Zcash Community Grants Milestone 5 Report (May 2026)
Hi Zcashers 
Here’s our May 2026 update:
1) Team Development + Onboarding
A major focus this month was onboarding two new contributors into Zk Av Club: The Archivist and the Storyteller.
These two roles are closely connected to the long-term development of the Recording Station archive and the broader challenge of preserving and organizing community memory over time.
The Archivist role is being filled by Irena, whose background spans publications, audiovisual production, exhibition management, provenance systems, and building collaborative projects from the ground up. We’re especially excited about the combination of organizational rigor and creative experience she brings into the project at this stage of development. You can follow her work at x.com/pttrn_rcgntn.
The Storyteller role is being filled by Dayvan, an independent writer and researcher focused on archives, memory, temporality, and digital culture. Her work strongly resonates with the archive philosophy emerging around Recording Station, where media is understood not simply as content, but as part of a larger ecosystem of historical memory, context, and interpretation. You can explore her work at dayvan.xyz.
2) Club Infrastructure
No progress was made this month on club infrastructure.
3) Publishing & Release Pipeline
This week we released a new recording from Funding the Commons at Berlin Blockchain Week 2025 featuring Drips: https://youtu.be/xcctaIm2dR4
This is the first of several recordings currently moving through post-production. It’s also the first Zk Av Club video to be edited by @PacDc. And, it’s the first published video to get support from Dayvan as part of the new Storyteller role.
4) PeerTube (watchz.cash)
The invite-only alpha is at watchz.cash.
We’ve begun planning a new curation layer for watchz.cash. The goal is to improve discoverability and long-term impact of Zcash community media by highlighting key talks, historical context, and evergreen educational material.
As part of this process, we’ve begun developing a framework for selecting recordings based on educational value, historical importance, technical relevance, and long-term accessibility.
5) Activations
We’re excited to announce that the Zk Av Club Recording Station is coming to The Blockspäti by @webzero on June 18 and 19 during Berlin Blockchain Week 2026!! More details coming soon.
The Recording Station is designed as an open-access community media lab. Our volunteer crew is bringing cameras, microphones, and an open invitation to participate in documenting the community and ecosystem through conversations, workshops, and experimental media.
We also continued discussions and planning related to:
- Neocypherpunk Summit by Web3Privacy Now
- DWeb Camp Berlin
- Zcon7 by Zcash Foundation
6) Workshops
Throughout May 2026, we continued reorganizing and developing the Zk Av Club Workshops program ahead of the July–December season.
This month focused primarily on:
- developing workshop processes and roadmaps
- mapping long-term workshop curriculum
- drafting a Workshops FAQ page
The July–December 2026 season is being organized around two primary tracks:
- Zcash
- Sovereign / local-first community media technology
We have begun brainstorming with @ZecHub while outlining the Zcash workshop track sessions. Current planning targets a July launch for the two parallel workshop tracks.
This month, @AuraBritoSM hosted a workshop, facilitated by @yoditar: Signal para todos.
The Spanish-language workshop focused on helping participants understand how to use Signal for more secure and accessible community communication. It was hosted on Free2Z and livestreamed simultaneously to X and YouTube with live audience participation and discussion.
7) Community & Ecosystem Support
We continued supporting conversations and collaborations around:
- Zcash community media infrastructure
- open-source audiovisual tooling
- archive organization
- consent-first publishing workflows
- decentralized media distribution
Join a skill network for workshops, transcription, event production, post‑production, and more. When something fits your skills, we’ll reach out with the scope and pay. Details and signup form: https://zkav.club/opportunities/gigs/
8) Zcash Weekend Watchparty
Last week, we announced the return of the Zcash Weekend Watchparty: https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/zk-av-club-presents-zcash-weekend-watchparty/55770
The concept is simple: recurring all-weekend livestreams on X featuring continuous broadcasts of historical Zcon presentations.
Last weekend’s Watchparty livestream included every Zcon presentation we could find across the years, starting with Privacy for Everyone (aka Zcon-minus-1), alongside Zcon Sessions with ZecHub at Zcon4 and additional community media produced at Zcon events.
The livestream ran for 99 hours and 28 minutes continuously. The full broadcast replay is now available for viewing on X: https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1nGeLyNwZERKX
The project serves multiple purposes:
- resurfacing important historical Zcash moments
- helping newer community members discover foundational talks and personalities
- experimenting with lightweight distribution systems
The streaming workflow is intentionally minimal and fully open-source, using command-line tooling rather than traditional broadcasting workflows.
9) Follow-up on Milestone 4 “What’s Next”
| Item | Status |
|---|---|
| Onboard Archivist & Storyteller | Complete |
| Recording Station archiving cadence | Under development |
| Begin publishing backlog items | Public publishing has begun |
| PeerTube implementation | Initial content curation in progress |
| Confirm summer activations | Confirmed |
| Event suggestion intake | Live |
| Public outputs dashboard | No visible progress |
| Monthly reporting cadence | Maintained |
10) Summary
- Onboarded two new archive-focused contributor roles: The Archivist and the Storyteller
- Released the first Storyteller-supported publication from Funding the Commons
- Began planning a new curation layer for watchz.cash
- Announced the Recording Station at The Blockspäti during Berlin Blockchain Week 2026
- Launched the return of the Zcash Weekend Watchparty with a 99-hour historical Zcon livestream
- Continued developing the July–December Zk Av Club Workshops program
- Continued historical Zcon presentation review and archive organization work
11) June Focus
In June, our primary focus will be:
- Recording Station activations at Berlin Blockchain Week 2026
- Continuing the publishing backlog
- Expanding archive organization and workflows
- Preparing the July launch of the 2026 Zk Av Club Workshops season
- Further development of watchz.cash curation plans
Thanks again to the Zcash Community Grants committee and the wider Zcash community for continuing to support this work.
— Ryan / Zk Av Club