert at all, but some of the other committee members know much more than I do and this aspect was definitely discussed during our initial evaluation.

The audience we agreed to aim at was even broader than the crypto ecosystem! The intended audience was educated laypeople who had no prior interest in cryptocurrency or privacy, to spread the idea that privacy is important and to associate it with Zcash.

We also discussed that having this kind of video already existing on YouTube if and when the wider public has a crisis related to privacy, that there would be an opportunity for it to go viral at that later time.

Yes, looking at impact via views was and is the plan, not because we can’t expect adoption, but because it’s impossible to attribute adoption to videos either way. If the price goes up or down, we can never tell why, unfortunately. If we knew that, our jobs would be easier!

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it is in theory possible. with referral links to wallets for example with special code. altho its a bit anti privacy technique in marketing stuff. but. could be implemented to get some info on new users wanting to try out Zcash.

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Thank you for your timely clarifications.

I have shared the video to some people who have no knowledge at all about cryptocurrencies, and it was not of interest to them. They told me they didn’t even watch the whole thing. Could it be because it was in English? It is possible. Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.

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What I don’t understand is why this wasn’t approached the same way marketing most any other products out there… simple quick ads… they can educate but are a call to action… to do something… and quickly consumable. Long form videos aren’t gonna do it.

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Want to talk to an expert in the field? I have a California State University degree in Media Arts, followed by 20 years of experience in the industry (yes, including living/working in Hollywood). Additionally, I’ve run my own YouTube channel for 10 years, along with multiple others including ECC and ZF.

Going back to something that media students learn in textbooks: Television/Netflix episodes are 22-minutes long, or 44 minutes for a 1-hour long episode.

If viewer retention (a percentage of time that a person watches a video, over the total length of the video) is so important, then why make a 22-minute-long video, instead of something that is the web video standard 5-to-7-minutes long?

There’s this quote from Marshall McLuhan that every media student cites: The medium is the message.

Here’s a web doc that was made for this medium?

If we look at the ZM YouTube channel, as I mentioned in my message above, it looks like they are not following basic guidelines that YouTube publishers take to get their videos to show in search results, recommendations and user feeds.

Here are some basic YouTube SEO tips from Hootsuite. So you can see how the pros should already know how to do it.

Either the folks at Zcash Media have no experience with web publishing and didn’t do any research (beyond watching Mr Beast) and, therefore, should not have been hired for the job. Or, they are somehow indifferent to or intentionally sabotaging the web distribution phase.

Let’s look, again, at that ever important question, “Who is the target audience?”

It’s not the people in or around the community who are funding it, crypto users, we’ve established that.

I would argue that it’s not YouTube users because they are not using basic techniques to get their videos in-front of the YouTube audience. Plus, 22-minute videos are made for television viewing where the audience is captive and bored, being fed a limited selection of well-made videos that have little or no substance.

My question about specific metrics that are being looked for, has not been answered. But, because of @ambimorph’s comment about not being an expert in this field, I’m really curious:

How were those metrics (what are they) chosen and the specific target numbers decided?

What were those decisions based upon, if experts in the field were not consulted?

Finally, when was the decision made to not make these videos about Zcash? And, why?

ps. Especially given this debate over the cost, the affiliate links in the video description are super tacky. Shill status: Unlocked.

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image1216Ă—216 18.6 KB

pps. i posted excerpts of this post in a thread and added my prediction:

I would be very surprised to see any significant increase in ZM YouTube metrics, with their current strategy. Actually, a significant decrease in views on the upcoming videos should be expected.
:link: x.com

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With 300k$ for video… only 20 k $ marketing is enough for minumum 10k for views in this sector… that is simlpe thing. And I dont speak for bots views… but to reach right audince… just on X you have plenty people interest in privacy and zcash… Im not an expert but that I know for some people that make videos in crypto… you need other marceting strategy at the and 3-4 authentic influencer will make better job and take less money…

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It seems that the people who are interested in privacy and zcash are not interested in the first long video.

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its 6 long videos not 1 but yea. and then they seem to do more short clips than i think was the plan originally, not sure. either way.

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This video with the most views before 2 years is not bad…Problem here is you must have a worker who make decentrilased marketing…I send you what normal people are saying…when man come to all zcash forums only can see some saying like my wallet is not working and long political speach and programers point of view… there is nothing interesting in zcash only 5-10 users that make tweets on X…See Reddit XMR is killing Zcash in all prospective and there is where XMR is making marketing…I work with impulsive gamblers who dont know where to put money… I must promote to them Zcash… and all saying… this shit is dead on all platforms…you must make markwting on decenteilased level… better 10 short vidoes that 1 long… in this time nobody look video from 20 minutes only 20 seconds… im not marketing expert but you can see how shitty memecoin is promote…imagine when you really promote this tehnology…from zcash you can see spam attack work with goverment, no privacy… we need to change this…I have gamblers with milions and all are crazy all can put money here… bit you need to improve marketing… I dont need nothing in return only I tell you make your marketing better

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Their “n shorts per video” was an escape hatch, in case they couldn’t come up with the amount of content that they had committed to. The lack of views on some of their shorts, and lack of playlists and hashtags, also reflects their lack of experience with, or interest in, web video production/distribution.

To top it off, they created a Patreon account to distribute interview videos that are actually about Zcash and were made in 2021 (never before released)

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patreon instead of free2z.com account :thinking:

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they are showing zero interest in Zcash, only in THE cash.

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