We should start a thread about this question because I think it’s important! Would you like to?
Sure. Should I or would you prefer to and I can comment on it?
It’d be great if you started it!
I regret not posting earlier, as soon as I saw Aditya’s reply, I realized he misunderstood the “hold” part. I meant to say that ZOMG was expecting answers to the questions about navigating the duplicate infra efforts etc. It didn’t seem like they were rejecting the proposal.
Side note: I’m happy to see @tromer & @Matthewdgreen back on forums 
1 Like
First off, I’d like to say that I understand that the committee is doing a difficult job with unusual constraints in a brand new area, so I appreciate and respect the work that everyone on the committee is doing. It can’t be easy, and I want to sincerely thank all of you.
I wanted to write this post in the spirit of “Agreeing to Disagree” and explain the perspective of an App developer on Zcash. There is some notion on the forum that I misunderstood the committee’s position or that there’s been miscommunication, but I don’t think that’s the case here. (And @holmesworcester / @Shawn there is absolutely no need to apologize - You guys are awesome and the communication from the ZOMG was clear)
From my perspective, this is the entire point of Zecwallet. An independent, community-owned, third party implementation of a lite wallet, which is the primary way most people will interact with the Zcash ecosystem. It’s why Zecwallet exists.
I understand and appreciate that the committee wants to be cautious and judicious in granting funds, making sure that the eco system grants are used efficiently, that there is a high level of co-ordination among grantees and there is that little (or none) duplication of effort. This is a perfectly valid position.
However, Zecwallet was built differently. It was built from the product philosophy that grantees should optimize for usefulness and utility. That is, grant recipients take product risks, iterate quickly on several ideas, and bear the cost of inefficiencies and duplicated effort in an attempt to discover what works, what kinds of wallets/apps/usecases Zcash users value and figure out what will get people to use and care about ZEC. And when some ideas/techniques/code proves itself out in the real world, grantees will come back and submit it upstream, so that Zcash as a whole makes progress.
For example, when Zecwallet Lite was being built, it was not clear whether t-address support was important. Instead of trying to figure out the answers via form posts and polls, Zecwallet implemented t-address support in Zecwallet and shipped it, allowing users to “vote” by using or not using the feature. Turns out, t-address support in light client is important, at least right now, so this worked out, and I ended up submitting some PRs to the upstream librustzcash.
Some ideas don’t work - I thought users care about having multiple z addresses, so I added support for multiple addresses in Zecwallet. Turns out users don’t care, so I ended up removing it from the mobile wallets.
One way to look at this is that all this effort was wasted, and it was obvious that users don’t care about multiple z addresses, and that Zecwallet wasted ~$10,000 implementing this feature. Another way to look at it was that it was worth spending the money to discover what users care about, and double down on the features that users do care about. Both viewpoints are perfectly valid.
I know it seems like I’m defending waste and duplication, and I guess I am. My product world-view depends on it, and I think Zecwallet has achieved some success in the Zcash ecosystem because of this approach. Build fast, iterate, double down on things that work, fix things that don’t. Accept some costs of duplication, rework and inefficiencies, as long as the overall product continuously improves.
I also understand that this is probably NOT what the committee wants, and values efficient use of funds and de-duplication higher. I also understand that this means the ZOMG probably wasn’t going to fund Zecwallet, and that’s OK.
This is another area where I would respectfully disagree. Again, I understand this is important to the committee and I’m probably in the wrong here, but I don’t want to submit Zecwallets server expense receipts to the committee for approval.
Zecwallet was and remains a fluid project, experimenting with a bunch of different ideas to see what works. Having to seek the committee’s approval for infrastructure and architecture decisions will dramatically slow down Zecwallet, and Zecwallet was not built for that. Now I understand there are 100s of successful open source projects that work fine with this model, but I think Zecwallet cannot work with this model. It’s important for Zecwallet to have the freedom to make infrastructure and architecture decisions quickly and locally.
I will readily admit that my expertise is in writing code and building products and I’m terrible at writing grant applications and forum posts (hence this wall of text 
), explaining infrastructure & architectural decisions and getting buy-in & approval from an overseeing committee.
As an example, Zecwallet built and shipped the entire lite client - The light wallet SDK, CLI and desktop apps, the caching lightwalletD server and t-address support - all in 10 weeks, because the Zcash Foundation was generous enough to let me have full control over the product, architecture and infrastructure decisions. However, if I had to write proposals, convince the committee of major infrastructure and architecture decisions and to seek approval with a 2-week turnaround time, I don’t think it would have worked.
Again, I realize this sounds like a #HumbleBrag, but I want to be clear that it couldn’t have worked for me and Zecwallet. I’m sure there are several other experienced developers who are well versed with how Open Source operates that could have matched and even exceeded Zecwallet’s timeline. I’m just saying Zecwallet (which is my first open source project) was not built for that and cannot operate under the model.
I also recognize that this is primarily my fault. That I was probably naive, and didn’t understand what the ZOMG was looking for. For that, I apologize.
I think the ZOMG has done it’s job well, but I can’t help but think Zecwallet is incompatible with how the ZOMG wants to fund the Zcash ecosystem.
17 Likes
Hey folks! I haven’t even had time to read most of this thread yet, and since nobody from my organization is on ZOMG, the choices of ZOMG are not something I need to express my opinion about.
The only thing I do want to say is that ZecWallet is great!
I 
ZecWallet, and I will always be grateful to Aditya for selflessly contributing such a great contribution to the Zcash community.
I’m a pretty danged heavy user of crypto wallets! Not counting occasional experiments just to test out a new one, I actively use five different Zcash wallets every week, and one or two of them every single day, multiple times a day! And ZecWallet-lite is one of those two. It’s the most reliable one of the five that I use.
My ability to see and feel Zcash in action and to learn from using it every day would be greatly diminished if Aditya hadn’t come along years ago and decided to pick up the zcashd command line and start building a wallet on top of it. And then most importantly, decided to keep going and going, and diligently improving it and supporting it and sharing it for free to everyone in the Zcash community, including me.
Thank you, Aditya. I am grateful to you.
16 Likes
I’d be irritated too, if I was in your shoes, but the fact is, the ZOMG is trying to prototype a new process. To attribute some kind of formalized intention to their requests, i.e. to “how the ZOMG wants to fund the Zcash ecosystem”, is a bit of a stretch wouldn’t you say?
I cannot imagine someone in this community simultaneously believing that the ZOMG is both “doing it’s job well”, and failing to fund zecwallet. To me those seem mutually exclusive.
Don’t get me wrong… I was the first person (If I Recall Correctly) to assert that the requests the ZOMG made were both poorly framed, and In My Humble Opinion counterproductive. <–(Meaning that they would lead to a needlessly inefficient process if adhered to.) If my memory serves there’s been personal friction between you and Sarah Jamie Lewis.
I believe you Aditya that, your model has been very effective so far (as far as I can tell), and I depend on your app for my daily financial transactions.
But, since we all know that the ZOMG’s process is nascent and evolving, let’s not pretend otherwise.
You mention that your own development process involves running many (sometimes costly) experiments. You say (and I completely agree with you) that that model is inconsistent with the proposed funding model the ZOMG offered. But don’t you think it’s a reasonable thing to allow the ZOMG to run some experiments, i.e. make some proposals, some of which fail? Or rather do you expect them to produce a perfect process without trial-and-error?
So… now you’ve got most of the community kow-towing to you… or would you like to frame this thread in a different way? Personally I think it’s an apt description of how our little band of ape-like creatures is responding to the posturing among the Top Apes. It is after all, what our brains are evolved to do.
More to the point, I am afraid. I am afraid that you, or Sarah Jamie Lewis (or some other Top Alpha Apes) will carry out the threats your posturing implies. As a hapless Lower Ape… I mostly just have to beg that you Toppers higher up the pyramid won’t trample the Little Users whilst engaging in your none-too-pretty petty power struggles.
If this is where it’s left, then… too bad for the Users.
2 Likes
Aditya has informed ZOMG of his decision to withdraw this proposal at this time.
1 Like
I primarily use Zecwallet products as well and, personally, am also disappointed that Aditya did not accept the grant though I am very hopeful that a new proposal will be accepted and this can be reconciled and soon put behind us. Its been echoed by many here about the newness of the model and “ironing out the kinks” so I think saying that the ZOMG is incompatible with Zecwallet is, at least, premature. This is the brand new funding model we have committed to, deliberated on for months, voted on, and subsequently voted for the ZOMG chairs to handle it. While we may not agree with this particular decision, there is no evidence to support any kind of ill-will or that this decision was made purposefully erroneous, but, just the opposite. They defend their decision for proposing the 2 month grant as a means to request more evaluation time for finding a more suitable modeling (which itself implies the importance of Zecwallet) and I support this. Otherwise we’re asking them to make decisions they may not be comfortable with and, as the ones being assigned to create this new template for grant allocation, I believe it was not an unwise path to take.
5 Likes
Let’s not focus on ZOMG. Let’s get funding for Zecwallet. I think everyone supports it whether its ZOMG or ZF. It would be a huge blowback to Zcash if @adityapk00 does a rage quit. I certainly don’t want that to happen (and nobody does). We already have one rage quit in 2021. We had one last year (Josh C). I wish only one thing — choose mission over a conflict 
4 Likes
As a happy user of Zecwallet I hope to see this project funded soon!
5 Likes