End of February 2018 Update

acityinohio · March 1, 2018, 6:41am

Note that this is a repost from the Zcash Foundation General Mailing List, which you can join here: https://lists.z.cash.foundation/mailman/listinfo/general . Wanted to cross-post for general visibility

February 2018 Zcash Foundation Update

Dear ZcF General Subscribers,

In an effort to provide greater visibility into the Zcash Foundation,
I’ll be writing end-of-the-month updates on our work by posting to
this list. Attempting a monthly cadence, but may adjust as we learn.

Without further adieu, here are the updates for the month of February,
in no particular order:

I was appointed Executive Director, in addition to preparing and
presenting a vision/roadmap doc to the Board. More info in the blog
post: https://z.cash.foundation//blog/exec-director-and-roadmap/ I’m
really excited to represent the Zcash Foundation and looking forward
to our work this year.

Powers of Tau continues! It’s been coordinated on a Foundation mailing
list, though all credit for organizing and maintaining goes to Sean
Bowe and Jason Davies. There’s still time to participate—if you’re
interested, join the mailing list here:
https://lists.z.cash.foundation/pipermail/zapps-wg/ and request to
participate.

We are beginning the planning process for the 2018Q2 grant program. We
have $125k slated for the program this time around, but the amount may
be increased with some outside support. Draft Q2 grant process
available here:
https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/GrantProposals-2018Q2/tree/draft
Feedback is most welcome!

Additionally, we have encouraged 2017Q4 grant recipients to post their
updates to this list; Guarda and Coincentrix have been quite
communicative either here or on GitHub—other grant receivers, if
you’re reading this, please consider posting.

We have been diligently planning Zcon0—our first conference, and what
we’re hoping will be the preeminent event on privacy technology in
cryptocurrencies. It’s June 25th-28th in Montreal, and if you’re
interested attending, the application is available here:

As part of the Zcon0, we’re going to certify votes from the community
to determine new board members and elect (or reject) current board
members. There’s long discussion on the governance issue available
here:

github.com/ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation

Governance and Board of Directors election

opened 12:25AM - 03 Jan 18 UTC

closed 05:32PM - 26 Aug 18 UTC

amiller

help wanted question design needed

We should have a Board of Directors election for the Zcash Foundation, and impro…ve/broaden our decision making process. We should time this so that the details are finalized over the next few months, and the election itself is commemorated at the Zcon0 event (which will tentatively be held in June some time). The following is a barebones, minimum viable, strawman proposal for how this election could work: **_1. We should make an assignment of “voting weight”_** to represent the voices of different groups / interests within the Zcash community. Just to be concrete about things, here's an initial proposal: - 0.20 Donors to the Zcash Foundation - 0.20 Miners (proportional by hashpower) - 0.20 Current Zcash holders (proportional to value) - 0.20 Board-chosen allocation of outside experts / “friends of the foundation” - 0.20 Board-chosen allocation of contributors / developers For each of these, there is at least some apparent path to take towards measuring and soliciting input them (though the devil is in the details). Our plan should be to conduct this process in the most pragmatic ways possible, making creative use of technology and/or foundation staff effort as necessary. (E.g., we could collect signed reports from mining pools about their hashpower and how its distributed.) We should also feature a common-sense approach to delegative democracy. You should definitely be able to delegate your vote to someone else. This shouldn't have to be complicated. **_2. Election of a larger board, with more representation of groups within the community._** I'd suggest we do the following, which seems like a graceful compromise of status quo and gradual growth: - One new board seat, to be elected by each of the five interests/groups identified above. This makes a total of 10 board seats. - The 5 bootstrap board members may choose to either gracefully depart, or run for “confirmation” from the voters as weighted above. **_3. Ratification of any bylaws / processes for the next year_** **_4. Finally, ratify and publicly deliberate as many “resolutions” as we have time/energy for_** I have an idea a list of “tough questions” for the community to discuss. Any thoughts on this plan?

but at the conclusion of that debate Zcash Foundation Board Chairman
Andrew Miller posted this governance election proposal:
https://github.com/amiller/ZcashFoundation/blob/election/election-proposal.md
As you might have guessed by now, feedback is very much welcome,
either here or on GitHub!

We’ve been actively pursuing hires for protocol development, web
contracting, and communications—either full time or contractors.
Pertinent GitHub Issues here:
https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation/issues/53
https://github.com/ZcashFoundation/ZcashFoundation/issues/54
If you
have any interest, please reach out to me directly (this address: josh
[at] z.cash.foundation).

Thanks all,

Josh Cincinnati
Executive Director, Zcash Foundation