Zcash Media 2022-2023

Community Grants
65

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.

5 Likes
66

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)

4 Likes
67

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.

5 Likes
68

Word to that.

69

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.

4 Likes
70

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.

4 Likes
71

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.

5 Likes
72

( Living in a Social Credit System - YouTube would be amazing if we could convince this dude to produce a low budget video )

3 Likes
73

Many seem to be making decisions based on fear, fear of lower prices. We could moon tomorrow and most of the arguments against this wouldn’t matter. Everyone that has posted in this thread has concluded the videos are top notch. I say be bold and fearless, assume the best.

1 Like
74

I mean… even ZIP1014 says this:

“In case the value of ZEC jumps, the Dev Fund recipients should not wastefully use excessive amounts of funds. Conversely, given market volatility and eventual halvings, it is desirable to create rainy-day reserves.”

6 Likes
75

hahaha yes I’m in favor of this!

1 Like
76

It was really hard for me to tell my friend about ZEC and how to use the wallet. So I think we need a video of the principle and explanation of how to use the wallet.

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77

Yes. Haven’t seen the other videos, maybe someone can proactively reach out to him. Also not the best look to make a video of social credit in china and have transparent chains like BTC, ETH, ADA for donations. He needs a Zcash address.

4 Likes
78

Can we please not propose to spend 200k on promoting the videos on Facebook, Instagram etc? Thanks.

7 Likes
79

JRGB have you got a reason why not? Zcash is nowhere near mainstream yet. It lives in a small corner of the crypto market reality, where half of the influencers in crypto think we are a laughing stock.

We need a bold and direct shot to reach common people. This can be a leap frog jump beyond the mudslinging battles within the crypto sector. Millions of people have the appetite to directly onboard into a non-Bitcoin community - these are the intellectually curious sort of people who responded to stuff like Shiba Inu ads, Hex ads, Cardano ads, Ripple ads, etc etc.

The difference is that a well done Zcash ad that draws in significant “normal people” attention is that we are opening their perspective to a legitimately revolutionary ideology about finance (decentralized p2p money via Shielded pools) and communications (z2z memos)

My opinion is that our community funds are best spent to the concept: Keep it simple stupid

The Zcash Media productions were awesome but they were crafted for a tiny minority of viewers, and I assert thats why they created an underwhelming impact.

2 Likes
80

Opinions mine, not ECC.

I support the funding of this grant given Zcash Media provides an outline of what topics they’re considering for videos. A question for the Zcash Media team:

Is there a plan to have some of the videos, or related content around them, drive transactions using Zcash related products? Ie. When the dobbertin reveal happened, the team had people send z2z transactions to receive a clue.

How do you plan replicating that in this plan? After watching a video, what would drive a crypto-curious person to download a zcash wallet a run a shielded transaction?

Regarding some of the points I’ve seen here. My perspective (NFA obvz):

Market timing: Yes we’re in a downtrend, and I think it’s going to go lower. People care about making money. Especially crypto-curious/retail investors. So after things calm down, let’s say a new wave of investors/retail are looking for the next big thing outside of top 20 MC. The content Zcash Media produces would stand out in the noisy spaces of YT/Twitter, people think “oh wow that’s cool”, and then they start researching Zcash as an investment. I think this is a massive onboarding opportunity, and that this persona, mostly retail/investors, need to have a quality introductions to Zcash on Youtube. Zcash Media fills this gap.

Education should be community driven: I think by Zcash Media committing to posting videos to twitter (like they have done) strengthens the communities ability to market Zcash. The content they create can be shared from personal accounts and can add substance to content. Ie. If a zodller wants to tweet “Imagine putting all your financial information on a public ledger” they could add this video to support their content. So, Zcash Media distributing their content enables community members to have better personal branding strategies that promote and grow Zcash.

250k views isn’t a lot: let’s not focus on just views/likes. I think the most important thing is that Zcash becomes the conversation in the crypto town square, twitter. When all of the videos dropped this was certainly the case. Zcash was in major publications and a lot of influencers were sharing the content on twitter. They more than succeeded in their job here.

Some personal perspective:

Zcash Media wants to be a hub for educational content, and I think they can certainly do that. But, as I mentioned, I think an extremely interesting angle is arming the community with quality content to assist in their work promoting zcash. It also gives prominent zcashers a channel to speak without the possibility of being maliciously misinterpreted.

Creating this level of content is expensive, as shown in the requested amount. When thinking about this, I’d encourage people to think what are the direct benefits, and indirect benefits, of this channel. Direct benefits are certainly more measurable, but I think there is a tremendous amount of value in the indirect benefits.

I think it also creates a certain amount of quality control. These videos will be held to a higher standard than other content that is created/posted, therefore we should assume that the content will be more accurate. Crypto in general is very complex, and when creating content around it, people sometimes get things wrong. By having a education channel held to a certain standard, we can be confident that interested users are being given the right information when being directed towards the channel. They also should be prompted to load up a shielded wallet with some zec after watching the videos :slight_smile:

Just my thoughts!

8 Likes
81

We will be a greater laughing stock if we were to pay for such marketing. If we cant grow organically, we have to examine why. We have to dig deeper why Zcash doesnt have that organic growth other projects have (Zcash does have organic growth just at a smaller and slower pace). Is it the narrative? Is it something about the Zcash story that doesnt quite catch ‘normal people’? Is it the tech? Is it the price? Is it the tiny dev community? Is it the exisiting community? Is it the people at the top? I dont have the answers…

Those intellectually curious people have nothing from Zcash. There is no dog mascot. We wont win them over to ‘a legitimately revolutionary ideology about finance (decentralized p2p money via Shielded pools) and communications (z2z memos)’.

We should build a good product then market it. The product isnt good enough yet.

I agree with KISS. Zcash isnt there yet.

7 Likes
82

When you have leaders publicly saying things like “mediocrity is the by-product of diversification,” and thinking that’s something that’s appropriate to say to their community, there’s literally no need to wonder why the Zcash community isn’t growing through word of mouth as fast as other decentralized, inclusive blockchain projects. It’s all stemming from some of these stewards’ “values”.

2 Likes
83

Reiterating the same point, there still can be consensus on getting some slick vidoes/content out. But in the last grant, at least 51k was tacked for paid media/marketing. Even Shawn seemed confused initially (first reply to the post). Not sure what the ROI on something like that is.

3 Likes
84

It was 166 people or so who shared their wallet to receive the clue. I would not call that “driving transaction use in Zcash”. Even less at the price tags we’re being quoted.

There are infinitely more cost-effective ways to promote downloading Zcash wallets than high quality educational videos at a 1.8 million price tag.

Again, there are infinitely more cost-effective ways to make people research on Zcash than educational videos at a 1.8 million price tag. Plus we already funded pricey videos that had it all to become blockbusters (Vitalik interview, Edward Snowden reveal) but failed. We definitely do not need need 1.8 million dollars worth of additional high-quality educational videos.

It is verifiably not. We already tried and failed. It likely is all downhill from the Snowden reveal video in terms of buzz.

Exactly, no need to centralise the efforts through (additional) pricey videos. There are numerous other marketing approaches that are a lot more cost-effective than producing expensive videos that hardly anyone watches. Once again, we already have three very expensive educational videos, we do not need more than what we already have.

But we have to, I mean, it makes no sense to pay close to 2 million dollars for a marketing initiative that will hardly have any impact on adoption.

It really wasn’t the case, and the little traction that it gained was because the revealing of Edward Snowden being “the mystery man involved in the creation of leading privacy cryptocurrency Zcash” was as easy as it gets in terms of making it go viral. As I said before, it very likely is only downhill from there for expensive educational videos in terms of impact and return on investment.

As stated before, most projects that have done well have done so while just having one high quality educational video. Why in the world would Zcash need 15 of those?. This money will be better spent elswhere.

We certainly do not need to pay 1.8 million dollars to a single entity to achieve that.

Whatever the benefits might be, we can already capitalise on them as we already funded 3 expensive educational videos on Zcash. We just do not need more, the return on investment just isn’t there.

To summarise: this is not the right initiative to fund, it just isn’t.

3 Likes