Complete clarity and transparency are something that the Zcash Foundation strives to drive across the board. From our monthly newsletters and our quarterly reports, to our community-facing policies and significant decisions, the Foundation strives to hold itself accountable to the Zcash community and we aim to do so without ambiguity. Where there might be issues or concerns plaguing the Zcash community, whether major or minor, the Foundation aims to ensure that these concerns, whether individual or concerning organizational policies, processes or decisions, are addressed promptly and candidly.
Humility for us at the Foundation means acknowledging our own strengths and skills, while learning from others and seeking out new knowledge. Having such a culture makes it easier to rely on each other for new ideas, feedback, or help whenever needed. We believe that mutual kindness, integrity, and respect are necessary for productive collaboration. We debate ideas productively (assuming good faith), we are open to appropriate feedback, and we maintain intellectual honesty without hostility.
Complete clarity and transparency are something that the Zcash Foundation strives to drive across the board. From our monthly newsletters and our quarterly reports, to our community-facing policies and significant decisions, the Foundation strives to hold itself accountable to the Zcash community and we aim to do so without ambiguity. Where there might be issues or concerns plaguing the Zcash community, whether major or minor, the Foundation aims to ensure that these concerns, whether individual or concerning organizational policies, processes or decisions, are addressed promptly and candidly.
The Zcash ecosystem consists of end-users, engineers, miners, researchers and more. We believe that they should all be given a voice within the Zcash community and the Foundation’s deliberations. Diversity at the Foundation doesn’t stop at the community level. We’ve created a dynamic state of operating in which diversity is leveraged internally to create a fair, healthy, and high-performing organization. We believe that an inclusive environment ensures equitable access to opportunities for all, and it enables individuals to feel safe, respected, engaged, motivated, and valued, for who they are and for their contributions towards the Foundation’s goals.
The essence of privacy is being able to choose what is or isn’t shared with others. To help protect that freedom of choice, the Foundation will not seek or hold privileged information beyond what is observable by anyone from public blockchains or equivalent outside disclosures. We will never knowingly facilitate or assist in surveillance, through a cryptographic “backdoor” or any other method.
The Zcash Foundation aims to encourage decentralization of the protocols and networks that we support, avoiding the placement of trust or granting of capabilities to any single party (assigned or emergent). The Foundation will not seek to place itself in a position of control over the Zcash community. Whenever current technology does not achieve perfect decentralization, we will seek to minimize, monitor, and mitigate centralization.
The Foundation shall support research and development to improve Zcash and other financial privacy infrastructure. It will strive to incorporate such progress into the Zcash protocol and software, while mindful of stability and security.
No “coin” is an island unto itself, and the success and adoption of cryptocurrencies are intertwined. The Zcash Foundation strives to collaborate with other privacy and cryptocurrency communities in areas of mutual interest.
With over ten years of experience in finance, and four years at the Electric Coin Company, Jack’s deep knowledge of Zcash, and his alignment with the Foundation’s values makes him the ideal person to guide the Zcash Foundation into its preschool years. The Foundation has spent its first three years establishing itself as a key member of the Zcash ecosystem, and now Jack will lead the organization as it continues its mission building and supporting the deployment of decentralized, censorship-resistant, financial privacy infrastructure.
Alex has enjoyed a colorful 25 year career in the governmental and non-profit sectors, beginning with a domestic operations and supply chain focus and then progressing to international non-profit leadership. Alex has managed operations for a large fire district in Oregon, created a supply chain division for an international humanitarian aid organization active in over sixty countries, led operations for an innovative food bank with a state-wide footprint, and grown a youth focused non-profit into an impactful and well-regarded international organization.
Danika earned a MA from SIT Graduate Institute and worked in the field of International Education and non-profits for the past decade. She most recently ran the operations for an English Pathway Program at the University of Vermont. Prior to that role, she volunteered at several non-profits around the globe, was the event coordinator for the Foundation for International Understanding Through Students (FIUTS), a non-profit in Seattle, and taught English in Japan.
Chelsea has worked as a software engineer on cryptography protocols and large-scale distributed systems, including at ThoughtWorks and HashiCorp. She is currently a graduate student at the University of Waterloo, where she focuses on privacy-enhancing technologies and cryptography research, and a Principal Researcher at Dfns.
Teor has worked as a software engineer and researcher on privacy-preserving protocols and large-scale anonymity networks, at The Tor Project and the University of New South Wales. Previously, they were a data analyst for grants management and fiat currency payment systems.
Alfredo is a self-taught developer who has worked in the blockchain industry for the last 5 years, as an active defender and contributor to the open source community. He started working for the Zcash protocol one year ago as a grant recipient from the Zcash Foundation. As an outside contributor Alfredo first worked on zcashd development and eventually focused on Zebra.
Pili has 15 years of experience working in the tech industry as a software developer, solutions engineer, consultant and project manager. She has previously worked at the Tor Project as a Project Manager for the Tor Browser, Community and UX Teams. Before that she was at Red Hat, a leader in the open source world, working as a solution engineer.
Conrado is a cryptography engineer who carried out research into the efficient software implementation of cryptographic algorithms such as elliptic curves, pairings, and authenticated encryption during his Masters and PhD studies at the University of Campinas. Since then, he has been working for eight years in industry, developing software for cryptographic devices such as tokens and hardware security modules (HSMs)
Marek is an advocate of information privacy, FOSS and open-source hardware. In June, he graduated with a Masters in Computer Science from the Czech Technical University, where he also was a mentor in cryptography classes. His research includes work on algebraic cryptanalysis. During his interview, he found a bug in Zebra’s implementation of the Zcash spec that we were able to fix.
Gustavo has over ten years in information technology with experience in various fields, including information security, internal audit, business continuity, cloud architecture, DevOps, and product management. He has developed business continuity and disaster recovery plans development for financial institutions, built a DevOps culture at several startups, developed automated CI/CD workflows on complex teams, and supported critical infrastructures for SaaS solutions requiring high availability.
Dan’s work experience has been in the broadcasting industry – where he has spent the last decade working in Network television doing audio visual production. In addition, he has four years governance experience as an elected official to the Board of Trustees for his local 501c3 union. Dan will work towards fostering stronger community relations by engaging with the Zcash community on the different ZF platforms.
Deidra has over twelve years of operations and events management experience in the education and for-profit sectors. Deidra supports the Foundation’s day-to-day operations activities, as well as the expansion of Zcon events worldwide.
Arya has over three years of development experience with a variety of projects to his credit, including a CTO role for a restaurant contactless-ordering startup and solutions for different-sized companies in PropTech, FinTech, TeleHealth, and other domains. Arya is passionate about performance engineering, and excited for the future of cryptocurrency.
Natalie has previously worked on the OTRv4 cryptographic messaging protocol at ThoughtWorks, and has built decentralized democracy enhancing open source tools for the European Commission. Natalie’s primary focus is on FROST, as we work towards making it possible to use threshold signatures with shielded Zcash.
CEO of Clovyr, former J.P. Morgan blockchain program lead, and co-creator of a zero-knowledge settlement layer for enterprise Ethereum.
Associate Professor at the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University, where he teaches banking, securities, and corporation law.
President and Chair of the Filecoin Foundation and the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web, General Counsel and Head of Policy at Protocol Labs, and special counsel to the EFF.
Assistant professor in the electrical and computer engineering department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an associate director of the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts.
Executive Director of the Zcash Foundation.
Director of Research at Coin Center, a nonprofit organization focused on research, education, and advocacy on the intersection of policy and cryptocurrencies.
President and Chair of the Filecoin Foundation and the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web, General Counsel and Head of Policy at Protocol Labs, and special counsel to the EFF.
Director of Research at Coin Center, a nonprofit organization focused on research, education, and advocacy on the intersection of policy and cryptocurrencies.
Need to reach us? Send us an enquiry and a member of our team will get back to you shortly.