The ZCG committee spent a large number of hours reviewing community feedback, evaluating the past grants to Zcash Media, thoroughly reviewing the proposal, and taking part in several internal and cross-collaborative calls with 37L team. We’ve prioritized the evaluation of this grant and have a backlog of grants to get to now.
The ZCG has provided an adequate response to 37L and discussed the disconnect in goals, the timing of the grant, the product-market fit, target audience, and length of the AAA content.
@GGuy you’ve been a great cheerleader here, I hope you are reviewing the concerns brought up by several community members in this thread, ZCG meeting minutes and the ZCG/37L recorded calls.
@aquietinvestor@37L when can we expect the recording of the second call posted?
Thank you for your support, your thorough consideration of our proposals, and your helpful feedback to the community throughout this process. We appreciate you speaking publicly about your feelings and hope you know that they do inspire our team to maintain enthusiasm.
In regards to your question - as you know, we have been in conversation with ZCG and since a few of the committee/community members had concerns about our first version, we tried to make adjustments with our updated submission. However, after posting and continuing to consider, our team leaders were ultimately not satisfied with what we submitted as option B due to the lack of flexibility it provided us. For this reason, when we met with ZCG we asked that they hold off until we could submit a plan that would be flexible and adaptable long term (hence the menu style). We believe this will help our grant be more easily discussed by the community/committee, as well as adaptable to changing committees each year and the various other natural changes that long term grantees must consider. We know the overall response to our work/grant has been supportive (which we are grateful for!). Yet, this grant process is challenging for major efforts like this, so we are working on finding ways to simplify it (if it works perhaps other grantees will be able to benefit from structuring their grants similarly some day).
Hopefully this helps clarify the answer to your question. We will be back, we promise!
Amazing, thank you. I must have missed/forgotten that occured. Good news .
I sympathize with your situation and thank you for your service. I truely appreciate the effort and time you (and others) put in.
I wasn’t aware there was still a disconnect in product market fit, target audience, and length. This is the clarification I was after. I assumed those critical issues would have been resolved before the second submission. Thank you.
I share these concerns and understand.
Final thoughts
After a few private and public conversations on this (and other) topics it appears the main difference between my views and many others appears to be urgency. It appears that almost all of us share concerned around how we adopt the first 1, 10, 100 millions users. Nobody can predict exactly when mass adoption of crypto will happen but I’ll make a guess and say its going to happen rapidly. We won’t see it coming, we might not even know when it’s happen, but if it happens anytime soon we will look back and go “wait… other cryptos got adopted… Why didn’t anyone adopt Zcash?”. Maybe Zcash’s lack of presence anywhere might be a start.
Listen, there’s a good chance I’m wrong and the smart people among us can “time” our media campaigns to this adoption phase. Maybe I’m paranoid to even suggest there’s a small chance this adoption phase has already started. But when it does start I hope we’ve got more then 2 Zcash Media videos on YouTube.
So given that even with all that effort and all those incredible skills the videos relased so far hardly had any impact on zcash adoption (or even on creating any meaningful buzz), could it be possible that it is because those are not really the type of skills that are needed to drive Zcash adoption?
Food for thought.
Really looking forward to that second call getting posted.
This is dangerously naive strawpersoning imo. The Royal We understand why crypto projects and their assets have succeeded or failed to be adopted. (Crypto has been around for > a decade now, and has demonstrated multiple boom and bust cycles)
There is no magic formula, but the driving factors are obvious
exciting price action (attract the masses)
strong narrative (give the masses hope and vision. this allows them to stay the course)
broad community size and engagement (look no further than the Hexicans for example)
accessibility (to buy and hold coins// to engage with community)
influencer content, marketing, hype
underlying, fundamental technologies
Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Cardano, Solana, Dogecoin (maybe), HEX - hundreds of other crypto projects have reached the state of “adoption” and keep in mind that adoption is a segregated state from “valued” (which is a transient state that experiences booms and busts)
Zcash has not reached a state of “adoption” and everyone in this ecosystem is having to look at what went wrong. Where could talent and money have been better invested. Why didn’t it stick?
Natasha, Thanks for the long response a week or two ago. I’m looking forward to the forthcoming revised proposal
Following-up to ask when is it that the community can expect the recording of the second call with ZCG to be posted.
In my opinion, the main concerns brought up by ZCG/ZF during the 1st call were not really addressed (even ignored) by the second proposal, and that is worrisome.
Posting the call will allow the community to track how/if the feedback provided by ZCG (and that had an impact on 37L deciding to drop the second application) actually gets integrated in the following set of “menu style” grants they apply for.
This should go without saying, but it is fundamental to show transparency when applying for any ZCG grant, and even more so when 1 million dollars is being requested from the community.
I am sorry to hear that you did not feel our previous reallocation satisfied your concerns. However, it is because we wanted to address the concerns of community members like yourself, we actually started our last meeting with ZCG by telling them that we would like to withdraw our current application and reapply with a menu based plan (as I discussed above in my last few posts), so that the community could be more involved in our process. We had felt a rush to address their concerns as quickly as we could in our reallocation, but after submitting it we didn’t feel it did justice to our idea or the community’s wishes, so we chose to withdraw. They asked us to keep this page open until we reapply, but for the time being, there is nothing for the community to currently consider until we bring a new proposal to the table.
As for your question about viewing the meeting. I noticed above that Adi mentioned the meeting video being posted, but I think he may have misspoken. In actuality, at the start of the call when I asked everyone whether or not everyone was comfortable having the video be posted this week, there was not unanimous approval. As such, we agreed to not post it. However, I reached out to the committee asking if we should perhaps post meeting minutes from the call in the same fashion as typical ZCG meetings. I will let @ZcashGrants speak to what they want the next steps to be.
In the meantime, here is a link to the meeting agenda I had written and sent to the committee before the call. In it you can see that I had included the discussion of our withdrawal and reallocation.
It is good to hear that you enjoyed seeing these meeting recordings - our team can prioritize requesting publicly recorded calls in the future.
We will also be hosting a guided value proposition/video topic session at Zcon so the community can partake in the brainstorming process. If you will be at Zcon, I hope you choose to attend this session and share some of your ideas.
Well, it is really hard to trust the process when there is not transparency.
I’m interested in the feedback you were given by ZCG, not in the structure 37L was hoping for the call.
I’m also really interested to hear why the participants in the call would not feel comfortable with allowing the community to listen to what was said, I mean, you are requesting a million dollars from us (even if it is ZCG who administers that share of the fund).
I was already worried with the political economy behind this grant, but now I am extremely worried.
What is it that needs to remain hidden from the community, and why?
I just want to set expectations here. Transparency does not require ZCG’s calls with prospective or active grantees to be made public to the community. We often have calls and rarely, if ever, record and post them. We do, however, communicate key takeaways and decisions in our biweekly meeting minutes or forum posts. A good example is a recent call we had with Taylor Hornby about his Zcash Ecosystem Security Lead grant proposal. @wobbzz did an excellent job summarizing the call to the community in a post on the forum.
Other times the grant applicant provides the transparency as Natasha did in her forum post last week when she summarized the meeting and relayed key decisions to the community, which included putting the Zcash Media: 2022-2023 grant on hold while they re-think their strategy and propose an alternative package-based proposal and, in the meantime, apply for a bridge grant to continue working on Twitter, Interviews at Zcon, and Social Media Cuts. The rest of the meeting was a very casual brainstorm session, and some of the ideas tossed around by ZCG/37L may or may not make it into their revised grant proposal. 37 Laines is under no obligation to incorporate our feedback, and at the end of the day, we make the decision whether to approve or reject the grant.
37 Laines has done an outstanding job being transparent with the community throughout their previous and current grant proposals. I will go so far as to say that no other grant applicant has engaged with the community in the open manner that they do. I very much appreciate that and value their presence in this community.
With that kind of attitude from the powers that be it is no surprise the crypto masses think Zcash is little more than a honeypot to said powers that be, and also the exact reason why the crypto masses won’t touch Zcash with a stick. This really needs to change.
But you did decide to post the 1st call with 37L, so it is the “selective transparency” with this grant application (which happens to be the largest one ever!) is what is worrisome/suspicious. I’m sure you can understand why.
Well @aiyadt seemed to think it would be very relevant for the community to get to hear what was discussed, but you make it sound like it was not really relevant and that “there’s nothing to see here”. Interesting.
Of course they are not obligated, but If grant applicants will keep coming with million dollar applications without taking into consideration the feedback previously given by ZCG then they are just wasting ZCG’s time, aren’t they. An attitude like this reminds me a lot of that famous “eff, you pay me” quote from Goodfellas.
I would be surprised if this new strategy does not involve 37L holding on presenting the next set of applications until exactly around the time members of ZCG who were against the proposal finish their tenure, but hey, maybe I am wrong.
It is not my intention to sound like I’m saying “there’s nothing to see here.” I’m sure there were things said that would be of interest to some community members. But, that’s not really my point. I personally do not object to the call being posted. However, posting a recorded call requires the consent of all participants, and it is evident that we do not have unanimous consent. Therefore, I respect the decision not to post it.
I do want to note that I recall Natasha saying on the call that she wanted the meeting recorded for internal purposes (e.g. note taking). Not all key members of 37L were able to attend the meeting, and having the recording ensures all important details are relayed to those who were absent.
I really like your exactingness and sharp questions, but in this case I cannot agree with you. And it’s not that I consider this money to be someone else’s, like do what you want with it. Absolutely not.
But again, what is the efficiency of such costs?? I mean, the number of potential contacts per dollar invested is disproportionately less. Why is there no difference of 1 million or 2 million for me? I’m just not good at pricing this industry. I trust the people involved and their numbers, Or let’s announce a contest for these videos if it is considered that it should cost much cheaper. It is not difficult to describe the requirements and criteria for the video. But these videos are critically important to us because they offer an accessible way to explain the core of our mission, its whole essence.
On the contrary I’ve been very impressed with the level of transparency on the part of ZCG and 37Laines through this process. After all, ZCG is an elected body with delegated authority (by the community through ZCAP) to make decisions about grant distribution. You may disagree that this is the best process by which to distribute funds, but I see nothing fishy, or problematic with ZCG presenting the details of its interactions with grant applicants and its own internal deliberations in summary form. Selective disclosure is the inevitable byproduct of any body tasked with decision making on the behalf of a larger group - hence the reason why it is so important to have high quality candidates with a good base of community trust (which I believe we do!). ZCG is answerable to the community in the form of elections and not in the form of granular recaps of all their activities - the process of soliciting community feedback is one to help ZCG with their decision making but is not the core of what ZCG does and ought not be determinative - if it were, what would be the point of ZCG as opposed to just having community members vote on all grants?
I have been of the impression that ZCG have bent over backwards to accommodate the concerns of what I believe are a very vocal minority with a great deal skepticism over grant, and have worked to provide more visibility into the process than is strictly necessary for a functional process here. I have inferred the positions of ZCG members from watching the calls and reading the debate here, and I think (though without some sort of robust polling system, I can’t do much more than speculate) that they are broadly reflective of where the community is.
I see every reason to believe that 37laines IS taking ZCG/community feedback into account if incompletely, after all, they have already proposed meaningful modifications to the initial grant application and as @aquietinvestor points out, they are an independent group and are free to do as they please. I hope we can reach an acceptable compromise proposal that funds 37Laines adequately for the work they do and keeps them on-board for the future. I am firmly in the camp that the work 37Laines has done (and I hope will continue to do!) is of excellent quality and critically important to the furtherance of Zcash, even if quantitatively it has yet to make a major impact. I see it as a deferred investment in the future. The scale of the proposal is a lot of money (in a relative sense, particularly in comparison to most of the other grant proposals we see). However, given the resources of ZCG and the fact that it is not, as far as I can tell, having to turn down other quality grants for lack of funding, it is far from unreasonable. Not to mention the genuinely high cost of quality work in this area.
I fear that we are falling into the trap of “penny-wise, dollar-stupid” and not considering how to best maximize our resources - and in the process risk alienating what I think is an important asset for Zcash.
PS: I don’t at all mean to pick on you, @Chammy, and like @artkor I appreciate your critical eye and believe it’s absolutely important for folks to hold and debate contrary view. I think you and @noamchom in particular have given very valuable feedback even though I disagree with some of your positions and thoughts on strategy.
There aren’t compelling reasons not to share all meetings in full to the public. It is particularly absurd to avoid sharing this easily creatable-sharable content, because of the subjective opinions of one or two transient participants in the meetings.
It is relatively standard in this wfh-zoom collaboration tech era that defacto consent to recording and sharing is granted intrinsic to attending a live meeting.
some ecosystem members may not be available to attend live
significant risk of loss of nuance due to note taking abbreviation
sharing original content allows for independent verification that note takers/ abbreviators are doing a good job (not creating error by omission, or arbitrarily filtering context that is valuable to folks not originally in attendance)
the audience for recorded meetings on youtube is extremely small, but those like @Chammy who are interested - we should not prevent. practically speaking nobody will be watching these uploads anyhow (take a look at arborist call view counts as evidence)
an archive of video calls is valuable to future community members that aren’t with us yet
allowing public direct access to these meetings allows for independent evaluation of how well the contemporarily elected ZCG members are doing at their responsibility to represent the community.
In short, hit the record button, then upload the meetings to YouTube (this is an extra 10 minutes of time). As others have implied, it is borderline absurd to be even hosting a debate about whether or not this is a reasonable deliverable for situations like this (discussions about spending more than 16,000 community fund Zcash coins, for more than 1 year of labor, etc)
He has never spoken to us, never reached out, and has no evidence of our perceived ulterior motives. Every single person who has commented on this thread that has actually met us vouches for us.
To help moderators with their work, any active forum participant can report problematic post.
No one has the right to demand people to give up their privacy. While I understand the context of providing transparency to the community, it’s also a dangerous precedent to set if all ZCG meeting have to be recorded and shared publicly. ZCG sharing their meeting notes already is a great effort in being transparent.
I also want to commend Zcash Media team for sticking with their plan and modify the single grant into menu items.
I will summarise my main concerns about spending so much money in such a suboptimal way:
For starters let me clarfy, I am all for spending 1M+ on marketing, but things should get funded based on the impact they will have either on development or adoption. What kind of impact can we expect from 6 or 12 additional videos, that could possibly justify spending 1M-2M million on it?
I mean, the return on investment of a video revealing Edward Snowden was “the mystery man involved in the creation of leading privacy cryptocurrency Zcash” was abysmal, was it not?
It is unlikely that any new documentaries will match the potential to go viral of such a grandiose revelation.
As I said, I’m all for spending 1M+ on marketing, I even believe it is a must given the enormous size of Zcash’s addressable market, but that money needs to be spent on marketing initiatives that will effectively (and measurably) drive adoption, on marketing initiatives focused on mass enrollement of vendors who will accept Zcash, on holistic marketing initiatives that promote Zcash wallet downloads, not on marketing initiatives that are not backed by what academic research has found has an impact on the adoption and difussion of innovations (ie. expensive documentary films).
I understand why people would want to rush to anything that even remotely promotes Zcash, and even more so when their bags are severly underwater, but this would be a very irresponsable and suboptimal way to spend USD 1M + million dollars “on marketing”.
As it was mentioned several times before, most crypto projects that have done well have done so while just having one high quality educational video, why in the world would Zcash need 10-15 of those?
Not one person has given a rationale for this so far.
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