Zcash Future Dev and Legal Defense Fund ZIP: a new lockbox and a 50,000 ZEC donation

The Future Dev and Legal Defense Fund ZIP is a draft Zcash Improvement Proposal by Sean Bowe of Tachyon Group, Zooko Wilcox of Shielded Labs and Jason McGee of Shielded Labs. @zooko opened the supporting forum thread on 30 October 2026, linking the draft text. The draft would end the Zcash Community Grants funding stream, send the same share of the block subsidy into a new lockbox, and oblige the ZCG Committee to donate 50,000 ZEC to the Network Sustainability Mechanism. It matters because the treasury ZCG administers has grown with the value of ZEC, and it is one of several answers to a dispute over how much of it the committee should hold.

What it changes

• ZCG's 8% funding stream, FS_FPF_ZCG_H3, ends at the ZIP's activation height A, which must be greater than the NU7 activation height N.
• A new funding stream, FS_FDLDF_H3, pays 8/100 of the block subsidy to a new recipient, FDLDF_POOL, for the Future Dev and Legal Defense Fund Lockbox, from A to E, the stream's original end height, which the draft computes as 6,132,390 on Mainnet.
• A stream paid to FDLDF_POOL produces no coinbase output. Its value goes into a lockbox balance, FDLDFBalance(h), which the draft adds to Issued Supply. No consensus rule moves value out of it; a future ZIP decides how it is spent.
• The NSM donation address is the Mainnet P2SH address t3QZUHYkaEQEuWosAc9HgMPKiQRdvuBPCQZ, which no one can spend from. From A, a transaction must not spend an output with that script, and its value leaves circulation for the NSM Value Balance.
• The ZCG Committee shall cause 50,000 ZEC of the funds it administers to be sent to that address within 30 days of acceptance, and shall publish each transaction identifier once mined. The Committee would do this by directing the Financial Privacy Foundation, which holds the funds.
• ZIP 1015 is amended to allow ZCG funds to be used for the donation and to record that it is not a grant. ZIP 1016 is amended to end ZCG's stream at A, while the 12% coinholder stream keeps the duration FS_CCF_H3 sets.
• Citing ZCG's dashboard, the draft puts ZCG's holdings at 91,452.98 ZEC and $8,796,224, against $2,417,165 of grant liabilities. At an assumed $1,300 per ZEC, ZCG would keep 41,452.98 ZEC, and its years of spending at 2026 levels would fall from 13.3 to 6.4.

The case for it

The draft gives the donation's size as a share of what ZCG already holds: "50,000 ZEC is about 55% of ZCG's ZEC. Anyone can check its payment on the chain, and ZCG keeps the rest of its treasury and its grants program." @zooko summarised it in the thread: "Tachyon Group (led by Sean Bowe) and Shielded Labs just posted a proposal to reduce the treasury, end the flow of funding, preserve operational capacity, donate $50M to Network Sustainability, and create a Future Dev and Legal Defense Fund." The draft argues the lockbox needs no custodians or keys. Shielded Labs, a co-author, states in the thread that it takes no money from the ZCG program.

The objections

@nikkolasg objected that the draft states the figure without deriving it: "Nothing in the ZIP says why 55% is right rather than 30% or 80%." Its alternative is to end both streams, ZCG's and the coinholder fund's 12%, with each fund keeping what it holds, and @Milton would not support pausing ZCG's stream without also pausing the coinholders'. @thowar2 said the proposal was tolerable but warned that "this proposal lacks a USD cap on the total fund, and I can foresee this issue re-surfacing if ZEC appreciates rapidly again." @divijpandya could not yet support it, because the lockbox has no process for allocating what collects in it while developers lose a source of funds. @emersonian asked for three months for the community to decide. @str4d raised a legal question: "Something I haven't seen anyone consider: can ZCG legally direct its funds to the NSM?" He argued that ZIP 1015, which governs the ZCG funds, requires the Foundation to disburse them for grants and for administering the grants program, so an amendment could only cover ZEC received later. @FPF answered that the Foundation has worked with its Cayman counsel on a potential donation to the NSM, "as long as there is an affirmative community vote in favor of the proposal and an accepted ZIP the donation can be legally completed." Two participants declared interests: @nikkolasg works at zodl, and @pacu worked at ECC, took ZCG grants and now works at ZODL.

Where it stands

The ZIP is an unnumbered Draft, created on 29 October 2026. The thread had 59 posts by 2 November 2026, and no vote has been taken. The draft proposes the lockbox and the donation address for a network upgrade after NU7 that activates before height E; the donation needs no upgrade and is due 30 days after acceptance. @str4d described the route he thought closest to hand: "a combination of ZCAP, Coinholder, Zcash Engineering Caucus, and ZecHub DAO polling, followed by implementation in full nodes and deployment to the network by node operators."

Other plans are on the forum. ZCG's own plan, posted by @ZCG on 29 October 2026 as a first look, would taper ZCG and coinholder grants to the 2032 halving and move about 36,200 of the roughly 91,500 ZEC ZCG holds to the NSM. On 2 November 2026 @GGuy, who stood for re-election to ZCG in June and posted as an individual, backed this ZIP: "I won't be progressing the Dev Fund taper proposal." @joshs proposes ending the whole Development Fund, coinholder share included, ahead of its scheduled end in November 2028. @thowar2 offered to withdraw their own ZIP to wind down ZCG and support this one, if ZCG commits not to pursue its own plan and supports this one. The draft names ZIP drafts #1414 and #1423 as alternatives where they overlap it.