Zcash Media 2022-2023

Success is the child of conviction. Mediocrity is a byproduct of diversification.

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I don’t know how I feel about this statement.

I don’t want to draw away from the point that it makes when I say that it is quite poetic and nice but yes I’m sorry the meaning is over my head, I’ve never heard that before.

I vote with all my HARD earned zec’s against wastful manipulative fomo proposals, and I vote for enthusiastic research and development. Growing the Zcash ecosystem FR!

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I think $1.8 million would be better spent on…

  • dev for features that improve UX
  • business development for better institutional support

12 videos with that budget seems overkill, especially since the primary value-adding use-case for Zcash is still mainly shielded transactions.

Once there is an improved UX, better institutional support, more features like ZSAs and staking, then more videos may make sense. Until then it seems like we’d have 10 angles of the same thing. :upside_down_face:

I will also say that it doesn’t make sense to go whole hog increasing awareness if we are not also going to promote the best Zcash mobile app (currently YWallet) as well. What is the logic here? Try to increase awareness for ZEC through $1.8 million in videos… onboard tens of thousands of users to zcashd? Edge? NH? Let’s be real and honest… you’ll need to funnel all those new users to a solid and fast mobile app.

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I support this grant with a few conditions. One of them being that there needs to be a quarterly review on the KPIs, and the ZCG have the right to stop funding if it deems the works don’t meet certain targets (set by the agreement between ZM and ZCG of course). This way ZCG don’t have to commit more than 10% of their budget to one grant in one go. FYI, current ZCG ZEC balance is less than 9 millions USD.

I think, as a yodler, you have a Ycash bias here. YWallet is a Ycash-first wallet. As a user of YWallet, I have to admit it’s a good alternative to Zecwallet Lite, especially during recent months when Zecwallet development stopped for a little while, but it’s not that much better.

Also, this is off-topic so I will not comment further. If you want to have discussion specific to Ywallet, I suggest you create its own topic @z.yodler. Cheers!

Actually no my comment is not based on bias.

I’ve been in Zcash longer than Ycash.
YWallet is hands down a better UX thus far and has far more features.

Personally, I’d recommend YWallet to friends; it’s the only Zcash mobile wallet I’d recommend to them at the moment. It was a missed opportunity to not spend $1.8 million promoting ZWallet/WarpWallet imho.

I understand that you are supportive of this grant. I would like to hear from others in community.

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I will step out of this conversation for few days & give time for everyone to share their honest feelings about this.

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My comment about the consumer funnel is not off-topic at all. This grant is $1.8 million to raise awareness and drum up interest and new users. Ok … THEN what? Where do those users go?

… to a mobile wallet. Which one? (The only one with a good UX)

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Edge and Unstoppable are not a Bitcoin first wallet.They are multi currency wallets.

YWallet is a privacy-oriented multi-currency wallet & messenger.

It treats Zcash and Ycash equally. Every feature of Zcash and Ycash are available. Sure, there is the logo and the first account is created as Ycash but I had to pick one. The ZWallet name was taken on the iOS store and besides, it was never officially recognized by the Zcash team. On the other hand, YWallet was welcome by the Ycash team.

I will have to disagree with your statement.

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Hello all,

Thanks for taking the time to evaluate our proposal. We appreciate those that have indicated their support and those that have offered constructive criticism. It’s certainly clear that everyone here really cares about Zcash’s success :slight_smile:

Many of the questions center around the above question, which could perhaps be summarized: “Why Now?” We do our best to address that question below.

Building towards a long term goal

Our ultimate goal is to build the world’s number one crypto media channel to inspire and inform global audiences about Zcash and its mission. We believe Zcash should be the number one digital currency since it offers the potential to protect and empower individuals in an increasingly controlling world. We believe that since there is no major country supporting Zcash, unlike fiat currencies, the only way for it to fulfill its mission is to provide clear, abundant, and engaging educational content in parallel to delivering consistent technological development.

It takes many years to grow large followings that can reach audiences all over the world. Eventually, we hope to build channels in every language with professionally dubbed videos in order to help Zcash ultimately become the world’s most used currency, and serve those who need it most, many of whom may not speak English. And in order to build to that long term goal, we hope to get started right away and not stop.

One of the main reasons why we want to get started right away is because of the large amount of operational overhead we hope to streamline over time so there can eventually be many teams working in parallel to make content for Zcash. The more consistently we can dedicate time to building out our systems, the better they can become.

Also, the longer we wait, the more opportunities and growth we’re missing. The videos and marketing keep garnering views - we are not distributing one off ads that are only put up once a year. Making the same videos two years from now during different market conditions is not going to be more beneficial than making those videos right now. We’re investing in our user base and it will compound the sooner we start.

Success on YouTube

Secondly, consistency is incredibly important for success on a platform like YouTube. YouTube has its own rules for promoting videos including things like click-thru rates and retention times. It will also promote channels/videos that consistently provide highly watched videos. With enough consistency and quality, YouTube may become an incredibly powerful tool to amplify the message we deliver about Zcash. However, we can only learn how to improve our video statistics, perform audience discovery, and grow higher and higher in the amount of hours people watch our videos by consistently putting out content and consistently iterating on how to improve it.

Different than traditional marketing

Due to the fact that we aim to tackle complex topics, our videos can cover a lot of ground. This is the benefit of the long-form, deeply researched content that we want to make. We hope the videos can serve as focal points for discussion around important topics in and outside the community. For instance, during our video releases, we noticed that the Spanish Zcash community was advertising for “Zcash Media Nights” where Spanish-speaking Zcashers could meet up to talk about the videos. That was so awesome!! Imagine an entire year where every month there’s a new topic to cover with multiple discussion groups going in different languages, where people can share videos with their friends and family and say, “Here, look! This video finally explains that ZEC’s privacy is not just for criminals, it’s actually protecting people from criminals!”, or “Look, this video talks about how privacy is so essential for protecting women’s rights and how ZEC can play a role in that!”. Another great example - @artkor was able to make his own dubbed version of the videos and use them to watch with his friends and family on the weekend (saying his parents, greater than 60 years old, are almost supporters of Zcash!).

This is what differentiates what we are trying to make from traditional marketing. Traditional marketing does not serve as the basis for a recurring discussion group, or material to watch with your family and friends on the weekend. More than just advertising Zcash, we want to show people through the power of story the human reasons to care about Zcash and the principles for which it stands - human dignity, individual freedom, anti-authoritarianism, the right to privacy, consent.

Continuing to make videos will continue the compounding effect where people begin creating content about our content and one video can lead to other videos. As Naval Ravikant has said, “All the benefits in life come from compound interest - relationship, money, habits - anything of importance.” We believe the same is true for Zcash Media.

Timing the market

Understandably, the concern has been raised about market conditions and the timing of our work. And since our main goal is to become a consistent content production engine, this will at times look like putting out videos when prices are down and at times look like putting out videos when prices are high.

When prices are low, as mentioned, someone may do additional research on Zcash and see that the market is down and decide not to buy. Whereas when prices are up, people may look at it as a good investment and decide to buy. However, from the investment perspective of the viewer, this is actually the opposite of what they should do. When prices are high, they should not be incentivized to buy any more than when prices are low. They would be better served to buy low; therefore, content delivered during a bear market could be argued to be more responsible than only releasing marketing material during a bull market. In fact, it is also conceivable that as people become more and more familiar with our channel and see that it produces high quality content no matter what the price is, and furthermore does not fixate on price like many other crypto YouTube channels, our channel may gain a significant level of trustworthiness in the market compared to other “fair-weather” channels.

Also, a recent anecdotal story highlights our belief in the value of providing educational material during downturns. A family member asked why crypto was crashing and due to the combination of being able to send her our videos and being able to explain that there are different aspects to crypto such as price versus fundamentals, she was able to continue during her own research and was able to sift through all the clickbait articles to find one that actually talked about how crypto technologies are changing our public infrastructure and what that future could look like. The simple explanation of the difference between price fluctuations and what’s going on fundamentally was able to give her the proper frame of mind to better understand the market and the tech. Explaining the difference between price, speculation, and the fundamental technology is an example of a video we could make that could go a long way to educating new people. (There are many historical examples of speculative trends that can really help any audience understand the phenomenon of crypto booms and busts we are seeing now.)

It is a bit like the two separate questions of asking why Amazon’s stock is going down in the early 2000’s versus being able to accurately explain the mission and strategy of Amazon to someone so that they can make an informed decision as to whether they would like to invest in Amazon’s vision, rather than having their investment decisions be based on the whims of short-term price movements. There is the old adage, “if you give a man a fish, he is hungry again in an hour; if you teach a man to fish, he is fed for a lifetime.” The mission of Zcash Media is to teach people how to fish. And in the case of crypto, it’s to teach people why fishing even matters in the first place.

Another reason to continue during the bear market, is to not abandon those who found out about Zcash just recently. Many new people found out about Zcash this past cycle, and it is critical for them to know that Zcash is not stopping because of the market. They should be seeing constant excitement and output to know that the Zcash community and mission is undeterred by bear markets. If anything, they should be seeing even more content and community events so that everyone knows Zcash is not afraid, its mission is crystal clear, and it is stronger than ever.

The same goes for potential investors. It is a rule of thumb that companies and projects that build through tough times are the ones to look out for. This is partly what attracted us to Zcash, its long term vision and dogged determination through the wrenching 2018/2019 bear market. No one who is not a true believer in their mission and eventual chances of success would continue through such conditions. Therefore, in our view, performing the work we have set out to do during a bear market, rather than waiting for a bull market, may be an even greater signal to the world of the Zcash Community’s collective belief in the vision of Zcash.

Despite the pros of delivering educational content during a downturn we outline above, we can definitely see the cons too. As Winnie and others mentioned, there is overall less interest in crypto (although interest in crypto is still on average going up, not down), and those that do watch, may be deterred by the market conditions. This may mean that for every dollar spent, there are less people seeing the content than during a bull market. This is likely true for pure “marketing” efforts that are solely advertising the currency itself. In our view, we are not solely doing marketing for the currency; we are educating people of the vision of Zcash: its ideals, its history, its future, its makeup, why it’s important, etc. Although there are many aspects of our plan that overlap with traditional marketing, we think laying the foundations for understanding why Zcash is important can not happen soon enough and that future iterations of marketing will be better served by having these long-form, holistic videos existing.

Also, every single video is reusable! All of the trailers, clips, short-form videos, copywriting, and long-form videos can be used again and again whenever new entrants come into the space! By starting now, we would create a wealth of resources for the future, which could potentially be in addition to the things we would be making in the future.

Another very valid concern regarding the Why Now? question is the percentage of ZCG funds that would be used for Zcash Media. We attempted to address this question proactively in our proposal, performing an analysis of the percentages of the ZCG that Zcash Media would represent at various USD prices of ZEC.

Not only is there enough funding to spend millions on developers while also supporting Zcash Media, we believe that by consistently growing the vibrant third-party ecosystem that supports Zcash, outside developers will actually be more attracted to work for Zcash since it is clear people are really excited about it. There could be a single Sean Bowe-like developer out there that comes across our videos and one day joins Zcash to solve a massive problem for cryptography. Also, continued strong support for more third parties shows that Zcash continues to encourage decentralization beyond ECC/ZF. This can increase the likelihood of getting high-quality third parties to come in and build all the technological benefits we want to see while also helping to decentralize Zcash!

It is our personal opinion that by spending more now on development and outreach, Zcash will be returned benefits that exceed the cost. This is a business strategy question, and while it is true some companies are cutting costs and laying off employees, the ECC, the ZF, countless other crypto businesses, and Zcash Media, if given the chance, are continuing to hire and build. There is an investment far greater than the videos and marketing that would be made with this grant - an investment in people. We have people so excited to work with us on bringing Zcash education to the world, we have to constantly tell them to wait until we hear about our grant. Each of these people, once trained and brought up to speed on Zcash (i.e., taught how to fish), has the potential to serve critical roles in Zcash’s march to becoming the number one digital currency.

We hope that touches on the core of the answer to the Why Now? question, and below we attempt to answer additional questions raised.

We were not confident the grant would get approved one way or another. But we attempt to plan for success, not failure.

View counts can be misleading since they can be bought and paid for (subscribers too, for that matter). While we did run some ads on our videos, even without the ads, our video on What is Zcash? rose to become the number one viewed video on Zcash in a month, after starting our channel only a month before the release. It’s also worth noting that we gained >2,000 organic subscribers after our videos came out. (A quick search on Google shows that on average, it takes 22 months to get 1,000 subscribers for YouTube creators).

In addition, as Jeff talks about in the video presentation we made, some of the most important metrics for success on YouTube are click-thru rate and retention time. In both of these categories, we were significantly above average and plan to improve (this was documented in our analytics report). We think a more fair assessment of our channel could be performed after releasing more videos and continuing to analyze and optimize our video metrics.

This is a good question since we’ll have a much better idea of the length of videos once we can start mapping them out. With that said, 10-15 minutes is a good goal, but it really depends on the video. If anything, 10-15 minutes may be the minimum amount of time since for each video we aim to holistically tackle an important topic, which takes time to introduce and explain topics in an understandable way.

We have begun outlining possible videos based on the footage we have logged and what we view the most important topics to be. We aim to cover fundamental topics first to get people on board with the “Why” of Zcash. As part of the initial stage of the grant, we set aside ~one month for planning out the episodes in detail - similar to how one would write out a TV series. We want each video to talk about something really important, be non-redundant with the other videos, and also have the whole add up to greater than the sum of its parts. Therefore, it is a bit early to be answering exactly what we will make, but here is a list of ~40-50 potential videos we are thinking about. Please note this list is extremely rough! Also, as part of our future efforts, we will collect community’s members’ ideas for videos in an organized way, maintain an ongoing list, and work with community members to make sure their points are getting hit.

We definitely agree that there may be no good comparison for Zcash. The analysis we linked to was mainly useful to us as a reminder that spending on marketing is not just to spend on marketing, it is to increase the future potential adoption/revenue of the product. Which, in turn, should reduce the percentage of the revenue necessary for marketing.

However, as a side note, we do not necessarily agree that Zcash is unlike SaaS in every way. As you mentioned, they have to compete with others offering a similar product, and although we may all know that Zcash has a unique proposition, to the rest of the world, it’s just another crypto that a handful of people use to make money or do crime. It’s part of our job to make sure people know it is unique and that it offers something that other projects fundamentally do not.

The ETH film is really awesome and they actually raised their money right when we were writing our first application to ZOMG! (We thought, “if they can do it, maybe we are so crazy after all!”) It is worth noting that the ETH film raised ~1,030 ETH in their crowdfunding campaign, at a price of ~$1,800 the day the crowdfunding campaign ended, which ends at about $1,800,000. (Of course, ETH proceeded to go up to close to $5,000/ETH a few months after their crowdfund). Additionally, this was their first fund raise. Also, they specifically noted that this money is for production only (no distribution). For feature films, distribution can take up 50% of the overall budget. Our budget has both production and distribution built-in.

Linda Xie and Carrie Weprin, two lead producers of the ETH film, are both advisors to our project and have been extremely generous with their time to talk to us. After serious consideration, it is our best estimation that the budgets for the types of videos we have made and hope to continue to make are very discounted (due to our enthusiasm to work on Zcash).

Just to clarify, although we’ve highlighted our target audience to be “crypto curious”, “crypto investors”, and “crypto newbies”, the true challenge for each video is to make it appealing to everyone. Our target audience helps us define what level of detail we can get into, and how much background we should strive to give, but each video should have parts that appeal to advanced folks as well.

The Dobbertin video provides a good example of striking this balance. We needed to be able to explain to general audiences why the Ceremony was necessary and occurred the way it did by writing and animating the “keys locking the code” sequences. But we also were able to capture and include in the video @ebfull talking about how he discovered the Halo breakthrough even though he was a high-school dropout. When we released the video, we received feedback ranging from non-technical Zcashers saying “this is the first time I understood what Halo does” to Naval Ravikant (an “advanced” viewer) tweeting the line from the video with Sean saying how he was really lucky to be able to discover Halo even after dropping out of high school. This video is an example of keeping the technical explanations to an understandable level while also including the human side of the story that even the most ingrained crypto audiences do not get to see otherwise.

This may be a chicken or egg question. If we think about Bitcoin, it was the small group of believers actually interested in the vision and possibilities of the tech that was the catalyst to its price improvements. Or if you think about companies like Tesla, it is the vision for the future much more than the actual sales that drove Tesla to success and lead to becoming a much more highly valued company than other companies that sold more cars! While it is true that price improvements are a self-catalyzing event where improvements in price can lead to improvements in the price, vision is absolutely critical (especially at early stages).

Also, narrative gets created by others when one doesn’t speak up for themselves. We can all probably rehash the numerous false narratives about Zcash prevalent among even the most prominent crypto influencers. Proactively telling our story helps prevent harmful narratives from gaining steam.

As a side note, although we cannot promise to improve the price of the coin, we aim to continue our significant push to provide education for Zcash itself, not the Electric Coin Company, not the Zcash Foundation, not Zcash Community Grants, but Zcash/ZEC and everything it stands for. We will do everything in our power to bring long-lasting users to ZEC both because we are ideologically aligned with its mission, but also because we recognize it is the engine for the common prosperity of the Zcash ecosystem.

Over its history, Zcash has spent the vast majority of its money on engineering and a tiny sliver on marketing/education. We don’t think the argument that spending a large grant on education means its tech is not good is too worrisome. If that were the bar to worry about bringing FUD, then almost anything Zcash does could be construed as negative. There will always be haters, and the more attention we get the more haters will show up - this doesn’t mean we give up. Meanwhile we will be growing a strong fan base that believes in Zcash and knows they’re using it for more than just speculation.

If Zcash is truly trying to reach 8 billion people and become a global currency (after all, this is why there are large investments in scalability), then thoughtful and multilingual educational content is highly aligned with this goal. Hopefully, the narrative if this grant were approved would be more along the lines of “In keeping with its mission to become a currency for the world, Zcash invests big in long-term crypto education”. On the flip side of creating FUD, investing in education and outreach in a very “crypto” way (“funded directly by the Zcash community, a group of die-hard Zcash fans combine their skills of filmmaking and science communication to release cinema quality educational videos for free”) is a very good look for Zcash and may persuade onlookers that the whole currency for 8 billion people thing is not just hyperbole.

Additionally, if Zcash were to remain mainly a science project, relying on its brand of technical prowess, the vast investments in research and engineering may be all for naught, and indeed, other projects may continue to copy Zcash’s technology, brand it in a more user friendly way, and siphon potential users away from Zcash. This would lead to a breaking of the feedback loop that is supposed to bring value to ZEC holders above other projects. Of course we want Zcash to contribute to the success of all crypto, but we don’t want it to happen at complete self sacrifice.

It is one of our greatest fears that the output of all those working so passionately on Zcash and the financial support of all those holding/using ZEC does not result in ZEC becoming a widely used currency. Investing in the education and dissemination of Zcash and its ideals is a proactive safeguard to directly funnel the ZEC-funded work the engineers are doing to the hands of the people their work is meant to serve.

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The productions by Zcash Media are incredible; really are industry leading works.

But that can’t change other factors. We’re in a bear market, Zcash community engagement is dropping, network valuation is dropping, ZEC denominated ecosystem spending reserves are dropping, and broad interest in altcoins is off of a cliff. It feels irresponsible to add another $2,000,000 of spending to the list of factors working against our ecosystem right now.

How about we let the dust settle for a few more months before making another follow up commitment on a big-box marketing project?

I think that a more impactful approach to marketing Zcash would be a clean 20-30 second video that communicates concisely why Financial Privacy matters in the blockchain commerce context. $50,000 for that video, and then spend $200,000 to have it promoted across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok

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I’m afraid that even with this response, and especially after hearing the concerns of several Zcash community members on this forum thread, on Telegram and on Twitter, I now more than ever do not support funding this grant. Josh mentioned above that mediocrity is the by product of diversification - justifying why 37L should get funded instead of the funds being spread across several Zcash community members to create an even greater feedback loop. I could not disagree more. Diversifying is the backbone of any and every successful community. I believe that empowering more content creators spread out across the globe would have a bigger net benefit to the Zcash community and a much wider reach than 2M allocated to one team that has already received half a million in the past. With that in mind, together with all the other concerns I and several community members have raised, I just am not for this.

I hope that ZCG will do the right thing. That’s all I’ll say.

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Hypothetical scenario/devils advocate - how would people feel if instead of being in a 2 year bear market, the market performed a March 2020 style grind up/recovery and run up in price over the next 12-14 months.
In that scenario would people prefer that ZCG had spent the money on marketing?
Could 37L/ZCG consider funding 2/3 months for example and judging the content(and the market to some extent) before approving further funding?
A key question is of course are the costs quotes in the proposal fair and reasonable for the content being created?(I don’t know what producing this quality of content costs, I hope someone does)

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This I would be more okay with. But absolutely not the whole $1.8M. I’m talking as a Zcash holder who trades several different asset classes with one of my main goals being to accumulate more ZEC. I’ve been doing this for years now. My family members and network own Zcash because I introduced them to it. My comments come from a very genuine and vested place. I will be very disheartened about Zcash if this proposal goes through in its current state.

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Word to that.

In that scenario, I would still prefer 1 or a few 20-30 second videos that are widely distributed via paid channels on social platforms. Placing long form content on YouTube has a significantly lower ceiling wrt to the odds of “going viral” and truly breaking an inertia point to help Zcash become a mainstream well known crypto currency network.

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I agree with the Snowden part.

In a hypothetical scenario where the last part of the second video didn’t exist and Snowden directly tweeted about his role/divulged it in a podcast followed by a coordinated effort by bigger community members to amplify it would have probably made the same amount of splash.

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After a good night rest, and reading the latest posts, I am less convinced about the current version of the grant proposal by @37L, sorry. But would be more in favor to include something as @tokidoki suggested:

With a ZEC balance of 9m USD the ZCG needs to be carefull with commiting 20% of their budget.

Just thinking out loud here:

The best marketing is having a product that is better and sexier then the competitors. However conveying the frame of thinking, education, would help with getting others to appreciate the value of Zcash, so perhaps its the way to go.

But ultimately the best marketing is when non is needed and people just use your product/service because its the standard, much better and or convient. And I think ZEC currently still has a high bar to use it conviently. Example: I simply want to go to a store, do my groceries and pay in ZEC without holding ZEC or needing to aquire it beforehand.

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