I don’t think the questions are completely invalid (some of them are quite interesting though I’m not the one being addressed) but I will say that the door swings both ways and I don’t wholly share the same sentiments with your total assesment. It’s true the ZFND can try harder and maybe give us some more data but so can the rest of us try harder and pay a little more attention, I’ve mentioned this before in the ‘ZFND should better communicate grant information’ (or something) thread. For instance, Zebrad. To my knowledge it will (hopefully) be verifying blocks on testnet here in just a few weeks for NU5. They post developmental updates and such about it pretty much everyday on the zfnd discord and have talked about it in every gardening club for the past couple months at least so I don’t think the community is as much in the dark about that as you do. The nature of grants is a legally binding contract and there are legal repercussions for otherwise fulfilling the accord. I think maybe not immediately blairing that out has to with said legal matters or maybe even just giving the benefit of the doubt though I dont know for sure. And to fair, my focus is here on this project; on this forum and the discords, the newsletters, the calls but sadly not github though I would if I were a dev and knew how github works. I dont think my level of sustained attention is required to stay sufficiently abreast of things in the community, excessive perhaps but I think that may have more to do with your own bottom line and I don’t personally feel it’s excessive at all.
@aquietinvestor Thanks for your feedback. You make a lot of very fair criticisms. I’m not going to try to address every one individually but there are some broad points I want to make.
As you note, I took over the reins at the Foundation six months ago. My first priorities (after getting my feet under the table) were (a) hiring someone to fill the gap left by Antonie’s departure, and (b) making sure that the Zebra project was on track. There are only so many hours in the day, and nobody can do everything at once - you have to prioritize. Those are the things I chose to prioritize, and I’m comfortable with the choices I made.
Next on my list of priorities is improving our communications and ecosystem outreach efforts. I agree 100% that our efforts in that area are less-than-adequate. What am I doing about it? I’m going to hire someone (and maybe more in the future) to focus on it.
When I left the Electric Coin Company (ECC), it had a team of three people in the communications/marketing/outreach/bizdev function, plus outside service providers. The Foundation doesn’t currently have anyone (and hasn’t had anyone for some time). Right now, it’s effectively a few hours of my time each week, which I freely acknowledge isn’t enough. That’s why we’re looking to hire someone.
I also want to say that, just because ECC does a thing, doesn’t mean that the Foundation should automatically do the same (and vice versa!). They are different organisations, with different backgrounds and histories, different structures, and different budgets. ECC currently has 3x as many employees as the Foundation, and a budget that’s at least 3x the Foundation’s current operating budget, so it’s not surprising that ECC is able to do more.
I also believe that it doesn’t make sense for the Foundation to blindly try to replicate what ECC does. Doing so would result in wasted, duplicated effort, and would negate the diversity and decentralization advantages that accrue from having two independent organisations.
For example, for a long time ECC chose not to build a GUI wallet.
The Foundation funded development of ZecWallet.
In that specific instance, I think the Zcash ecosystem is far better off as a result of the Foundation doing something differently from ECC.
With regards to the level of detail in the ZF Board meeting minutes, I would just say that the ZF Board and the ZOMG Committee are very different in nature, specifically in terms of their legal obligations and fiduciary duties.
You said:
I think you underestimate how much having a full-time person focused entirely on that function will help with solving the problem of me not having enough time to deliver the sort of communications and the level of community engagement that are necessary to live up to the standard we aspire to and that you clearly expect from us. I’m pretty confident that, once we find the right person and get them onboard and up to speed, we’ll start to see significant improvement.
To give a concrete example: As you noted, the June board meeting minutes had not been published when you wrote your post. Posting the minutes is (currently) my job, and I hadn’t got around to posting them until today. If I can remove myself as a bottleneck from that process, we (and you) will no longer have to wait until that particular task bubbles to the top of my (very long) “To Do” list.
I want to make one thing clear: My focus is not on serving Zcash holders. Instead, I believe that our mission, and the Zcash ecosystem, is best served by focusing on Zcash users, both existing and future. This is clearly stated in our mission statement.
What are we doing to further that mission?
We’re building Zebra because we believe that a modern, modular node implementation will make it easier to integrate Zcash into more platforms and apps, will reduce the security risks of relying on a single node implementation, and will sidestep some of the limitations that the zcashd codebase has inherited from bitcoind.
We’ve researched and are developing a PoC/demo implementation FROST to provide the equivalent of multisig for shielded addresses so that custodians (and other users who rely on multisig-based security) can support shielded Zcash.
Focusing primarily on Zcash holders means that you’re focusing on people who are already using Zcash. The real opportunity is to figure out how to bring in new users, and I think the work we’re doing will support and contribute to that.
On the topic of transparency, the Foundation publishes its form 990 and audited accounts, and, as you note, has provided quarterly updates in the past, although there’s been a hiatus since I took over. Reinstating those quarterly updates is something I plan to do as soon as we have the bandwidth, and I take on board the point you made when we spoke about the effort required to currently find the information that we make available.
With regards to accountability, I believe that we’re accountable to the Zcash community, in two ways.
Firstly, the ZF board consults the Zcash Community Advisory Panel (ZCAP) when electing board members. This year, nobody new stood as a candidate, so we’re giving the ZCAP the opportunity to re-open nominations.
If there truly is, as you claim, “a growing consensus within the community that the Zcash Foundation is not sufficiently transparent and does not adequately serve … the Zcash ecosystem” then I would expect to see ZCAP vote to re-open nominations and recommend candidates who have firm proposals to improve transparency and better serve the Zcash ecosystem.
Secondly, the governance process that resulted in ZIP 1014, and created the Dev Fund, has established a precedent for changing ZIP 1014 itself. If the Zcash community wanted to reduce (or eliminate) the Zcash Foundation’s share of the Dev Fund, it could do so.
FYI, I disagree very strongly with this statement. The emission schedule for Zcash (and, thus, its inflation rate) was set before the genesis block was mined. Everyone who holds Zcash knows that its monetary supply will eventually top out at 21,000,000 ZEC, and that ZEC is distributed as block rewards, to the Founders and miners for the first four years, and to the Dev Fund recipients and miners for the subsequent four years (starting last November).
During the governance process that led to the creation of the Dev Fund, nobody proposed redirecting some or all of the newly-created ZEC to existing Zcash holders, instead of to miners or the Dev Fund recipients.
Great! I’m genuinely delighted to read that! What I say to you is: Get involved!
I want to hear ideas and suggestions. I want to hear constructive criticism. Instead of asking:
…why don’t you tell us what you think we should do to achieve those objectives?
Better still, why not get directly involved? You’re clearly articulate and have very strong opinions about how the Foundation should communicate and engage with the community. Why not apply for the Communications & Ecosystem Relations Manager role?
You want to hold me accountable? If ZCAP votes to re-open nominations, stand as a candidate for the Board! (Or, if it votes to re-up the existing members, stand next year!) If you’re successful, and if you’re not happy with my performance, you can table a motion at your first board meeting to fire me! 
I’m not sure how we can be more accountable than that!
I asked for bootstrap foundational docs and reports be made available to the community, and I was given the link to the Delaware corporate entity registration page. Classy.
This should be doable with the RSS feeds of the blogs and the forum – convert XML feeds to JSON daily, save as markdown posts to GitHub and package it up into a Gatsby/React app; I want to build an open-source aggregate article/blog system anyway, so could be a fun project. Would this idea just involve aggregating blog/forum posts, or involve a monthly write-up also?
@Dodger Thank you for your response. I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to write a thorough post as I know you’re busy.
There are two quick points I want to make:
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Quarterly Reports – I get you’re new, busy, and understaffed, but I’d think something as important as quarterly reports should be high on the list of priorities of things to do. If you don’t have a Communications Director in house to do the work, you can (1) hire a consultant/contractor to help until you find someone to fill the role or (2) split up the work between existing employees (e.g. you, the COO, and Ops Director). Reporting shouldn’t stop just because you don’t have the bandwidth to get around to it.
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I’m sure you were joking, but if I was on the board, my first action would not be to make a motion to have you fired. I don’t dislike you or harbor any ill will toward you. We talked on the phone the other day, and you seem like a good guy. But more importantly, you and I are on the same team as Zcashers and, as such, our interests should (more or less) be aligned. So what I would do as a board member is try to help you run the organization better than it was run under the previous Executive Director. That ultimately benefits us both.
I will start focusing on solutions rather than the problems. If ZCAP recommends the board re-open nominations, that might provide an opportunity to get someone new on the board with a different professional background, skill set, and perspective. I think having someone on the board with a strong business acumen would be very beneficial to the Foundation in the long run.