Zcash Community Grants Committee Google Meet Meeting: May 12, 2025
[Minutes taken by FPF]
Attendance:
- Artkor (not present, voted async)
- Brian
- GGuy
- Jason
- Zerodartz
- Alex (FPF resource, notetaker)
Key Takeaways:
- Open Grants
Open Grant Proposals
- Ledger Live Integration
- Zondax: This project’s main objective is to integrate the new Zcash Ledger Shielded application with Ledger Live to enable transparent transaction support. While they intend to explore shielded transaction integration in a subsequent phase, their initial focus is on delivering transparent transaction support within a reasonable timeframe to ensure a successful and timely release. The requestor is asking for $95,000.
- The committee is continuing deliberations related to this grant. An update will be provided shortly.
- Jason and Pacu had a call with Ledger on Friday. The key takeaways were:
- The first priority is for Ledger to fix the issue causing ZEC with Sapling inputs to be stuck on devices. Ledger has confirmed they will fix this free of charge.
- Ledger will post a proposal for shielded support, which will be a retroactive grant in order to align with community expectations and demonstrate the product’s functionality before receiving funding.
- ZCG is open to negotiating an ongoing maintenance and support grant with Ledger to ensure Zcash remains functional on Ledger devices after the retroactive grant is completed.
- In the coming days, someone from Ledger will respond to the forum thread to introduce themselves and reassure the community of their commitment to supporting Zcash long term and also likely mention items 1 and 2 above.
- Zondax: This project’s main objective is to integrate the new Zcash Ledger Shielded application with Ledger Live to enable transparent transaction support. While they intend to explore shielded transaction integration in a subsequent phase, their initial focus is on delivering transparent transaction support within a reasonable timeframe to ensure a successful and timely release. The requestor is asking for $95,000.
- Zcash Global Turkish (Q2 2025)
- This project aims to introduce Zcash to a wider audience in Turkey, raise awareness about the importance of financial privacy, and build a strong, sustainable Turkish Zcash community. By leveraging Turkey’s growing interest in cryptocurrencies and Zcash’s advanced privacy technology, the initiative will focus on education, content creation, and community building across platforms like Telegram, Twitter, YouTube, and blogs. Local events will further support these efforts by providing direct education about Zcash and financial privacy, with the ultimate goal of increasing adoption and long-term community growth. Requestor is asking for $10,400 for three months of funding. ZCG members are asked to provide their feedback and vote.
- Jason: We’ve discussed this as a group and we’re going to approve this grant. This team has done a good job and ZCG received positive feedback from Artkor’s survey of the Turkish community with value found in the team’s content and wanting to see this project continued.
- Unanimous approval.
- This project aims to introduce Zcash to a wider audience in Turkey, raise awareness about the importance of financial privacy, and build a strong, sustainable Turkish Zcash community. By leveraging Turkey’s growing interest in cryptocurrencies and Zcash’s advanced privacy technology, the initiative will focus on education, content creation, and community building across platforms like Telegram, Twitter, YouTube, and blogs. Local events will further support these efforts by providing direct education about Zcash and financial privacy, with the ultimate goal of increasing adoption and long-term community growth. Requestor is asking for $10,400 for three months of funding. ZCG members are asked to provide their feedback and vote.
- Zcash Nigeria (Q2 2025)
- This project builds on our recent progress by Zcash Nigeria to expand awareness of Zcash, highlight the importance of financial privacy, and strengthen the local community. In this next phase, they aim to deepen engagement through tailored education efforts, targeted events, and expanded outreach across social platforms. Key goals include onboarding more local businesses to accept ZEC, scaling up content creation for a Nigerian audience, and fostering long-term community growth through consistent, privacy-focused programming. They are asking for $9,600. ZCG members are asked to provide their feedback and vote.
- Jason: I think they’ve done a good job and I think we should continue to support this grant.
- Zerodartz: I think they’re doing ok but could do better. I’m a bit hesitant but I’m willing to approve once more and evaluate. I want to see more activity this time on social media and make sure the posts are very localized. Maybe a few more events would be possible with easy to understand goals - like onboarding people to wallets etc. It’s a bit hard to get a good understanding of how much and how effective what they have done is so far. But I approve this time.
- Brian: I also support this grant. Do you feel like you can see more of an organic response with the Turkey group instead of the Nigeria Group? Nigeria shows photos, meetups and things like that. But the thing that I’ve found challenging is trying to evaluate how good of an organic response there’s been, like seeing more people come into the ecosystem.
- Jason: I definitely hear Zerodartz’s concern as well. This is something that we’ve debated for years with the Global Ambassador Program. It’s super difficult to gauge how effective they are in terms of building community.. Originally, we sprinkled Ambassadors all over the globe, and it was clear that there were some that were good and then some that were just doing the minimum. But from there, we decided to focus on different regions that we all thought were important places for Zcash. I think Chidi does a really good job, but there is always room for improvement, especially for bringing new community members. So, if we have specific things that we want them to do we should tell them, and also maybe they can learn from what the Turkish community and other communities are doing. I think they’d be open to doing that. They’ve asked for feedback.
- Brian: That’s one of the things that always makes these things challenging. Like, overall. I support Nigeria, but I also hear Zerodartz’s concerns.
- Zerodartz: I’ve got to say, they have posted some quite cool and localized memes last month.
- Gguy: I think it’s worth having a discussion in our next brainstorm about this. Given it’s still relatively early days I think there is value in leveraging their current momentum and providing feedback on where they can improve. I think they are heading in the right direction. We just need to find ways to increase the value and momentum of their efforts.
- Unanimous approval.
- This project builds on our recent progress by Zcash Nigeria to expand awareness of Zcash, highlight the importance of financial privacy, and strengthen the local community. In this next phase, they aim to deepen engagement through tailored education efforts, targeted events, and expanded outreach across social platforms. Key goals include onboarding more local businesses to accept ZEC, scaling up content creation for a Nigerian audience, and fostering long-term community growth through consistent, privacy-focused programming. They are asking for $9,600. ZCG members are asked to provide their feedback and vote.
- AirGap Cold Wallet Solution
- AirGap is an open-source, self-custody wallet that turns any spare smartphone into a highly secure, air-gapped cold wallet using a two-app system—AirGap Vault for offline key storage and signing, and AirGap Wallet for transaction management. The solution eliminates the need for dedicated hardware, offering features like human-verifiable seed generation via dice rolls or coin flips, complete offline operation with no connectivity, and advanced security options including BIP-39 passphrases, BIP-85 support, and social recovery. With prior experience implementing shielded Sapling transactions for Tezos, the AirGap team brings proven expertise to privacy-focused integrations. They are asking for $100,000. ZCG members are asked to provide their feedback and vote.
- Brian: This is not the right time to support another wallet solution. We have enough on our plate at the moment. I vote to reject.
- Gguy: The wallet could be useful, I just don’t see any demand for it. Until the community shows a demand for this type of solution, it’s not the right time. I reject.
- Zerodartz: I agree. I guess the only difference is it’s a multi-coin wallet, but it doesn’t have that many users, so, I don’t think it’s worth it right now. I reject.
- Jason: I reject as well.
- Unanimous rejection.
- AirGap is an open-source, self-custody wallet that turns any spare smartphone into a highly secure, air-gapped cold wallet using a two-app system—AirGap Vault for offline key storage and signing, and AirGap Wallet for transaction management. The solution eliminates the need for dedicated hardware, offering features like human-verifiable seed generation via dice rolls or coin flips, complete offline operation with no connectivity, and advanced security options including BIP-39 passphrases, BIP-85 support, and social recovery. With prior experience implementing shielded Sapling transactions for Tezos, the AirGap team brings proven expertise to privacy-focused integrations. They are asking for $100,000. ZCG members are asked to provide their feedback and vote.
Brainstorm Session Follow-Ups
- Maya Protocol
- This is getting very close, possible launch in May.
- Lightwalletd Infrastructure
- ZCG is working to migrate Hanh’s infrastructure to ZecHub in the next few months. Kick off meeting happening soon.
- Zingo / Qedit
- ZCG is facing challenges due to delays in the NU7 upgrade and zcashd deprecation, both of which have no clear timeline for completion. We are funding several initiatives related to zcashd deprecation and NU7, such as Qedit’s work on ZSAs and Zingo and Blockchain Commons’ work on zcashd deprecation. However, the delays in these projects mean that ZCG may be required to continue funding them beyond the original scope, which is becoming unsustainable due to the high costs involved. Grants should have a defined scope and clear endpoints to avoid indefinite funding. Jason will bring this up at the Arborist Call on Thursday to get feedback from the core engineering teams.