Zcash foundation board of directors

Thanks for prompting this discussion @kek. Let me start with this reply first:

We haven’t published it yet, but I’m in process writing a (rather lengthy) State of the Foundation report on publishing details around the same level as last year’s budget in addition to updating the community on the current state of our treasury and what we actually spent last year. I gave some numbers last month but the forthcoming post—which should be published this week—will have more granularity.

In addition, you can always view our Form 990s, which we are required by law as a 501(c)3 to submit to the IRS every year. We generally file extensions on these, so they’re not submitted until later in the year. Thus you can expect 2018’s 990 to be on our website by end of 2019. Given the delay, I’d view them as a good source for verifying that we spend money according to the (much more up-to-date) blog posts. Trust but verify and all that. :slight_smile: You can view 2017’s 990 on the website—thanks to this discussion I realize it wasn’t carried over during our GitHub consolidation, so I just remedied that now.

Re: your other question regarding the election process, as stated in the repo, the election really should have been called an “advisory” panel. Relevant section screenshot here:

From a legal perspective, the Zcash Foundation operates like most non-profit 501(c)3s, in which the Board is ultimately responsible for voting new members into the Board. The Board membership terms are three years, according to Section 3, Article 1 of the Foundation’s bylaws. Two vacant seats were left by Naval and Yan last year, and Amber and Ian were elected by the Board (based on the advice of the Community Governance/Advisory Panel) into their terms. The Board may expand membership if they so choose, and there aren’t any restrictions on being elected for another term. I do not speak for the Board, but I do not expect another Board election this year (though I do expect another expanded Community Advisory Panel process for other policy decisions). CC @amiller, the Zcash Foundation’s Chairman of the Board, if he’d like to offer his opinion on the above.

More generally, the Board votes on strategy and policy but also has the key job of evaluating the Executive Director/management of the Foundation and whether they are executing on the strategic goals of the non-profit. In that regard I personally believe they’ve been doing an exemplary job, but I’m obviously biased. If you are unhappy with how the Foundation has been working, it’s probably more effective to petition the Board to fire me, TBH.

One thing that I’d like to make abundantly clear, particular regarding this reply: it is not in the Foundation’s Mission to boost investor confidence in ZEC. We care about long-term development of value in the Zcash ecosystem as it pertains to building private Internet payment infrastructure for the public good, and while our endowment is weighed heavily in ZEC, we are indifferent about short-term price fluctuations and will not engage in activities purely designed to boost investor confidence.

I hope this elucidates the structure of the Foundation, and keep an eye out for the State of the Foundation post this week (we’ll definitely post about it on the forums).

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