Zcash Community Grants Meeting Minutes 9/4/2023

Community Grants
1

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

Attendance:

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

Key Takeaways:

  • Open Grant Proposals
  • Brainstorm Session Follow-Ups
    • Treasury - ZCG has not made any firm decisions; however, they flagged two grants to investigate further.
    • Dashboard - “Grantee name” and “category” will be added to the Grants Dashboard this week.
    • Ledger - Jason is working on setting up a meeting with a new Ledger contact and ZCG.
    • Pacu - Pacu gave the committee and community a rundown of his efforts this past month.
    • Beth - Beth gave an overview of what she has been working on.
    • Future of ZCG - ZCG discussed its role in ZF and what its focus should be moving forward.
    • ZecHub DAO - Jason disclosed he joined the ZecHub DAO.

Open Grant Proposals

  • Bird Calls - Formally posted the second phase of the project, the integration phase, asking for $245,600. They think it will take a significant amount of work to integrate BTCpay into Birdcalls. At the 05/29 meeting, the committee voted to put Birdcalls on “hold.”.

    • No change. The committee will leave this grant proposal as an open agenda item and revisit it in future meetings.

  • Accurate Description of P2P Trading - Jason gave background to this proposal. The applicant is an assistant research fellow at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. They are asking for $43,000 to develop an open-source event simulator to gauge the accuracy of the developed mathematical models and to uncover the connection between risk aversion and the success rate of atomic swaps. The applicant states that understanding this should aid DeFi platform operators in predicting and ensuring user experience, which would then lead to wider cryptocurrency adoption.

    • The committee voted to reject this grant proposal as it is out of scope for projects they are interested in funding, and it is unclear how it would benefit Zcash.

  • Ori: Alternative Full Node Implementation - Jason outlined this proposal. The applicant is offering to build another full-node implementation of Zcash. He posted the grant originally in July to the grants platform (but not to the forum) under the name ZZM but changed the name to Ori and resubmitted the grant on the grants platform, but ZCG cannot access it.

    • Dan will reach out to the applicant for more information, including clarity on the price. Since previous similar projects have entailed a higher budget, we would like to see a more detailed breakdown of the proposed scope of work and associated costs, to make sure we understand the proposal. Dan will also ask the applicant to repost to the grants platform.
    • ZCG will vote once more information is obtained.

Brainstorm Session Follow-Ups

  • Treasury
    • In reference to the last meeting, the committee made a statement regarding precautions about how they will spend money and future funding of grants. ZCG has not made any firm decisions as of yet. In their brainstorm session on Friday, they flagged two grants to look into further:
      • Elemental ZEC – Zcash UI Component Kit and Payment Processor
        • This grantee recently posted to the forum, but this grant would be considered canceled for the same reasons as the Zephyr grant.
      • Trezor support for Zcash shielded transactions
        • ZCG is considering canceling the last milestone of this grant because the Trezor team communicated that they do not have the resources to complete that last milestone.
        • The committee did not cancel before with the sentiment of “we need them more than they need us,” but given the current price of ZEC, it may be a good time to cancel this grant with the addition of Trezor’s notice stated above.
      • Brian stated that he disagreed with canceling the Elemental ZEC grant because, despite issues and extra time needed, they still provide updates and community engagement on the forum. He agreed with canceling the last milestone of the Trezor grant with the caveat that ZCG communicates to them that ZCG is open to Trezor reapplying when the time is right.
      • The committee decided to leave the Elemental grant open and cancel the last milestone of the Trezor grant but will give that team a heads-up first.
      • Brian will contact Trezor to inform them of the decision. Once that is sent, Brian will let Alex know so that Alex can also send an official message to them.
    • Response to community feedback on the forum regarding ZCG’s statement and starting a public metric for underperforming grants: Jason asked ZCG if the committee should refer to the community before canceling active grants as a whole. The committee agreed that ZCG will continue to use its discretion for canceling smaller/individual milestones.
      • Jason will follow up on the forum to inform the community of this decision. At this time, ZCG is not looking to cancel any grants that are in good standing.
    • ZCG will keep revisiting this topic publicly.
    • Another subtopic that was discussed was the Global Ambassador Program. GGuy said ZCG should consider hedging out the remaining payments for the ambassador program with the monies from the last milestone of Trezor. ZCG will discuss this further in their next brainstorm session.
  • Dashboard - Jason sent Dan the categories that need to be added to the grants tab of the Dashboard, which will be maintained by ZF moving forward. Dan shared the document with Danika, and she will add the categories this week. Moving forward, these categories will be included in the Dashboard along with the reporting requirements, which will be tracked starting with the approval of Hanh’s maintenance grant and Eiger’s UniFFI Addenda.
    • If there are any questions on categorizing a grant, ZF will ask and get confirmation during ZCG meetings.
    • Grantee names will also be added to the Dashboard for easy pull info on specific grantees when necessary.
  • Ledger - Jason was introduced to the CTO of Ledger and reached out to discuss the relationship between ZCG, Zcash, and Zondax, as well as Hahn’s work. The CTO referred Jason to someone else and is working on setting up a meeting with him and ZCG.
    • The committee is aware of the community wanting an update and ZCG is actively working on getting a resolution.
  • Pacu - Brian summarized the conversation with Pacu and ZCG last week. Pacu gave a rundown of his efforts last month. The committee is happy with the details he provided and posted on the forum. Dan said the Light Client Working Group is running again, and Pacu is now under the ZF Zoom account. The LCW group link will be a recurring link that can/will be shared with community members this week.
    • GGuy added that Pacu’s update was very thorough, and he was very encouraged and happy with this so far. Jason agreed.
  • Beth - Beth attended ZCG’s Brainstorm meeting last week. She gave an overview of what she has been working on over the past few months. She has done a lot of work on potential partnerships and engineering team collaborations and needs. Some engineering teams have asked her for the current Zcash roadmap. ZCG told her the flow would be similar to Chainsafe: she would set up a call after establishing the relationship, determining their core competencies, and broadening ZCG’s network reach.
    • The committee is pleased with what she came back with, and she also mentioned that she is also enjoying her work.
    • Dan will set Beth up with an @zcg email address moving forward to help establish her new role with ZCG. The committee will use its discretionary budget to pay the $9 monthly bill. ZCG will discuss the option of committee members getting an @zcg email address at their next meeting.
  • Future of ZCG - The committee has been discussing ZCG’s vision of the Zcash Community Grants committee and Devfund. ZCG has discussed whether they should primarily focus on major grants more than they have been. Another topic they have discussed is the committee’s role and how to improve it. ZCG will discuss at their next brainstorm session Jason’s idea to poll the community on these topics: the primary focus of ZCG and their role as committee members.
  • Jason: ZecHub DAO - Jason disclosed to the committee and Alex earlier that he recently joined the DAO for ZecHub and wanted to put it on record in the meeting minutes. Jason therefore will not be weighing in on any future grants or milestone payouts related to ZecHub.
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