Zcash Community Grants Meeting Minutes 8/17/2026

Community Grants
1

Grant Dashboard

Zcash Community Grants Committee Google Meet Meeting: August 17, 2026

Attendance:

  • Artkor

  • Zerodartz

  • Paul

  • Hanh

  • Gguy

  • Alex (FPF resource, notetaker)

All votes this week were unanimous with the exception of Apple Silicon (3 declined, 2 passed, no approvals)

Key Takeaways:

Open Grant Proposals

  • Constant-Time Hardening and Explicit Timing Semantics for Zcash Rust Cryptography

    • This proposal requests a grant for a documentation-first constant-time hardening audit of librustzcash — making timing semantics explicit (labeling constant-time vs. intentionally variable-time paths, documenting threat model assumptions, introducing compile-time guards and regression tests) without forcing constant-time behavior universally. Requesting $10,000.

      • Gguy: I believe the applicant was going to attend an Arborist Call. So We will check in and see if that’s occurred.

      • Remains open

  • Apple Silicon Zero-Knowledge Proving: Mobile Halo2 and Tachyon Acceleration on M-Series and A-Series Chips

    • Applicant proposes to port an already-proven NEON-optimized Montgomery multiplication kernel and Pippenger MSM pipeline from Apple Silicon Macs to A-series iPhones, delivering a Swift Package Manager library (FUJI.swift) with thermal-aware proving modes, integrated into the Halo2 proving pipeline via SwiftRust bridge. Requesting $62,000.

      • Hanh: I had a conversation with Dev from Valar Group. They are working on similar optimizations. They forked Orchard. But that raises the problem that if we approve this grant, where will it land? It’s unlikely that wallets will use it if it’s not going to be in one of the official releases. Ideally it should end in the Orchard crate, but for that it means approval and review by the core team. Or it lands on a fork and is unlikely to be used by anyone. So, I think that we still need to figure out if the gain is significant enough. Otherwise, is it worth doing all this work when we are most likely not going to see it implemented by any wallet? Essentially the chances of having PR in orchard are fairly slim. So, what do you guys think?

  • Gguy: I agree. I think our major concern with these types of grants is getting value with a merged upstream. At the moment it doesn’t seem likely. Unless we’re able to see this work contribute to an upstream project, then it’s hard to see where this is going to get used within an existing application.

  • Hanh: The problem is that this is going to discourage a lot of similar work. You’re basically saying that this is very, very hard to have any part of the crypto libraries modified. Which is true, but that’s not a very good message (and probably the right one).

  • Artkor: At the same time I’m also reluctant to reject it because the applicant has demonstrated a good understanding of the problem and has already invested a significant amount of time in this work.

  • Hanh: I think the work is reasonable but I’m pretty sure from experience that it’s not going to be used. It’s too hard to PR for the benefits it provides.

  • Artkor: Can they work together in this direction? Maybe they have a different approach for this work?

  • Artkor: Looks like a reject.

  • Hanh: If you want to cover our bases, we could at least ask if the core team would consider merging that into Orchard. If so, with what time frame?

  • Gguy: Let’s see what we can do.

  • Hanh: Paul, would you have a special connection for that?

  • Paul: Probably not. I don’t get involved in things like this on the ZODL side. Maybe someone can comment about what we’ve seen in the forum on this. I don’t have that off the top of my head, but unless we’re seeing traction and interest there based on everything I’ve heard in this conversation, I believe this is a rejection. So that’s where I would land. I’m happy to try to bring it up to others on the engineering side of ZODL but I think we’re having to take steps that shouldn’t be necessary if there’s community support.

  • Hanh: Yes, but I think that for these types of projects community support would be minimal because it’s very technical. It’s easier to give an opinion on something you understand, and this is hard to understand.

  • Paul: Yeah. And I personally don’t feel like I’m qualified to opine on it really. So that’s why I would say there’s got to be a better path for this to be considered by the community. Maybe it’s the Arborist Calls or some other path where this can be where this can gain some attention and get some consensus before it gets funding.

  • Hanh: Ok what I hear from you maybe the path forward is to have this person attend the Arborist Call like the other technical proposals we’ve been on the fence about.

  • Artkor: To be honest we’ve already reached out to people that do this work but they weren’t interested in this proposal. Dev’s team.

  • Hanh: Yeah, that’s not absolutely fair though. Somehow they could have a conflict of interest. They work on something similar.

  • Artkor: But they don’t want funding for this work.

  • Hanh: They can apply later on a retroactive grant or something. The ask is fairly reasonable if the value is there. There are two values. There’s an immediate value which is speeding up proving and verification on Apple silicon and that’s like today right about 30 to 50% faster. And the second thing is you’re giving a message that you’re accepting contributions from technical people regardless of where they come from. And the other problem here is that if you don’t, then it means anyone will have to go through approval from the core team.

  • Gguy: I think it’s worth exploring this one a bit more.

  • Hanh: So are we still on the Arborist suggestion or do we think he won’t want to do that?

  • Artkor: I have already suggested he go to Arborist Call but he said that his English is not good for this.

  • Hanh: In that case, it gives us another reason to reject. It’s technical but also has logistics and teamwork elements. This proposal has to fit all aspects, but it’s not strong enough from a technical perspective to overcome limitations.

  • Paul: Sounds to me like what would be very helpful here is for this individual to have a partner, a colleague, someone to help navigate our ecosystem a little bit better.

  • Hanh: Seems like it’s a reject?

  • Paul: It is for me, yes.

  • Hanh: I’m ok rejecting.

  • Gguy: I’m not going to vote to reject it today. We haven’t reached out to ZF yet, that would probably be the last attempt.

  • Hanh: ZF wouldn’t help them much because even with ZF support they can’t be added to Orchard.

  • Zerodartz: I’m ready to reject today because otherwise it’s just going to stay open. I do like the idea of faster proofs, but if there are also others working on similar speed improvements now, it will be hard to get this work merged and used by everyone.

  • Paul: I reject

  • Artkor: I pass

  • Hanh: I reject it because I don’t think it’s going to change.

  • Declined (3 to 2)

  • Zk-ComsmwasmVm + Community-Led Audit & Design Space Hackathon

    • Applicant requests a grant to extend CosmWasm with multi-curve Halo2 proof verification, modular verification-key storage, and IBC light clients tracking Zcash under Crosslink hybrid finality and PoW confirmation depth, enabling Zcash-native cryptography and headers to be used in CosmWasm smart contracts, DAOs, and cross-chain applications. Requesting $230,000.

      • Gguy: I’m not convinced with the end to end projects that were proposed. I’m happy to explore this again at some stage, but the times when ZCG receives the most value is when we do have those end-to-end projects that users can actually start to use in meaningful ways, but I just haven’t seen the interest in that as of yet. So, today this will be a reject, but happy to explore in the future.

      • Paul: Same here.

      • Artkor: I agree, I’m not negative on this direction but I still don’t see a strong reason to fund it now. My impression is that this proposal may be part of a broader project and I may be missing some of the context needed to understand how this module is expected to be used in practice because of that I don’t feel I have enough information to approve it in its current form. At the same time I respect the work already done and remain open to supporting retroactive funding in the future If this module of this direction proves useful in practice and brings clear value to the Zcash users.

      • Zerodartz: I would also agree that the current practical value is hard to see for Zcash, but there might be some cool use case in the future, but yeah, currently I don’t think it’s the right time for this. So, I reject.

      • Declined

  • Open Light Nodes

    • Applicant requests funding to expand a self-funded, already-live Mumbai light client endpoint (Zebra archive + lightwalletd, TLS, client IP logging disabled) into a maintained multi-region Asian network with reproducible benchmarking, public health monitoring, and wallet integration support. Requesting $32,000.

      • Gguy: As it stands for me, ZCG has received a couple of these region based applications for infrastructure type applications. We would like to explore this more. We think that it’s important. We think that decentralization is important. And I would like to explore something that is more structured so that we can support infrastructure across the ecosystem rather than single projects. So I will start exploring how we can do that. That does mean that today I’m not ready to approve this application.

      • Hanh: Likewise. I think this is very critical and even more important now than ever to decentralize the light wallet infrastructure. For instance, I would welcome a framework of discovery of nodes as well as a platform for registering and adding independent nodes because I feel like today the dominance of Zec.rocks is too high. It’s good to have something that is reliable like that and we made great progress since like a year or two ago where we only had a handful of servers. I am grateful for their work. It was needed. But I think that we have traded reliance for centralization, and now we’re very, very dependent on the zec.rocks servers. Um, so I personally think that ZCG should invest quite a lot into this, like hundreds of thousands of dollars easily, to build something that is future proof. I will reject this one, but because I think this is not ambitious enough.

      • Paul: I very much like that framing and that we need a very ambitious way to attack the challenge of this. And I think that also applies to some of the other topics for grants that we’re going to be discussing and considering today is that they’re important, they reflect some very large challenges and in some cases I think maybe we will proceed and make small progress where we can. I think I’m falling on the side of we need to first figure out a bigger approach before we fund the smaller efforts.

      • Artkor: I just want to note that this team from India has been very active and their work has not gone unnoticed. We value this kind of approach, where community members look for different ways to contribute to Zcash and I hope we can find a structure that works well for everyone.

      • Zerodartz: I would say it’s a good team so far and it’s a good idea but maybe the proposal itself is not the right fit right now. Lightwalletd nodes are crucial part of Zcash infra so we should fund this sort of projects but we need to figure out a better framework that makes sense for more communities to run servers.

      • Declined

  • Shielded Compliance Bridge

    • Applicant requests a grant to build a production-grade, audited Rust library and TypeScript/WASM SDK enabling VASPs to reconcile shielded ZEC activity against KYC’d accounts, with pluggable AML screening interfaces and IVMS101 Travel Rule record construction — addressing the compliance gap that drove 73 exchange delistings in 2025. Requesting $17,500.

      • Artkor: I don’t see a clear demand for a general purpose solution of this kind. In my experience, compliance integrations are usually shaped by the requirements of exchanges or institutions that will actually use them and teams often build much of the surrounding infrastructure themselves. There are also still no common standards or approach in this area. In many jurisdictions the regulatory framework is still very basic and does not address the specific differences between blockchains in much detail. While at some places there is effectively no clear framework at all. Without a specific partner asking for this approach I’m not convinced that the proposed solution will be adopted in practice. For that reason, I don’t support funding this proposal.

      • Paul: I would agree that Artkor really nailed it and that for something like this we need to know that there’s going to be demand for it and it has a partner and it’s going to be using it. So I would reject.

      • Zerodartz: I think it’s not the right fit right now. I reject.

      • Declined

  • Zcash Arabia

    • Applicant proposes to scale an existing Arabic-language Zcash education and community initiative across the MENA region, expanding educational content, user onboarding, and developer engagement for Arabic-speaking audiences. Requesting $27,000.

      • Gguy: ZCG is funding many community groups right now and unfortunately we can’t fund all community groups and this one is a reject from me.

      • Artkor: I appreciate that the team has continued trying to build activity around Zcash in the region, and I do not want to dismiss that effort. But I want to be honest. This has become a difficult case for me, and I am not sure where I stand today. On the one hand, addressing individual concerns raised in our previous reviews does not by itself give me confidence that the community activity is sustainable and organic. On the other hand, I also do not want our previous rejections to become, in themselves, a reason to reject the proposal again. At this point, I think broader community feedback would be especially useful. If people believe this team should receive continued support, I would encourage them to express their support publicly.

      • Zerodartz: I agree. The team has shown they can make stuff happen but its efforts have been quite uneven over time. This team’s work has not gone unnoticed. But there has been very little overall support shown from other Zcash communities for this community project until now. Building a strong and active community is very hard.

      • Declined

  • Shielded ZEC Privacy and Trust Architecture Framework

    • Applicant requests a grant to produce a public privacy and trust architecture framework for shielded ZEC consumer applications — comparing browser-local, provider-assisted, and off-ramp-coordinated patterns across trust-boundary matrices, data-flow diagrams, security assumptions, and a U.S. legal issue map reviewed by qualified digital-asset counsel. Requesting $49,500.

      • Artkor: I don’t support this proposal. I have not been able to identify a clear practical need that this framework would address for Zcash or how its deliverables would be used in practice. I reject.

      • Gguy: I also haven’t seen much interest or need for this proposal so I reject.

      • Zerodartz: I don’t see enough value from this project right now. I reject.

      • Hanh: Same here. Quite a lot of buzzwords and not too much feedback from the community. No interest from either wallet developers, exchanges or users so hard to see who would use.

      • Paul: I reject it based on that rationale.

      • Declined

  • ELLIPAL Zcash Ironwood Shielded Transaction Support

    • Applicant requests a grant to add Ironwood shielded transaction support to its TITAN air-gapped hardware wallet (QR-code-only communication) and companion mobile app, covering firmware Pallas/RedPallas/ZIP-32 integration, PCZT parsing and clear signing, UFVK export, and full mobile app flows for shielding, deshielding, and fully shielded transfers. Requesting $95,000.

      • Gguy: We’re leaning positive on this. Initial thoughts?

      • Artkor: Some time ago, I wrote on Twitter that many of the best technologies enter our homes without us really choosing them. We, as users, do not always decide which technologies we will use. Sometimes they simply become part of the devices we already use. Today, the community has given me an opportunity to help bring shielded Zcash to some of the most popular devices. I know that these hardware wallets have strong sales in a number of regions. For that reason, I support this proposal, and I would like to thank the team for taking this step.

      • Gguy: Despite our previous attempts funding to get shielded support on hardware wallets it’s a hard task to do. So I would support this team in making those efforts to get Ironwood support.

      • Zerodartz: I’m ready to support this since Zcash right now is only on one hardware wallet and we probably will have more soon and we need to have more even though I’ve become more skeptical about hardware wallets lately since a lot of data leaks have happened. I still think some people who already have those wallets would benefit from having the opportunity to use shielded Zcash directly. I will say that probably in the future we will not be as open to supporting more hardware wallets since most of the top ones should already have Zcash support.

      • Paul: I would agree with that thought. If this proceeds it’s a relative modest ask compared to some of the others we’ve seen for hardware wallet integration. So, I’m willing to vote in favor of it, but I’m very skeptical in general of funding these activities for entities that are in the business of providing such hardware to customers for their own profits. it just something about that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. And they should be able to justify investments like this without being subsidized in my opinion. But I would in this case let it go.

      • Hanh: I agree that it’s pretty high for something that has been done by Keystone. It’s a similar design to Keystone. It is going to be no USB, no Bluetooth and exchange via QR codes only. That’s the model of Keystone. I hope that they’re going to use most of the code that has already been written. The ask, even though it’s not astronomical, seems to be higher than necessary. Plus it seems like we shouldn’t have to subsidize the entire work anyway. It seems like we’re actually paying more than it costs. To me a more reasonable ask would be around 30 to 40k, but on the flip side, this is a very popular wallet. It’s not the top one, but I think it’s in the top five. And I also agree that eventually I think we would have to stop funding all the hardware wallets out there. But if we have funded Keystone, this is more popular and very similar to Keystone. I don’t really see a reason to stop now. I hope that after Ledger we will have Trezor and then we can stop funding hardware wallets. But I approve this one.

      • Approved

  • ZECsy Community Building: 12 Months of Zcash on the Ground

    • Applicant requests a 12-month full-time in-person events program (September 2026–August 2027) — committing to a rolling cadence of 8 mainstream crypto/tech events, 4 adult-industry activations (Exxxotica circuit, AVN, interNEXT), and 8 weekend workshops, with a 4-person field crew, apprentice training program, flexible city-specific side events, and a standing feedback channel routing real-world user problems back to ecosystem teams. Requesting $588,000.

      • Gguy: There are a lot of positives with this grant application. I like the clear ambition and direction and leaning into problems that actually need to be solved in the real world. Having said that, I do have concerns about the mix of events that have been listed. There are a lot of generic Ethereum events among others. So I would encourage the team no matter what the result today to lean in towards the industry focused events. So I’m not quite ready to vote today based on those issues. But is anyone else ready?

      • Paul: I’m ready. This is what I alluded to earlier where I think we need better structure around activity that would be a larger program. In this case, I really do agree that I’m not thrilled about the mix of events that have been put forward. But there’s a lot of work this team is doing that is extremely valuable in my view and I think it’s worth that investment to encourage them to do what they see as required to ensure they’re they have the right credibility and experience to proceed with the work that they focused on in the adult industry. So, I’m in favor of giving this the funding to proceed even though if I were putting the proposal forward, I would have done it probably a little differently, but I think it’s important work that we need to support. And I also just want to note that the community support that I’ve seen has been very strong. So that really does affect my thinking on this.

      • Artkor: 100% agree, I see clear value in the work of this team and the level of community support is meaningful to me. At the same time the current proposal is very broad and I’m not comfortable approving the full scope as submitted. I will prefer to identify the parts of the program where the expected value is clearest and work these the team on a more focused structure rather than reject the proposal outright. At least this approach worked well for us in the past and the positive community response suggests that the results were quite impressive.

      • Hanh: My point of view, it’s clear the team is well-liked by the community and they have the support of many known community members. They have good results, they’ve connected with a bunch of people. I think the quality of their work is pretty high. That allows me to identify two things that I think they are doing very well and things that they are not doing as well. So the stuff for me that went very well is the web zero stuff. Well it’s not technically their stuff, but they participated, and it shows that if you have an event that is branded with Zcash and it’s entirely Zcash, you make more impact than if you go to an Ethereum convention and you have your booth and you talk to people who walk by. So I would like them to do more of that. Second thing is when they are also the only ones who engage. For example, when they were at Exotica in Chicago they had ~700 conversations. I think that’s their highest success so far. I would say that we should separate the events that have high value, like these ones, from the ones that have lower ROI like the ETH stuff. That would reduce the budget allocated to travel and of course accommodations, but more importantly, refocus the efforts where they are more impactful. I would say that we asked them to focus on the four adult industry events for a total of 60k. Then we do a few mainstream tech events. We keep the workshops and for the local events we ask the local community to engage to send their people so that makes the entire stuff a bit cheaper, not really like just 100k. What I’m trying to say here is that the budget is not that different. It’s just restructuring the ask so that it becomes more productive. We keep them on the same retainer; basically, their pay is the same. It’s still a full-time job for Milo and his team for 160K, but we ask them to focus more on the adult stuff and reduce the trips. That would be my counter proposal. Plus, every quarter we can reevaluate if we’re making progress because the big question here is whether the adult stuff is working out. Not so easy to figure it out but worth a shot. What do you guys think?

      • Gguy: I agree. Having a clear focus seems to drive outcomes and if we can make that proposal stronger. I think that will lead to better outcomes.

      • Zerodartz: Yeah I agree with most of your points. I think the best course forward is to have a call with them to make some adjustments. I do think clearer focus on the adult events and workshops is likely more effective way to go for this team.

      • Remains open

  • Zcash Belgium Chapter

    • Applicant proposes to establish a permanent physical community hub in Brussels — a walk-in space for support, training, and meetups — paired with ULB campus visits, city outreach, and business/merchant engagement, with supporting materials already produced (podcast, GitHub documentation, handbook preview). Requesting $36,305.

      • Artkor: I think Batuhan already gave the best recommendation in the forum thread and I agree with his advice.

      • Gguy: I think building contributions within the community first before applying for a grant is a good idea.

      • Zerodartz: There’s no clear Zcash history for this applicant yet. Start with small contributions and work slowly on building a small community first is the best way. Reject now.

      • Declined async

  • zeclight — independent Zcash light-client infrastructure from South Asia (Zebra + Zaino, Singapore) — starter grant

    • Applicant requests a small starter grant to stand up and operate an independent Zebra + Zaino light-client endpoint in Singapore (asia-southeast1), operated from Nepal, with a public verifiable status page, fully reproducible open-source deployment, and quarterly forum transparency reports. Requesting $5,760.

      • Artkor: I agree that we should move away from funding individual nodes separately and instead propose a fair and scalable incentive system for this kind of infrastructure across the community.

      • Gguy: Given the multiple applications we’ve received in this area it’s best to think of a way to fund these more broadly.

      • Hanh: It falls under the same category as the light nodes grant we discussed earlier.

      • Gguy: This one will be rejected today but we’ll be happy to hear back from the team when we find an approach that can fit more broadly across these teams.

      • Declined

  • Test-Effectiveness Audit for Zebra: an independent regression witness for consensus-critical code

    • Applicant requests a forward grant to build a targeted mutation testing layer for Zebra’s consensus-critical code paths — using operators derived from real Zebra defect shapes (not random mutation), manual adjudication of surviving mutants, and a verified negative-control regression test for every confirmed gap, specifically addressing the pattern of test-exists-test-passes-defect-recurs documented in four Zebra security advisories. Requesting $45,000.

      • Too early to vote

  • Rvess Pay ZEC to Mobile Money Integration

    • Applicant requests a grant to add Zcash shielded payment infrastructure to an existing Cardano-piloted mobile money off-ramp platform, targeting KES, UGX, and TZS payouts via Relworx, with a Rust scanning service consuming compact blocks via lightwalletd, diversified Unified Addresses per quote, ZIP-321 payment URIs, and an idempotent state machine — with real-fund launch conditional on provider approval and KYC/AML controls. Requesting $32,000.

      • Too early to vote

  • Zcash WalletConnect Integration

    • Applicant proposes a browser wallet for Zcash with WalletConnect v2 integration — enabling wallet discovery, QR code/link connections, and shielded transaction signing from dApps — plus Zcash lending as a planned ecosystem feature. Requesting $50,000.

      • Too early to vote
2 Likes
Grant Application - Zcash Arabia (August to December 2026
[Grant Application] zeclight — independent light-client infrastructure from South Asia (Zebra + Zaino, Singapore)
Grant Application: Shielded ZEC Privacy and Trust Architecture Framework
Grant Application - Shielded Compliance Bridge
Grant Application: Zk-CosmWasm: A Programmable Selective Disclosure WebAssembly Smart Contract Virtual Machine
Apple Silicon Zero-Knowledge Proving: Mobile Halo2 and Tachyon Acceleration on M-Series and A-Series Chips
Grant Application - Open Light Nodes: Independent Zcash Light Client Infrastructure for Asia
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On July 20, the committee explicitly asked us to organize an IRL event and some said that once we did so, they would be willing to change their view and support us

And yet, despite the fact that the committee has largely overlooked the positive results we have achieved online, when you look at other community initiatives funded by ZCG, you will find that roughly 80% of their work is conducted online, while only around 20% consists of IRL events. This alone demonstrates that online community building is meaningful work and is already recognized and funded by ZCG.

Nevertheless, we organized an IRL event and paid for it out of our own pockets.
Then today, you acknowledge that we addressed the concerns raised and demonstrated that we can deliver.

And yet, in the end, the proposal is rejected!!
This explains the ongoing struggle we have faced with the ZCG committee for the past three months, we address every concern, and the committee itself acknowledges that, yet in the end, the proposal is rejected!
What more are we supposed to do? Can anyone help us resolve this issue, which has unfortunately become extremely difficult?

Good, so the issue is not the value of our work or our ability to deliver? but simply that ZCG does not currently have enough funding to support us?

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I’d like to share some personal thoughts. I enjoy commenting on community-related topics like this because I went through a very similar process about 2.5 years ago.

Before building the Turkish community, I had three different proposals rejected within a period of roughly 2–3 months. The feedback we received included things like “you haven’t built enough awareness yet” or “you need to increase your community metrics.” And these weren’t comments we received only from the ZCG; we were also constantly getting feedback from active community members and experienced people within the ecosystem, and we kept moving forward based on that feedback.

Of course, not every community or every process has to be the same. But as someone who went through this process, I had the opportunity to clearly see how important it was to keep our consistency, move forward as a team, and demonstrate how committed we were to the project. I believe that commitment attracted the attention of both committee members and people supporting us within the community.

For more than two years, we have consistently worked with lower budget requests than many other communities when submitting our proposals. And if the goal is to build a strong presence on social media, we are probably one of the teams currently producing the highest amount of content on a monthly basis.

Of course, I consider the ZCG’s evaluation to be an important measure of success. But from my perspective, there are other forms of feedback that matter just as much, if not more. The effort you put into creating value, participating in discussions on the forum, and finding common ground and building things together with other communities despite the language barrier — I believe all of these things help make the community you build something that other people genuinely appreciate and want to be part of.

That’s why, as a community manager, I genuinely understand your disappointment and have a lot of respect for it. Because I’ve experienced those same disappointments myself.

But at the same time, I also believe that when you truly believe in the project and continue consistently, the disappointments you experience along the way can eventually turn into really meaningful results.

So I sincerely hope you don’t give up. If necessary, start with a smaller funding request and continue building. As someone who wants to see Zcash move forward, I would genuinely love to see you remain part of that journey.

If you used money that you genuinely needed to organize this event, please let me know how much you spent. I’ll cover it from my personal budget.

Let’s make Zcash better together. :shield:

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I’m leaving the relevant screenshots here. I was also rejected several times through Discord and had various discussions about it, but I can’t access those conversation records at the moment.

I could have simply walked away or chosen to argue with people. Instead, I continued working on a project I genuinely believe in, and because I personally care deeply about financial privacy.

Today, we’ve been working on Zcash in Türkiye for nearly three years. We have a team of almost 10 people, and we continue our activities.

That’s why sometimes, if you keep pushing forward with something you truly believe in, it can eventually lead to success. Intent and consistency matter.

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Thank you, Batuhan, for your response and for offering to help. We really appreciate it.

We have been working for 1 year and 7 months, and we have gone through many of the same things that Zcash Türkiye went through, repeated rejections from both ZCG and ZecHub.

Every time, we did not give up. We improved, adapted, and continued building.
We also started with a no budget then with very small budget, much smaller than many other communities. So in many ways, we have already gone through the same process you described.

The biggest problem, however, is what happens when the feedback becomes impossible to act on.

Imagine that you agree with ZCG on a one-month pilot grant, with clearly defined deliverables: translating articles and publishing news on social media.

You complete everything that was agreed upon, report the translations and publications, and even go beyond the agreed scope by organizing an online webinars and AMAs. You then apply for another grant to continue the work.

Then you receive a response from the committee:

“You did not accomplish any of the agreed work, therefore your proposal is rejected.”

You provide additional reports and evidence proving that you actually completed the agreed work, and you submit a new proposal.

Then you receive another response:

“Okay, you did complete the agreed work, but nobody downloaded the ZODL wallet, so your proposal is rejected.”

You point out that ZODL downloads were never part of the original agreement and ask how you can be evaluated against a metric that was never agreed upon.

But you accept the feedback anyway. You create a plan and launch promotional campaigns specifically to increase ZODL downloads.

You submit another proposal, this time with evidence that you addressed that concern as well.

And then you receive:

“Great, you have demonstrated that you are capable of delivering, but your proposal is rejected.”

This is what happened with us!

You can imagine the amount of effort, time, and frustration involved in going through this cycle repeatedly.

And yet, we did not give up. We continued working without funding throughout the past three months and actually long before that as well. We repeatedly addressed the concerns raised by the committee and did everything we were asked to do, and more.
And today, as you can see in this thread, committee members themselves acknowledge our efforts and recognize that we demonstrated that we can deliver.
Yet the proposal is still rejected.

6

@artkor , if the issue was related to merging to upstream, you could’ve just said so, it would have made us more productive. There’s like a whole week wasted then, which makes me agree with other commentators on this thread like @ZArabia and @Batuhan . Truly don’t want to be critical, but this is just mean.

So, a final ask from us is if we garner support from other wallets or the core upstream team, will that be enough to alleviate the committee’s concerns? Because we could fairly do that. My English isn’t exactly good when I speak, but when I type? Flawless.

Just… confirm that it’s the major reason and it would be good. Jesus Christ my professor (Prof. Joseph Bonneau) faced less transparency issues with f*cking DARPA, and that’s the government.

In which case, we would be glad to re-submit for discussion in the next meeting while constantly communicating with other wallets and teams.

EDIT: Not to mention, “others are building it and thus we should dismiss the work already done” is such a bullshit excuse I am like, this close to hyperventilating. I thought the purpose of Zcash Community Grants was to fund the community, not established, funded organisations who can afford to sustain themselves. The Winklevii invested $1m in what, Shielded Labs, or whatever it was. It’s like the Ethereum Foundation closing ethereum/eips because “people proposing EIPs are problematic because Vitalik had the same idea a month ago”.

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@ZArabia

Well, I actually have something to say in response to this criticism, since I know exactly what it’s all about. I’ve been down that road myself. For a while, I spent a lot of my time and financial resources keeping Zcash in the public eye in the Russian-language space for a long time. Probably about 3–4 years, before the first grant programs of any kind appeared. The domain alone cost me about $3,000 at the time, simply because I wanted it to be a top-level domain with the widest reach. The thing is, I just bought ZEC and wanted its price to go up – that was my investment strategy. Not through receiving payments, which is an extensive approach, but through the price appreciation of the investment an intensive approach. After that, I couldn’t help but be noticed by the community. And when the price kept falling and falling, in my moments of despair, this community supported me with kind words. I remember every moment. Shawn, Josh, Dismad, Jason (ZkSquirrel), Jason McGee and Zooko, of course and many, many others. This community is very warm and wise. And then the ambassador program was launched, which provided incredible support; at a time when Zcash was practically sinking, it gave me the chance to see the light at the end of the tunnel and feel the value of this work. The program we were invited to join. By “us,” I mean active people from all over the world who wrote about Zcash out of conviction. In other words, we weren’t looking for a paid opportunity; rather, all of these activists were invited to join the program, which was both unexpected and pleasant. And when the program ended, none of us went our separate ways, we simply continued doing what we’d been doing. You won’t find any complaints on this forum about the program being shut down. We simply thanked each other for the time it was around and moved on to spreading the word about Zcash, clenching our fists and sometimes facing harsh criticism about our uselessness from passersby who simply noticed that the price was falling. Yes, that’s exactly how it was. It’s been anything but an easy seven-plus years since I first bought ZEC.

I don’t want everyone to go down this path, honestly. That’s not what I want. I just want to make sure that your intentions are driven first and foremost by the fact that you understand Zcash and understand the benefits it brings to you personally and to people in this world. And then you might just start doing this work because you see value in it for its own sake. Not because someone is paying you for it, but because you’ve seen the value in it. That’s all. And every time you demand financial compensation in this way, you drift further and further away from what I’d like to see. It’s a shame I have to explain it this way. I thought these were simple, everyday principles that people should be able to understand on their own. I’m sorry if what I’m saying comes across as preachy. I just figured that no one else would say this so bluntly.

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9

What makes you think that this is a reason for the rejection?

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It’s definitely not, I was just reading the conversation, which heavily relied on what other technical teams’ opinion was, which, as you noted, was a massive conflict of interest too. My main issue, which I felt was the reason for rejection, was the lack of wallet/upsteam integration, which we were never told to explicitly look for, were we?

My main critique was that if we were told that it is a major factor, we would have improved on it and sought outreach ourselves in the last 14-20 days.

This felt remarkably similar to ZArabia’s concerns, which was “goalpost shifting”. If we had gotten a short list of what we should seek, in the conversation over the last month, we would have definitely had consensus with the committee.

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11

Artkor, I totally understand what you’re getting at. But “I want to do something good and I bought X because I believe in it” and not getting SUBSEQUENT support is different from being promised support and then investing and being disappointed.

Here, I’ll do a comparison:

  • Your case:
    • You wanted to set up something because you believe in Zcash.
    • You, out of your own volition, spent $3,000 on a domain. You knew the risks.
    • You, out of your own volition, bought ZEC, not because a shill promised you its price would go up, but because YOU believed it was the right thing to do.
    • Your story is a remarkable one of “believing in it”.
  • Their case:
    • They wanted to do something good, which they did.
    • However, they were, repeatedly, told by the community, not that they should just do it on their own, but that they would be paid for it.
    • They did things in hope that the promise will be true.
    • It never was.

Would you continue investing in Zcash if the Zcash Foundation said that “top Zcash holders will eventually get additional ZEC from the Zcash Foundation” and the requirements keep changing, because you were inconsistent in buying ZEC using your own money? Be honest, you’d call it a scam and move on. That’s literally the DEFINITION of a predatory scam if it was done as an opportunity.

The community should be clear if they just don’t wish to or can’t fund a project, full stop. Or just tell the person what exactly they should expect. The committee could have just told ZArabia to not expect a grant and do it anyways, instead of “do X and then we’ll give you the grant”. You told me that (“you should not expect approval” and what we should do), why not ZArabia?

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12

For every grant, our goal is to make sure it benefits the zcash ecosystem. Technical projects need to end up in production (we rarely fund research only projects). We have funded projects that did not get merged upstream and cost a pretty penny. Therefore, we are more cautious now but that is not something new. I was on your side once, so I understand your frustration well.

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13

Hanh, I completely understand, but my complaint is not that due diligence should not be done. It absolutely should be. As I once mentioned on the forum, I was once on a corporate due diligence team myself.

My issue is that despite knowing, as you yourself received millions in grants over your term as the developer of YWallet and Zkool2, the general requirements for the technical grants, you never communicated them to us. All we ever got was “it’s a technical grant, it takes time” and “it is normal for technical grant evaluation to take more than a week”

Instead, if we got productive feedback like artkor does, such as “you should reach out to upstream contributors” or “it would be good if you contacted other wallets”, we would have acted on it.

But what do we see? The committee members themselves tried to reach out without ever involving us in the loop…

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14

From what I understand, it was suggested to you to meet the dev team via the Arborist Call.

I beg to disagree. Having the result of the grant used is common sense.

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No, it was suggested that the Arborist call was the goal, not meeting the dev team. “Attend WEF to meet Bill Gates” is different from “Have you pitched this to someone who’s involved in Microsoft?”

One requires you to attend a specific thing at a specific time via a specific mode, the other is a general consensus requirement that can be fulfilled via any number of means. For the record, I mentioned Tal Derei to artkor, who I did e-mail and got the initial FUJI project evaluated. Now I guess I will have to reach out to a dozen or so researchers as well.

Maybe it is. Which is why I asked Artkor if I should pitch it to the developer of Zkool2, which happens to be you, to test if the optimisation works. Regrettably, we were unable to demonstrate it in-wallet because we do not have the funding to buy heavy compilation equipment or the bandwidth, but again, we did demonstrate it to you. Were we expected to demonstrate it to every major wallet? If so, we should have been told.

Regardless, it is clear that this conversation will lead to nowhere, so I have created a group message with all committee members where I hope that this problem will not recur and we can communicate transparently.

16

Thank you, Artkor, for your response. We always appreciate your cooperation and support.

We were hoping for a direct response to our problem and, more importantly, some possible solutions.

Our criticism was very clear: the committee asked us to organize an IRL event and indicated that it would be willing to support us afterward. We did exactly that and organized the event, but no one supported us afterward. We also know that you said “and I am not sure where I stand today” which at least suggested that you had not rejected the proposal outright.

I believe you are fully aware of what we have been going through with opinions and criteria changing every time.

Regarding the accusation that we are simply asking for money and do not believe in Zcash:

Unfortunately, we have become used to hearing similar accusations from ZCG members each time.

First, we were accused of not doing the work we had committed to. We proved that we had completed the work and provided evidence. Then new concerns appeared, such as the claim that we did not have an active community. Again, we provided evidence showing that we have a very active community.
Then the committee said that all of our online work had little value and that we needed to organize IRL events.
Today, after organizing the IRL event as requested, the committee said, “Great, you have proven that you have the capabilities and that you made a great effort.”
But instead of supporting us -which would seem like the logical next step- our work and achievements are once again being disregarded because of a totally new reason there is no support from other communities.

In any case, regarding your latest point, we have understood what you mean since October 2025, when you told us:

“At the same time, ZCG aims to maintain consistent evaluation standards across all community grant requests. For regional initiatives, we typically look for:

  • A proven record of measurable impact within the Zcash ecosystem (e.g., original educational resources focused specifically on Zcash, high activity on social media like Twitter and Telegram).

  • Demonstrated engagement with the wider Zcash community, including cross-collaboration with other ecosystem teams (e.g., ZecHub).

  • Evidence that the initiative has already been sustained on an unpaid, long-term basis, as a sign of genuine commitment to the community’s values.

To see more specific details, please note specific examples of communities where local grants have been approved.”

At that time, we understood these requirements and provided clear evidence that we had already been working for a long period without receiving any funding whatsoever.
Then, in February 2026, you personally supported us and approved our grant.
Therefore, we assumed that this particular issue had already been resolved.

17

Let us try to solve the main problem and put an end to this ongoing struggle.

The problem is that the committee has repeatedly dismissed our work and achievements because they are “online.”
Yet, based on our research, most other funded communities allocate approximately 80% of their budgets to online activities and only around 20% to IRL events.
Even after we organized an IRL event as requested, our proposal was still not approved because we supposedly lack support from other communities! This is another new and unusual requirement that, based on our research, does not appear to have been required from other communities that received funding in the past.

So what exactly is the definition of “support from other communities or community members”?

is this something like that? @zerodartz @artkor

We are not claiming that these people or organizations are saying, “Fund ZcashArabia.” That is not their role, and no other local community grant proposal, as far as we have found, was ever required to first obtain support from other communities.
Rather, these are clear indications that our work is reaching other people within the Zcash ecosystem and that our efforts are being recognized and appreciated by others.

Is this sufficient for the committee to approve our proposal?

If anyone interested here’s some work we did from Mid-February 2026 to August 2026 (Please refer to our monthly reports below for full details.) - We only got funding from Feb. to May.
These are not just social media metrics; they represent real onboarding, education, ecosystem collaboration, and active participation in the Zcash ecosystem.

  • Bringing ~200 ZODL wallet downloads through our campaigns and community initiatives during May and June.
  • Educated more than 230 Arabic-speaking users about Zcash, privacy, and self-custody through our Academy, educational content, webinars, and community activities.
  • Produced and localized more than 60 educational resources, including articles, guides, lessons, and translations, in addition to some videos, infographics, threads.
  • Grew our community from:
  • 200 → 425 Telegram members (+105%)
  • 400 → 920 X followers (+125%)
  • 100 → 230 Academy participants (+110%)
  • Hosted multiple community events +8, webinars, contests, and campaigns with ~500 total participants in total
  • Onboard 90+ users to ZcashNames.
  • Launched new Academy tracks including Rust Development and Security & Privacy with gamification
  • Collaborated with multiple Zcash ecosystem projects, including ZecHub, ZcashNames, CipherPay and Red·Bridge, Noir wallet with plans to make more collaboration.
  • Launched community activities such as: (Eidiya Merch Campaign, World Cup Prediction web app, Draw Your Country Flag with the Zcash Logo Contest).
  • Hold 1 IRL event
18

As I have said before, I think it is important to promote a community and content in Arabic. For me both ZA and ZCG have valid points. My suggestion is to reach a middle ground:

ZCG does not feel confident enough to fund this initiative, so they relent and approve it.

ZA asks for $20,000 USD for several months of work, so they give in and are willing to receive a smaller ambassador-style amount to boost everything they have already been doing.

While you agree on this, take some time to review what this grant requires and what the ZCG really needs from this community.

From my perspective, after closely following the various requests this year, I believe this is the main issue. I think this is the first time it’s been addressed so directly and clearly. I understand it’s difficult to say, but if this is indeed the case, it needs to be stated this way so that ZA can address this concern. ZA is right that they are given different reasons each time for rejecting the proposal. I also want to emphasize that while they have been critical, I have always felt they were respectful.

In short, for me, the problem seems to be that while ZA does its job (Telegram, X, Academy), there’s something that doesn’t inspire confidence in ZCG (Is the work organic?), and therefore, it’s necessary to clarify what these issues are and resolve them.

I could be wrong; I’m simply sharing my perspective to help find a solution and move things forward, so they’re no longer stuck.

19

Thank you so much, Palmar, for your comment and your support.

As you can see in this meeting minutes, ZCG has acknowledged our efforts and recognized that we have done everything required. However, in the end, they rejected the proposal or, perhaps more accurately, they have not made a final decision and asked us to first receive support from the community before approving the proposal (Although this request is entirely new, according to the July 20 meeting minutes, we were only asked to organize an pilot IRL event, after which our proposal would be approved. we organized the event, but as you can see, our proposal still not approved)

We have now provided clear evidence that the community does support us, including support from different parts of the Zcash ecosystem.

Therefore, given all of this, we believe the logical next step is to approve the proposal.This is what we expect from the committee, whose work and efforts we respect and appreciate.