Zcash Community Grants (ZCG) is refining its approach to funding Zcash Community organizations in 2025 in order to create stability and certainty for well-established and proven community projects. This effort focuses on ensuring impactful contributions, while streamlining the process for everyone involved. This new approach is being implemented in cooperation with the Financial Privacy Foundation (@FPF), which is providing a matching contribution to the funding pool.
Approach: Eligible Zcash Community groups are being invited to submit full-year 2025 funding requests to ZCG. Eligible groups can propose monthly or quarterly milestones for payout. No additional funding for community groups will be made available by ZCG in 2025.
Funding: FPF will contribute $75,000 to the funding pool and ZCG will provide the remaining funds (amount TBD depending on the value of approved grants).
Eligibility: Groups aligned with ZCG’s recent statement are invited to submit full-year grant requests: “Moving forward, ZCG will apply strict criteria for community-focused grants, prioritizing established communities with a proven track record of delivering impact in regards to community building, effective organization, and collaboration with external entities. We will also favor communities recognized and valued by key members within the ecosystem.” Additionally, ZCG further defines “established communities” as communities that are administered and sustained by individual contributors, both volunteer-based and compensated.
In line with this statement, the following groups are invited to submit full-year grant requests:
- ZecHub
- Zcash Global en Español
- Zcash Brazil
- ZK AV Club
Process and Timeline:
- Submissions from eligible organizations are due December 6th, submitted via the standard grant request process. All requests must be for a full-year (starting January 1, 2025), with either monthly or quarterly milestones permissible.
- ZCG to conduct a standard grant review process with a final response date no later than December 30th. Note: FPF will not have input into funding decisions.
- Approved grants to be monitored and paid out as per standard grant processes.
FAQs:
- Is funding for the “eligible” groups guaranteed? No. ZCG will review the grant proposals, revert with questions and/or concerns, and ultimately determine if funding is warranted at the level requested. The act of submitting a grant request doesn’t guarantee funding.
- How will new Zcash communities gain funding if ZCG isn’t funding any additional community projects in 2025? New or less-established community projects have the ability to request funding via ZecHub, Free2Z, and other similar platforms for funding outside of ZCG.
- What is the total value of the funding pool available for this project? The amount is to be determined based on the value of the final approved grants. FPF will be contributing $75,000 to this project regardless of the final funding amount.
- What if grantees don’t deliver on their grant? Like any grant, ZCG (via ZF currently and FPF post-halving) has the right to cancel non-performing grants under the standard terms and conditions that all grantees agree to when they submit a grant request.
Please post on this thread or reach out with any questions. Thank you!
