Zcash Media 2022-2023

The relevance is that the current UX of [shielded] Zcash (aside from YWallet/WarpSync) is not good enough for mass adoption… and yet the grant in this thread is one of the largest grants ever…for marketing (not UX).

The point is …we still have things backwards (which Jobs was saying). The UX for syncing a node, the UX for rescans (excl warpSync because that’s quite impressive and fast), the UX for and application of viewkeys and payment disclosures, the UX for institutional use-cases around reporting and compliance, the UX for interoperability, the UX for shielded multi-sig, the UX for converting to a stablecoin or way to pay bills…. All of those need to be addressed and the experience simplified where possible/feasible.

So, again, hypothetically, this grant passes… and we get tens of thousands of new users… that will only be half of the road to success. If those new users funnel from the videos to current featured or “official” wallets, then the majority will end up bouncing/defecting because those UX topics above aren’t solved yet— ie use of [shielded] Zcash is still too complicated for the average person or missing UX elements.

For example, here’s a thought experiment for the community. What if this grant were rejected, and 2.75 ZEC were given to 10,000 new users instead. (I’m not suggesting we do that but that’s about $1.8 million). What would happen to those new users? Many would fail to set up zcashd and renege; many would just hold or sell it transparently on Coinbase/Gemini/etc; many would try to use ZecWallet/lite/mobile but get confused.

“Vision communication” is important. But I would argue that the recipe for Jobs’ exceptional vision communication was that (especially later in his career) he presented a distilled vision AND then followed through by releasing a product with good UX within hours/days of walking off stage. classic Jobs: wouldn’t it be great to (fill in blank) … well order the all new (fill in apple product) after my talk :exploding_head:
We are simply not there yet on the product side of Zcash; so in my opinion, it’d make more sense to invest in UX… and ask this grant team to reduce their budget and number of proposed videos.

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