Hello everyone,
We are excited to share our official proposal for ZEBL Cape Town (Zcash Early Builders Lab) with the Zcash community!
Building on our team’s active presence and track record in the South African tech ecosystem, ZEBL Cape Town is a 3-month targeted developer activation initiative designed to onboard 80+ young builders and developers (ages 16–22) directly into the Zcash ecosystem.
Our primary goal is to establish a sustainable, open-source pipeline of young developers in South Africa by focusing on hands-on testnet wallet configuration, zero-knowledge (zk-SNARK) concepts, shielded transactions, and building real prototype applications.
Key Highlights of ZEBL Cape Town:
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Target Audience: 80+ high school upperclassmen and university STEM/computer science students across Cape Town.
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Core Format: A 2-day intensive workshop and mini-hackathon paired with a 30-day virtual follow-up cohort (Young Builders Circle) to ensure long-term retention.
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100% Testnet Safe: All coding exercises, wallet generation, and shielded transactions operate exclusively on the Zcash Testnet (TAZ).
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Open-Source Impact: Production of a fully documented, reusable curriculum repository (MIT-licensed) published directly to GitHub for other global Zcash chapters to fork and deploy.
Core Target Metrics:
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60+ Active Testnet Wallets initialized and connected via lightwalletd.
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150+ Shielded z-to-z transactions executed with encrypted memos.
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10+ Open-source student GitHub repositories with functional prototype applications.
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30-Day Retention: Tracked engagement and code commits via the Young Builders Circle cohort.
GitHub Grant Application:
You can review our full grant application here:
ZEBL Cape Town: Zcash Early Builders Lab · Issue #493 · ZcashCommunityGrants/zcashcommunitygrants
We welcome any feedback, questions, or suggestions from the community and look forward to your input!
Thank you,
Thabo Makoena & The ZEBL Cape Town Team