The election of a new Major Grants Review Committee means that the sun sets on the inaugural Committee’s tenure.
Chris Burniske, Holmes Wilson, Hudson Jameson, Sarah Jamie Lewis, and Shawn (aka MineZcash) were elected by the Zcash Community Advisory Panel in September 2020, and they decided to adopt the name Zcash Open Major Grants (ZOMG). The Major Grants slice of the Dev Fund began accruing ZEC when NU4 activated two months later, and the first grant applications were submitted in early 2021.
Following Sarah Jamie Lewis’s decision to step down from the Committee, MLstepped in to fill the empty seat, and the committee approved their first grants in January 2021.
As the first to perform this role, ZOMG was presented with the challenge of figuring out how a major grants review committee should operate. Their job was made more difficult by the fact that the Zcash Foundation went through a leadership transition in early 2021 which resulted in the Foundation not offering as much support to ZOMG as it should have – something we now realize, with the benefit of hindsight.
Despite the challenges they faced, ZOMG lived up to the trust and expectation placed in them by the Zcash community by doing an excellent job. Meeting every two weeks, they assessed 72 grant applications, and accepted 28 of them, ranging from a $4,800 grant for building a cold wallet utility, to a $673,200 grant to the Tor Project to build a Rust implementation of the Tor client protocols, which will make it easier to integrate Tor with Zcash.
ZOMG’s efforts bore fruit and will continue to bear fruit over the coming years, as the grants they approved continue to deliver benefit to Zcash, its ecosystem and the Zcash community. Just as importantly, having broken new ground as the first Major Grants Review Committee, ZOMG have blazed a trail for their successors, setting them up for even greater success in the future.
Therefore, on behalf of myself, the Zcash Foundation board and staff, and the Zcash community, I want to offer sincere thanks and appreciation to Chris, Holmes, Hudson, Michelle, Sarah, and Shawn for their efforts. I’d also like to express my appreciation to Hudson, Michelle and Shawn for agreeing to extend their tenure for longer than they had expected, to bridge the gap until the new Committee was elected.
Thank you for your service to Zcash and its community.