Hi everyone. I’m Daniel Goh, gorusys on GitHub and the forum.
I’m a systems engineer. The last few years working in the Zcash ecosystem. I’ve been buliding zecvault — a non-custodial vault for people who want to hold ZEC without handing it to a custodian. I built zcashgranthub — grant governance tooling that handles proposal submission, on-chain tracking, and round management.
I’m running for ZCG because I’ve seen the grant process from a builder’s perspective — what makes a proposal credible, where scope goes wrong, what accountability looks like after money changes hands. The committee needs engineers who can evaluate technical proposals with depth. That’s what I’m offering.
Here are my answers.
1. ZCG receives 52,500 ZEC per year (during the current halving cycle). A year ago that was worth $2,625,000 per year. Now that is worth about $24,000,000 per year. What should change, if anything, about how ZCG does its work? (Zooko)
My view is that more capital should not simply mean more grants. It should mean better strategy.
First, ZCG should become more proactive. While ZCG utilizes two primary funding mechanisms—Open Grants and RFPs—our current capital allocation is heavily weighted toward Open Grants, leaving RFPs vastly underutilized. Instead of only waiting for applications, we should identify the ecosystem’s most important gaps and actively encourage solutions. A ninefold increase in available capital should be matched by more deliberate grant design, clearer priorities, and stronger accountability. The goal is not to fund more projects; it is to fund the projects that matter most.
Second, I would prioritize talent development and developer growth. Zcash has made meaningful progress in expanding adoption, but we still need more builders, researchers, and technical contributors. A larger budget gives us the opportunity to invest in developer education, mentorship, training programs, and ecosystem onboarding. Stronger talent pipelines ultimately lead to stronger teams and higher-quality grant applications.
Third, security deserves greater attention. ZCG recently closed its vulnerability bounty program after it became overwhelmed by AI-generated and low-quality submissions. While that decision is understandable, bug bounties remain an important security channel. The Orchard issue was discovered through a structured audit, demonstrating the value of systematic security reviews. Audits and bug bounties catch different classes of problems, and a mature ecosystem should support both.
Finally, I would emphasize discipline. A larger budget naturally creates pressure to deploy more capital, but I believe that pressure should be resisted. I would rather fund eight high-quality projects with clear milestones, measurable outcomes, and strong accountability than twenty projects with vague goals simply because the funding is available. ZCG’s goal is not to simply exhaust the treasury, but to make prudent and necessary investments. If a budget surplus remains after these core allocations, we should conduct thorough research to ensure the remaining capital is deployed efficiently.
2. What is Zcash’s biggest opportunity right now? (Dismad)
I believe Zcash’s biggest opportunity right now is to establish itself as the institutionally accessible standard for financial privacy.
The institutional door is opening. Zcash remains available on major regulated platforms and has features like viewing keys that allow selective disclosure when needed. While other privacy-focused projects are facing increasing regulatory pressure, Zcash has a real opportunity to demonstrate that strong privacy and regulatory compliance are not mutually exclusive. The world is moving toward Zcash’s original argument. Financial surveillance is expanding, concerns about privacy are becoming mainstream, and more people are recognizing that privacy is a normal requirement for a healthy financial system.
The opportunity is not simply to be another cryptocurrency. The opportunity is for Zcash to become the default privacy layer for the digital economy. But I think that window is limited, and we need to execute with urgency while it is open.
3. If you could change one thing about Zcash, what would it be and why? (frankbraun)
If I could change one thing, I would focus aggressively on transforming Zcash into the default, privacy-preserving payment layer for autonomous AI agents.
Public, transparent ledgers are completely incompatible with autonomous business logic. If an AI agent operates on a transparent blockchain, its proprietary strategies, operational margins, and trade secrets are permanently exposed to competitors and malicious front-running bots. AI models don’t just need digital rails; they require informational opacity to protect their data advantages.
By prioritizing developer tooling—like Python/TypeScript SDKs and MCP integrations, Zcash can anchor itself as the indispensable financial infrastructure for the multi-billion-dollar autonomous AI economy.
Thanks for the time.
Zooko’s question is the one I keep thinking about. Nine times more budget is genuinely hard to govern well — I don’t think we’ve solved it yet, and I’d like to help solve it.
I’ll be in the forum if you want to go deeper on any of this.