Zcash Media 2022-2023

Every company is trying to figure out a way to cut costs so it can survive bear market. We are talking about spending huge amount of money on something we don’t know is going to make a huge impact.

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You raise a very good point that I had not even considered. Most crypto projects, and organizations in general, tend to have one high quality explainer video. That’s about all that is needed to communicate a project’s mission and vision. These videos are created to be short and compelling stories. But given the complex structural nature of our ecosystem, the video could be longer. I’d personally be down to have Zcash Media work on producing such a video, assess its impact in the short term, before deciding to fund 12 more videos.

I’d also echo someone who asked an important question: what will each video be about should it be decided that Zcash Media will be funded to produce and market 12 videos? I think making a decision on a $1.8M grant without this information is not right. (Final comment from me!)

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The community consensus has always been that Zcash needs better marketing and releasing videos during a bear market when there is less noise with a simple message of Zcash being BTC 2.0 can counter intuitively work on crypto newbies/folks who have heard about bitcoin/were on the sidelines and now generally believe that BTC has crossed that chasm of going to 0. It is down 70% and they want to dip their toes in. Zcash being BTC 2.0 can target this audience.

The risk with a 12 part series is that it assumes Zcash price not going to 30 (Pre pandemic trendline) and remaining there for 3-4 years. The project will eat a major chunk of grants if we remain in that range for a while.

But the team already has over 30 hours of video recorded. Maybe there can be a middle ground with 1 or 2 long form videos rather than 12 episodes. Something like that can cut the marketing/digital outreach/administration budget by 1/12. I personally believe that long form content holds up better (over the course of 3 to 5 years) and can serve the purpose of educating the audience. We can use snippets from it to create more engagement.

For reference there is an Ethereum documentary slated to come out in winter 2023. It is supposed to be a feature length film shot from scratch for which they raised 750 ETH (95% going to the actual production). ETH was around 1800 when they did the campaign, so they probably have a budget of around 1.4M (750x0.95x1800). Ironically it is called Ethereum the Infinite Garden when Zcash shielded pools are Sprout, Sapling, Orchard. They also have a twitter account where they post occasional content documenting their progress.

I have zero experience in film making but according to this website 2-4k is the low end per finished minute for a documentary. Does 8k per finished minute sound reasonable or is that too low?

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I think the short term KPIs released by @37L are a good benchmark to assess the execution of the work.

Personally I feel all this focus on ZECUSD is very short sighted. Right now according to coingecko ZEC is ranked 55th according to marketcap. If at the end of 12months ZEC can increase its position into the top 40 I’d be thrilled. That’s approximately a 2x increase in marketcap relative to other crypto! Over the coming years I want to see ZEC crack the top 15! It’s very apparent that Zcash has been unable to achieve that through technology and a few short lived marketing/education attempts alone. I strongly believe to achieve top 15 marketcap we need a long term campaign and significant investment that spans through both bear and bull markets.

To put that into perspective if ZEC were ranked 11th in marketcap that’d be a 10x increase in the value of ZEC! I think now, a time when everyone claims that some 40 or so cryptos above are are “hibernating” through the winter, is exactly when we co-ordinate a sneek attack from behind and take their places!!!

Can you imagine what the next bull run could look like for ZEC if it were where ranked 39… 29… or maybe if we are lucky, 11???


I also feel other community members are puzzled by why I’m so excited about running this campaign during a bear market. There will be huge benefits when the noise of the hype machines of memes and profit die down. Crypto content creators, YouTubers, podcasters, news outlets, will all be begging for positive crypto news! Traditionally on twitter positive crypto tweets get way more engagement then negative tweet. Many content creators therefore trend towards positive news when possible. Imagine if popular crypto podcasts every other week basically have a segment “Hey! Have you seen the latest Zcash video?”. That’s huge!

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We should look at the merit of the grant without tying it to CG rankings which creates unreasonable expectations. If the target is crypto newbies as the original post implies then those newbies are probably the last driving force for crypto markets. They follow whatever is being bid up (K9 coins/Alt L1s/Defi/NFTs/Gaming).

Price does not follow narrative rather narrative follows price. Best example was most newbies became aware of dogecoin during SNL which was the best time to get out and no amount of newbies will ever push it back up now

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Personally I think it’s quite reasonable to hope that if ZCG spend $1,848,655 it should positively influence the marketcap of ZEC relative to other cryptocurrencies.

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There is some research which says that 1$ invested into stocks leads to a market cap increase of 5. If we assume that ratio is 10 for crypto, if everything else remains same, for Zcash to go from current 831M to 8.31B (#10 in CG) it needs ~7.5B increase which corresponds to a buying pressure of 750M. Assuming the video viewership of 250k (previous videos) that is around 3k per viewer. For reference, median account holder on Robinhood has 240 dollars in their account.

Whether to fund or not should not depend on newbie bid which in both traditional and crypto markets is mostly a narrative cover for institutional shenanigans.

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In the current climate, I would rather spend 1.8 million on developing the best Zcash wallet ever to exist. And with the rest of the money spend on developing other tooling and apps.

Bear market = build - Bull market = hype.

I admire @37L 's work. I thought the videos were extremly well made.

For such a large ‘Marketing Grant’ I think this should wait abit

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Why can’t we do all 3? Spend $1.8million on @37L and $1.8million on a wallet and $1.8million on apps? I hear even in this bear market ZCG has more then enough funds… :thinking:.

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Let me try one more time. Zcash is a scientific, privacy project. It’s made a name for itself because of that. Have we thought about how it will seem from an optics POV if the largest grant Zcash funded was a marketing grant? We’d essentially be giving competitors leverage to go on Reddit and Twitter and say:

  • Zcash tech is not superior. It’s why they’re prioritizing selling a story and funding marketing grants that are larger in size than their research and dev grants.
  • People can also use it against Zcash and say that it’s a privacy project that is spending $1.8M on targeting users with marketing which goes against its very mission of protecting individuals’ privacy.

There are so many other factors to consider aside from market conditions and I really hope that they are all taken strongly into consideration.

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i chuckled for this :joy:

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I wish there is more community excitement & support for applications like this: Zemo - Your Web3 Inbox

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I am in favor of funding this proposal. It’s the right team, with the right capabilities, at the perfect time.

Zcash is at an inflection point. For “reasons,” it should be clear from the current market that ZEC’s privacy characteristics are not enough to garner meaningful attention from today’s crypto participants. Other projects, with less to offer, seem to be valued by more people.

Each crypto bull run has brought in more participants, with more diversity. But in our public engagement at ECC, we’ve learned that many of those participants have little to no knowledge of Zcash or its beneficial characteristics, of which privacy is one. And quite honestly, until very recently, the privacy benefits have been too difficult to use, and the competing narratives too challenging to yellow pill a meaningful amount of newcomers.

The ZEC UX is quickly improving. Wallets and other tools are making it easier to use ZEC in the manner it was intended. In the next bull run, I hope to see greater adoption of shielded by default.

But hope is not good enough. Coupled with good UX, we need to be ready with good narratives, content and tools to support mainstream awareness and adoption. We need to be ready to move ZEC out of our little echo chamber and into the mainstream consciousness. We won’t get another chance. We can’t wait until the next time mainstream comes and then hope to catch up with meaningful content at that time.

@37L understands that compelling marketing doesn’t happen all at once. It’s a constant drumbeat - it feeds a flywheel. I’ve often said we ought to invest in flywheels over fireworks. It’s important not to stop the flywheel once it gets rolling, but rather, you keep the momentum moving. Inertia is death.

It takes a lot of effort, time, and a bit of luck to build the right team. As a community, we are incredibly lucky to have a proven world class team already mobilized and at the ready. We simply need to say “yes” and let them run! I’m incredibly impressed at what they’ve built in such a short period of time. In my opinion, they are irreplaceable.

The world has already begun to thoughtfully consider and debate whether cryptocurrencies will live up their promise. Expectations are moving beyond speculation and technology experimentation. We have the opportunity to help lead this discussion through our lens - through the 37L lens!

Let’s come behind 37L and unleash them to creatively and professionally educate the incoming mainstream before most of them arrive. There is no more opportune time than right now.

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What data suggests we won’t get another chance? I have seen similar messaging towards Zcash media grants where we rushed into funding grants because of the timing and urgency.

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I think the next run will be the tipping point for the mainstream. Unlike in the prior runs, the regs, liquidity, and tools are quickly aligning and accelerating. Tradfi is also all over it.

I saw similar inflection points when the web was born. It’s when Google overtook Altavista and when the browser wars began. It’s when Friendster lost to MySpace and then quickly Facebook. It came fast and the also-rans were quickly overcome.

Additionally, we are currently losing the narrative battle - which is happening right now. We need to normalize privacy. We need to create the expectation that it’s necessary for human freedom and flourishing. We need exceptional narratives in both content and presentation well ahead of all that is headed our way.

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After reading through all of the posts in this thread I have determined that funding 37L is the better option, specifically it was Joshs narrative that convinced me of this:

However, imo dontbeevil does make valid points, particulary:

And here:

So taking it together, for me, I think hessitation for this grant can be relaxed with more clarification as mentioned by Winfred here:

In addition it seems there is concern that it is either marketing or development/UX. If this is true than no amount of marketing will solve a bad UX or lack of ready to use apps for ZEC. This also deserves some clarification IMO.

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:100:

Easier, cheaper, and more exciting. The transition to POS is about to change the game imho. ( Shift HALO into gear ).

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Next run is not going to happen anytime soon. If 2018 bear market is going to repeat, it will take at least 2-3+ years. We have plenty of time imo.

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That was my concern too: re timing. That in the event things play out as they have in previous cycles, the videos might be outdated by then :woman_shrugging:

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Tech changes. Our values are timeless and on the right side of history. From what I’ve seen from 37L, they are focused on the foundational and the timeless.

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