Organizational Details
How did you learn about Zcash Community Grants?
Over the last year, the Zcash community has consistently requested a ShapeShift integration. In conversations with community stewards, we were pointed toward Zcash Community Grants as a way to bootstrap the necessary infrastructure while we deliver crosschain swaps, send/receive functionality, balance tracking, and transaction history for ZEC on both web and mobile.
Project Overview
Requested Grant Amount: $50,000
Category: integration
Team Information
Project Lead
Name: Tim 0xFBL
Role: Head of Product
Background: Former MakerDAO product lead with deep experience in DeFi, DAO Tooling, and user-first design.
Responsibilities: Leads the product workstream by setting priorities, aligning with engineering, assisting GTM, and ensuring deadlines and quality standards are consistently met. Receives and evaluates product feedback, guiding it through the development process to deliver intuitive, secure, and innovative user experiences. Evaluates market opportunities for new product features and launches. Pioneers zero to one innovation. Kills things that don’t work.
Additional Team Members
Name: Hpayne ShapeShift
Role: Head of Marketing
Background: Former crypto miner turned growth strategist with a track record across social and fintech. Now leading marketing at ShapeShift, with a sharp focus on paid acquisition, organic growth, and full-funnel feedback loops that turn attention into action.
Responsibilities: Owns the full-stack marketing engine at ShapeShift — from strategy and storytelling to execution and analysis. Leads copywriting across communication channels, drives inbound and outbound campaigns, manages partnerships and PR, and translates user data into actionable insights. Acts as the connective tissue between teams to keep messaging sharp, aligned, and impactful.
Additional Team Members
Name: 0xApotheosis
Role: Head of Engineering
Background: Veteran builder with deep roots in blockchain infrastructure and open-source development. Brings years of engineering leadership across DeFi and protocol-layer projects, with a strong focus on security, scale, and shipping clean code. Believes in code over credentials and keeps the spotlight on the work.
Responsibilities: Leads the engineering org at ShapeShift, overseeing architecture, implementation, and infrastructure across all products. Ensures code quality, scalability, and security while aligning closely with product and marketing to bring features from idea to mainnet. Guides technical strategy, manages contributor workflows, and keeps the entire dev pipeline moving smoothly in a decentralized environment.
Additional Team Members
Name: Tyler ShapeShift
Role: Head of Operations and Customer Success
Background: One of ShapeShift’s earliest team members, with deep roots in both the centralized era and the DAO transition. A true crypto native who’s worn many hats over the years, now leading operations and customer success with a focus on quality, consistency, and user trust.
Responsibilities: Oversees operations and customer success at ShapeShift, managing QA, testing, and support across the full product suite. Ensures a smooth user experience by maintaining high standards for reliability, responsiveness, and cross-team coordination. Acts as the bridge between users and engineering, turning feedback into fixes and confusion into clarity.
Additional Team Members
Name: Prof McCarthy
Role: Head of Tokenomics
Background: A former university economics professor turned full-time DeFi operator, Prof brings deep financial theory and real-world execution together as ShapeShift’s Head of Tokenomics. After leaving academia, he joined ShapeShift and now leads the DAO Finance Committee, balancing protocol incentives, treasury strategy, and long-term sustainability.
Responsibilities: Oversees all things token and treasury; from FOX supply dynamics and liquidity strategy to budgeting, forecasting, and DAO runway. Leads the DAO Finance Committee, managing treasury diversification, asset allocation, and governance-backed financial operations. Balances short-term performance with long-term sustainability to ensure the health of both the token and the DAO.
Project Details
Project Summary
ShapeShift is a global community of high-quality builders accelerating access to a decentralized, self-sovereign financial system. With no custody, open code, and modular DeFi tools, we empower individuals to connect directly with the open protocols shaping the future.
Project Description
ShapeShift DAO is building a comprehensive self-custody suite of tools that provide an alternative to centralized exchanges. Our product roadmap is driven by the community of FOX Token holders, and is available on the web at app.shapeshift.com, and on mobile iOS and Android devices.
We currently support four products:
Flagship Trading App
A multichain trading platform supporting swaps across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum, Base, Dogecoin, BNB Chain, and more. Users access top DEX aggregation, one-click DeFi actions, and native crosschain swaps with no custody and no KYC.
Classic ShapeShift
A revival of our 2014 product ethos: fast, private, memoless swapping of BTC, SOL, USDC/USDT, and FLIP.
FOXCrypt
A privacy-first, end-to-end encrypted messaging app for one-time messages.
ShapeShift Wallet
A self-custodial wallet giving you seamless access to Bitcoin, Solana, EVM chains, and more in one place.
Proposed Problem
Zcash has limited competition for multichain wallets and trading platforms.
Crosschain ZEC liquidity is fragmented, primarily accessible via Maya Protocol.
Users lack streamlined, self-custodial mobile-first access to ZEC alongside other blue-chip assets like BTC and ETH.
Proposed Solution
Multichain Zcash Wallet: Best-in-class ZEC support on desktop, mobile, and native ShapeShift wallets.
Crosschain ZEC Trading: Unified access to Maya Protocol liquidity within ShapeShift’s multichain swapper—bringing ZEC into the same flow as BTC, ETH, SOL, and more.
Expanded Privacy Access: Exposure of ZEC to ShapeShift’s existing global user base, with a strong GTM campaign amplifying ZEC as a leading privacy asset.
Proposed Format [deliverables of proposal]
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Spin up Zcash node
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Support HDwallet
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ShapeShift Native wallet support
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Consider other wallets connecting through SS (e.g., Ledger, Metamask…)
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Connect swapper
- Mayachain to start
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Test full end-to-end integration
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Balances
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Swaps
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Success/failures
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Consider finishing LP for mayachain
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Unlocks first-class mobile + web experience for LP management on Maya
- ZEC liquidity depth accessibility
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Dependencies
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Continued liquidity support from Maya Protocol.
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Reliable community demand and engagement around privacy assets.
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Stable Zcash node infrastructure (Liquify + redundancy).
Technical Approach
ShapeShift is a full-stack, open-source web app. All development, testing, and releases will be transparently tracked in public GitHub repositories, enabling reuse by the broader Zcash ecosystem.
Upstream Merge Opportunities
N/A
Budget
Hardware/Software Costs: $0
HW/SW Justification: We have no hardware or software that we are including in the scope for this ask.
**Service Costs: **
$36,000 total for infrastructure ($60,000 total cost for ShapeShift)
- $5,000 per month for 12 months of running a Zcash node + unchained. Asking $3,000/month for 12 months to cover a portion of the Zcash node infrastructure and unchained via AWS and Liquify.
$14,000 for Marketing ($40,000 total cost for ShapeShift)
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External PR firm (privacy messaging sprint, 2 months) – $10,600
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ABM campaigns targeting Monero/Dash/Zcash/other privacy communities – $4,000
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Paid media: Reddit, X, programmatic, and OOH pilots – $15,000
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Joint campaign with Maya Protocol + privacy communities – $4,000
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Organic SEO, landing pages, earned backlinks – $5,000
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Video creation and social content – $1,000+
(ShapeShift is contributing ~$26k from existing marketing budget; this grant subsidizes ~30%.)
Service Justification: This money will go directly towards our AWS and Liquify node bill for Zcash node data + blockbook parsing. Having consistent node uptime and redundancy empowers users and streamlines onboarding, eliminating concerns about infrastructure costs in our business case. We are 90% within migrating our entire infrastructure, while making our site more performant and secure it also unlocks more chains, specifically, Zcash support was one of the motivations to migrate in the first place. We project that a year of node coverage will allow us to focus all of our internal resourcing on building the most intuitive and easy-to-use UX for Zcash.
We have an aggressive GTM plan to promote Zcash upon its launch on ShapeShift. The $14,000 represents roughly a 30% cost-share of the existing marketing spend of $40,000 that is planned. At a high level, this includes:
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Working with our external PR firm for a two month privacy-focused messaging and commentary sprint ($10,600)
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Running outbound ABM messaging to Monero, Dash, Zcash, and other privacy-aligned communities over 2 months. ($4,000)
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Top of funnel awareness and paid media. Including Reddit, X, Programmatic display advertisements, and exploration of bespoke OOH opportunites ($15,000)
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Joint awareness campaign with Maya Protocol and other privacy-aligned communities ($4,000)
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Social Content, landing pages, organic SEO, and earned media backlinks ($5,000)
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Internally generated and organic video creation ($1,000(+))
Compensation Costs: None. Core team is resourced internally.**
Compensation Justification:** None. Zcash is prioritized as a new chain and swapper to support as per our roadmap. You can track work in progress in our open-source repositories on Github.
Total Budget: $50,000
Risk Assessment
Implementation Risks
Node uptime or infra instability → mitigated by Liquify partnership and AWS redundancy.
Complexity of integrating ZEC swaps via Maya → mitigated by experienced engineering team and phased rollout.
Potential Side Effects
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Heavy reliance on Maya liquidity initially; mitigated by roadmap expansion to additional routers as volume increases.
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Increased infra costs over time; mitigated by DAO treasury support and infra migration work already underway.
Success Metrics:
Chain launch:
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Account balances
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Tx history
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Querying
Adoption Goals:
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1,000+ unique wallets interacting with ZEC within 3 months
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$1M+ quarterly swap volume powered by Maya (success)
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$10M+ quarterly swap volume and deeper ZEC pairs (smashing success)
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Liquidity growth in Maya ZEC pools post-integration
Awareness Metrics:
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PR reach
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Impressions from campaigns
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Engagement in privacy communities.
Project Schedule
Startup Funding Amount:
$36,000 for initial node infrastructure costs
Startup Funding Justification:
Milestone(s) Details:
Milestone 1: Spin up Zcash node
Amount (USD): $0
Expected Completion Date: Month 1-2
Details:
- Liquify support + Blockbook tx parsing
Milestone 2: Support Zcash on HDWallet
Amount (USD): $0
Expected Completion Date: Month 2-3
Details:
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ShapeShift Native wallet support
-
Consider other wallets connecting through SS (e.g., Ledger, Metamask…)
Milestone 3: Connect Zcash to Swapper
Amount (USD): $0
Expected Completion Date: Month 3-4
Details:
- MayaChain
Milestone 4: Integration Testing Complete
Amount (USD): $0
Expected Completion Date: Month 3-5
Details:
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Balances
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Swaps
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Send/receives
Milestone 5: GTM
Amount (USD): $14,000
Expected Completion Date: Month 5
Details: See above for high-level breakdown.
