Zcash Media YouTube Channel

Community Grants
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Hi Zcash fam,

In this thread, we would like to gather community sentiment around starting a new YouTube channel called Zcash Media to place and promote the videos we are working on thus far (Zcash Mini-Documentary & Educational Series and The Ceremony, Powers of Tau, and Halo Video), in addition to future videos we hope to make.

Summary of Points covered in this post

-We believe creating a YouTube channel called Zcash Media is the best route to distribute our work
-There is an ongoing conversation about whether to put our videos on a Zcash Media YouTube channel versus hosting them on the ZF YouTube channel.
-We outline the pros (decentralization, disintermediation, neutrality, consensus, our experience, and starting with a blank slate) and cons (starting a new channel, additional costs, our relative newcomer status) of starting a Zcash Media YouTube channel versus hosting the videos on the Zcash Foundation’s YouTube channel
-We would like the community’s feedback on this topic

First, we would like to discuss our vision for Zcash Media. As writers, filmmakers, Zcash enthusiasts, and community members, we want to create a hub where anyone can go to learn and be inspired about Zcash, its mission, and its enabling technology. This is why we applied in the first place: to unify the disparate information surrounding Zcash in a short documentary and series of educational videos. And why, after having our application approved, prepared diligently to identify the key elements of Zcash’s story and turn them into >100 interview questions, fervently traveled across the country, staying and filming at our family and friends’ houses to stretch our budget, and worked many a late night to create accurate animations and edit the over 30 hrs. of footage into comprehensible and entertaining stories. The world is changing at an ever increasing rate, and people need easily understandable information in order to help them make empowering choices. We see Zcash as one of those empowering choices and do not want people to miss it simply due to a lack of outreach on the part of the Zcash community (we perceive this is the biggest barrier to Zcash’s success).

We want the Zcash Media education hub to be independent from both ZF and ECC so that we can work without restraint as we create the content we think will be most effective. Zcash Media’s independence will also give it the ability to take a different stance than ECC and ZF if necessary. In the long-term, we want to foster a place for community members new, old, and yet to arrive to be able to work together to channel their enthusiasm for Zcash into much needed educational material, thought pieces, etc. We envision a similar process to how the Ethereum website is managed where community members made up of artists, writers, and designers can gather to suggest and build what they think will be best for the project.

The two videos we are working on have brought significant positive feedback from people in the Zcash community (interviewees, ZF leadership, previous and current ZOMG/ZCG members) as well as from outside the community (our advisors, friends, and family who have acted as test screeners). Towards our goal of creating a home for these videos in Zcash Media, we would like to continue to produce this level of content for the foreseeable future. After our general introductory video and our video on the Halo upgrade, we would like to make videos on a range of relevant topics that we believe can help inform crypto newbies, crypto natives, large institutions, and crypto/Zcash skeptics alike. The footage we have collected from over 15 people, along with new interviews with Vitalik Buterin, Erik Voorhees, and Kevin Owocki coming in mid-February, will give us material for interesting videos for months to come.

We are excited to plan how we can achieve a consistent output of high quality videos and are developing a proposal to accomplish this, much in line with the previously suggested idea of long-term grant support suggested by Nate Wilcox and others. However, before we do that, we need to know what the community’s thoughts are in regard to whether we should start a Zcash Media YouTube to put our videos or put them on ZF’s YouTube. We outline what we perceive to be the major pros and cons below.

Pros:

-Decentralization. Placing videos on either ECC/ZF YouTube pages would give additional control to the top two decision makers in the Zcash ecosystem. Placing videos on the Zcash Media page would help to give control to additional players in the Zcash ecosystem. We hope that through our grant process, we have shown various Zcash stakeholders that they can trust us to make and continue to make decisions that are in the best interest of Zcash and its community. We will continue to thoughtfully heed their feedback and respect their advice in every step of our process to always do what is best to move Zcash forward.

-Disintermediation. We believe it is important to have minimal friction between content creators and their distribution outlets. This can be seen in the massive rise in popularity of user generated content as audiences prefer to get their media “directly from the source.” This also removes an additional layer of control allowing content creators to work solely to the best of their artistic ability and not to a distributor’s wishes. Further, disintermediation will prevent bias from the distributor to try and shape the narrative to their liking. Our expertise is in storytelling but authority lies with the distributor. We have experienced the effects of a separate distributor approving content and feel it diminishes the freedom of storytelling and experimentation.

-Neutrality. As community members, we believe that hosting the content on an independent platform from ZF/ECC will lend authenticity to the content as it is not coming strictly from entities that are already strongly tied to Zcash, but instead from independent third parties enthusiastic about Zcash. In addition, hosting the videos on a platform separate from ZF/ECC helps to avoid getting involved in the politics surrounding those two entities.

-Consensus. We believe that by acting as neutral content creators and surveyors of the Zcash ecosystem, we would be able to work with ECC, ZF, and ZCG to gather and synthesize information on the happenings of Zcash. We would strive to work with all Zcash entities to put out a holistic messaging strategy, thereby achieving consensus in our outreach efforts while still maintaining decentralization - just like a blockchain :wink:

-Experience. Our team is experienced in not only producing cinema quality videos and synthesizing highly technical subjects, but also in promotion of YouTube videos. Members of our community have had YouTube channels with 10,000’s of followers and millions of views. In addition, we have connected with various people with successful large-scale content creation and distribution efforts to act as advisors to the Zcash Media channel and ensure its success. We believe that the combination of our community’s experience and the experience of a panel of outside advisors would give us sufficient expertise to promote Zcash Media. In addition, we would ideally hope to work with ECC and ZF to grow the Zcash Media channel since we believe it would greatly benefit all of the Zcash ecosystem to bring broader attention to Zcash.

-Blank Slate. Both ECC and ZF’s YouTube channels are filled with hours long webinar content that are (although riveting to the diehard Zcasher), not inviting to general audiences. We believe that starting with a blank slate and filling it from the start with high quality videos optimized for presentation on YouTube will result in a much better long term curation and user experience.

Cons:

-Starting a New Channel. Starting a new channel may make it harder to attract as many viewers as hosting the video on ECC or ZF’s channels, which both have thousands of followers and brand name recognition among crypto enthusiasts. However, we believe this is a short term problem as Zcash Media will strive from the beginning to grow its audience using both high quality content and significant outreach (see points above). Also, the Zcash Foundation YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi01v05DNTUEC_eB0c9rpgQ) has ~1,000 subscribers and the most popular video (ZK Rollup: Ethereum Scalability with ZKPs - Alex Gluchowski - YouTube) has 2,860 views. That video is 2.5 years old and is about an Ethereum scaling solution. We believe that Zcash Media has the potential to gain more subscribers and views rather quickly given the high production quality and strategic promotion of our videos. In other words, we consider that both ZF and Zcash Media YouTube channels would be starting from a similar point in terms of number of YouTube subscribers and viewers.

-Additional Cost. ZF and ECC are both putting resources towards outreach and marketing in 2022 and beyond. By creating a Zcash Media YouTube channel with its associated organizational and promotion costs, we would be asking the community to put additional resources towards education and outreach. We believe this is a worthy endeavor nonetheless for several reasons. First, increasing the adoption of Zcash around the world is a huge task that requires a concerted effort. We believe that by working together with ECC’s and ZF’s teams, we can all help to increase the awareness of Zcash. Second, ECC and ZF both have their own mission statements that shape their outreach and marketing efforts. By having a channel such as Zcash Media that focuses exclusively on the Zcash currency itself, we can provide a neutral place for audiences to learn holistically about the entire ecosystem. We envision working synergistically with ECC and ZF to prevent redundancy in outreach efforts and support each organization’s goals.

-Newcomers. We are relative newcomers to Zcash, having first gotten involved directly in the community in Summer 2021. But we have been fortunate to meet many community members firsthand through our interview process and subsequently work with them on the videos. We have provided rigorous updates on our work thus far - in line with Zcash’s goal of transparency and our goal of building trust with the community. In addition, we are known entities with a brick and mortar business and address on file with ZF, we are not going anywhere :slight_smile: Lastly, although we are relatively new to Zcash, we are not new to the pursuit of dedicating ourselves to what we see as worthy causes. 37 Laines’s most recent short film was about a Black single mother learning how to balance her own career and take care of her autistic child. This film was done in collaboration with the autism community, debuted as a fundraiser for autism research at UCLA, and made freely available on YouTube, where many in the autism community saw themselves represented in a film for the first time. They have also worked on campaigns for various healthcare/science initiatives, going as far back as their work with MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2014. David Boyer has worked in science for more than a decade, originally performing biofuels research to help create more sustainable energy sources, and he has now worked for over 6 years studying the underlying causes of neurodegeneration to battle Alzheimer’s and related diseases. During this time, he has been an avid advocate of people recovering from addiction, raising funding to start the first university sponsored office for the support of students in recovery from addiction at UCLA.

Final Thoughts

Zcash Trademark

We have already signed a licensing agreement with ZF to use the Zcash logo in our videos, and we will work to remain in good standing with the community, ZF, and ECC to be good stewards of the Zcash logo. Also, we will make sure viewers of our videos know that we are a Zcash community (ZCG, to be precise) supported channel that is delivering free educational material that the Zcash community has approved.

Open Source Policy

In harmony with the open source nature of the work funded by ZF or ZCG grants, the work we produce will be freely available. In addition, as mentioned above, we would make it clear that Zcash Media is a community supported effort. When posting videos on YouTube, we will likely use the Standard YouTube license so that reuse of our posted videos has to be done with the permission of the creators of the video (us). Further, since the Zcash trademark license agreement does not permit sublicensing, we would need to consult with the owners of the Zcash trademark (ECC/ZF) for reuse requests. In other words, we would work with ZF to decide on a case by case basis requests to re-use the videos posted on Zcash Media.

Longevity

After getting feedback from other members of the community on this post, it was pointed out to us that a potential pitfall for starting Zcash Media would be that it may make ZCG feel obligated to approve future grants we may submit (which may lead to a sort of “rubber stamp” approval process for each grant we submit). In order to avoid this, we are thinking of ways so that if we and ZCG could ever not come to an agreement on the production of new videos, and we have to actively give up managing the Zcash Media YouTube channel, we could make sure the videos can remain freely available.

We believe this is enough for now to get the conversation started ;). Please let us know what you think.

Thanks for reading!

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In the spirit of decentralization, I prefer that Zcash Media starts their own YT channel. Hosting on ZF channel might add another cost of review by ZF team. The review can be a good thing of course, but it can also lead to bad release timing.

I also think having a separate channel would protect both ZF and Zcash media from any unforeseen censorship by YT.

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I’m a bit torn down on the use of the name “Zcash Media,” for similar reasons that ECC moved away from calling itself the Zcash Company, and why I personally would like to see Zfnd change its name. It sounds official and authoritative. I understand both the benefit and downside of the name, but generally would like to see more players who represent the community, waving the flag freely.

Independent from the channel name, I believe that the videos should be produced and distributed outside of ECC and Zfnd channels, and outside their control. That way, ECC and Zfnd are free to signal boost, challenge or ignore, but not censor.

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What experience does 37 Laines have of running and promoting YouTube channels (or other distribution channels)? Can you point us to any examples of similar work you’ve undertaken in the past (specifically, distribution and promotion of content, rather than just production)?

Popular YouTube channels can generate significant revenues. Your proposal doesn’t mention what would happen to any revenue generated by the channel.

This seems to suggest that 37L would seek to retain copyright ownership and control of content that is created using funding provided by Zcash Community Grants. Is this correct?

I just want to provide some more context and background around this.

37 Laines’ original grant applications did not cover distribution of the documentary series. As a result, ZF expected to end up handling that aspect (likely using a Creative Commons license). This begged two questions: how to best distribute and promote high quality content like this documentary series so that it reaches the widest possible audience, and who should benefit from any revenues?

It doesn’t necessarily make sense to have something like this documentary series appearing alongside some of the ZF channel’s content that, while of interest to the Zcash community, doesn’t necessarily have broader appeal (e.g. ZF Community Calls). At the same time, there is other content (e.g. some of the Zcon videos, the informational videos produced by ECC) that does have broader appeal.

One potential solution we’ve been thinking about is creating a new Zcash channel (on YouTube initially, and possibly on other suitable platforms such as Vimeo in the future) to showcase content like this documentary series, and aggregate other suitable content from ZF, ECC, and other members of the Zcash ecosystem (including other grant recipients), with any monetization revenue accruing to the benefit of the Zcash community (e.g. by being spent on promoting the Zcash channel, thus creating a virtuous feedback loop).

Creating a new, independent channel, separate from ZF, also opens up the possibility of outsourcing its administration and management to a specialist distribution partner that has experience of selecting and promoting high-quality content and building an audience, while ensuring that the Zcash community doesn’t lose control (or fail to benefit from) content that it has funded, either directly through Zcash Community Grants, or indirectly, through the ECC’s and ZF’s slices of the Dev Fund. It also decouples content production from distribution, thus sidestepping the Longevity issues detailed above, and if the distribution partner is selected by the Zcash Community Grants committee (e.g. using a competitive RFP process), it ensures that the channel will become independent of ZF, while providing a safety net in the event that the distribution partner opts to end the partnership.

The release of the first two episodes of the documentary series presents an opportunity to launch such a channel with a virtual “movie premiere” event, with participation from the Zcash Community Grants committee and the producers (37 Laines). We’ve put together a plan to do that, supported by PR and Twitter/Google ads.

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Yes this should be made clear in the proposal.

For reference, AFAIK, once you qualify for YouTube Partner and monetise videos:
1,000,000 views = ~ $1000 - $10,000

IMO if these videos get 1,000,000 views they deserve every cent.

Note: I thought about stipulating the videos can’t be monetized but figure YouTube still run ads anyways so someone should benefit. Who knows maybe one day the channel can be self sufficient.

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Would a creative commons licence limit the ability to effectively market the material on YouTube? Creative commons would allow anyone to re-upload the video right? My layman’s understanding is that the YouTube algorithm would gain a better understanding of the content if the views and subs were all on the same channel rather then scattered.

When the content is scattered people skip the “official” channel because they saw the video elsewhere. This is turn makes YouTube think the recommendation was a “miss” and is less likely to recommend again.

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Note that a video may attract many views not because of the production quality but because it contains a newsworthy revelation that attracts a lot of attention.

Possibly, and that’s something that we’re still mulling over (hence why I said likely). In general, I’m strongly in favour of releasing this sort of content under a CC license so that it can be widely copied and redistributed. It also ensures that other content creators can remix it and/or incorporate it into other works, unleashing a “long tail” effect.

Note that the vast majority of the footage that 37 Laines filmed during the production of these documentaries will not be included in the final cuts. That’s an inevitable side effect of the editing process but it means that there’s a lot of raw material that others could turn into more content.

All that said, the advantage of using exclusivity to be able to drive eyeballs to a new, Zcash-focused channel would certainly be helpful. Sticking with the “movie premiere” analogy, in the same way that new movie releases are only shown in theaters and/or on certain streaming services for a certain period of time, before being made more widely available, the solution for Zcash community-funded content might be to keep the license restrictive for a certain period of time (to benefit from the exclusivity) before releasing it under a CC license (to benefit from the long tail effect, and to permit the Zcash community to remix and redistribute it.

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Yes please.

How about ownership of channel? I guess the risk here is that the community could disagree with future channel use.

But my understanding would be that while “Zcash” is in the channel name they have to abid by the “rules” that have been set in the TM agreement. Could we add a clause that any rule breaking could trigger something like a YES/NO ZCAP vote to take back control of “Zcash Media”.

If the channel is a crazy success we can revisit the TM and funding in future grants.

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Interesting! Is this at the request and direction of ZCG and 37 Laines?

Also, we haven’t been asked about participating and have some thoughts given the nature of some of the material that we chose to now reveal. I think it makes sense to at least talk.

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I think this is another reason why I’d lean more towards @37L managing the release.

There’s also a xx% chance the video under performs and @37L blame Zfnd for incorrectly managing distribution, and Zfnd blame @37L for missing the mark.

While I believe @Dodger made some solid points with regards to licencing and revenue I’m pretty sure these are things we can solve and still allow @37L to control distribution/channel.

I’d lean in favour of this proposal.

@37L given the discussions above is there anything you feel needs clarifying/addressing/adjusting?

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I think it’s important to avoid the implication that the project was conceived of or funded by ECC or ZF (even if those entities have been in some way involved), and I think it might appear that way to the public if it were released on the ZF official channel. The project was created independently by community members and funded by ZOMG so it should be read that way by the public, as a passion project and an organic growth out of the community. I also think @Dodger is on to a very good idea with an independent Zcash Community Media Distribution channel which is very much worth exploring.

Agree with @GGuy that the monetization side of the youtube channel is unlikely to be very significant for the moment. That said getting millions or tens of millions of views would merit a revisitation of the issue, though I think that would be worthy of celebration by all of us.

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This is a very important point.

ZOMG didn’t consult with ECC or ZF before voting to fund the original project. It of course did involve interviews and appearances with the key members of ECC, ZOMG, and ZF in it’s creation, but I think if the project is to spawn it’s own “community” Zcash media YouTube channel it should stay with the original spirit of it’s creation: a decentralized community effort.

My gut tells me with the release of Halo, shielded by default, etc… and the quality of the 37laines videos we could be looking at that kind of high viewership sooner rather than later. :crossed_fingers:

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We’ve met regularly with 37 Laines throughout this project. It was they who raised the question of how the video was to be distributed, which is why we came up with a draft plan.

We reached out weeks ago and had a meeting scheduled but unfortunately that meeting didn’t occur. We’re happy to meet to talk about this any time.

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The only thing that I’m on the fence about is the monetization of the channel.

  1. If it’s fully funded by ZCG, then it has no need to run ads on the content since it’s already funded.

  2. If 37laines intends to use the channel to monetize the content, then ZCG should consider some sort of AD profit sharing agreement either with the channel or with 37laines itself.

It almost makes sense for the ZCG to simply set up a channel for itself and post whatever content they fund onto it. They have the budget to run advertising and promotion already set aside without the need to go through a Grants process.

ZCG could independently fund, curate, and promote content in it’s channel without any annoying ADs, yay decentralization.

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Reached out to us about this video? It’s high on our radar. I didn’t see or hear about anything. Let’s make this happen ASAP.

[Edit] For clarity, we believe how the videos are released is ultimately a community decision and not up to ECC or Zfnd. I’d just like to learn more about Zfnd’s plans for promotion and share about our intended approach for supporting @37L after they make the videos available. Back to the conversation!! :wink:

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Opinions are my own here:

I actually like the name they suggested, Zcash Media. When I go on YouTube to learn more about other crypto projects, I usually search them either by their name or by their ticker, and that’s the typical behaviour of most of the users on crypto YT. Most people who will want to know more about Zcash would search for “Zcash” or ZEC and since this channel aims to create a lot of content related to that, and by doing so, drive a lot of traffic to the channel, titling it something that begins with “Zcash” would put the channel at the top of the list of searches. I’m not sure what other name would be appropriate for such a channel, particularly on the platform in question (YouTube).

Totally agree with you on this. The channel should opt out from revenue generation. Ads on the videos lessens the quality of the experience.

I love all that you guys are doing and I think you will contribute significantly towards Zcash awareness. I do find this bit to be a bit restrictive though if our goal is awareness :slight_smile:

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EDIT: I’ve delete this comment discussing effects of discoverability and ads. You can view in edits if needed. I’ve since discovered what I believe to be the answer about ads and discoverability in the subsequent comment. I now recommend we disable ads on Zcash Media. If it means ZCG pay more to make up the difference I think that it’s well worth the relatively small amount to make up the difference.

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While a few years old this video gives a good overview on the topic. I suspect this is still true.

I also recommend we disable monetization.

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Just wondering, what experience does ZF have in marketing/building narrative/building any sort of community? I believe we should double down on 37L.

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it would be really cool to get as much marketing as possible on this. we are at a time where privacy is more important than ever. we have seen what the likes of paypal and gofundme do to their own users. absolute fraud going on in completely established companies with ppl(even in positions of power) having no ability to change this level of censorship. anyways, a big push to the average crowd outside of crypto would be amazing at this pivotal time in history.

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