Zcash ZAP: a draft ZIP renaming the ZCG grant stream for adoption

A draft Zcash Improvement Proposal would rename the Zcash Community Grants (ZCG) pool of funds the Zcash Adoption Pool and bind its grants to adoption, without changing the size of ZCG's 8% stream. The draft is owned by Daira-Emma Hopwood, with credits to Violet Rollergirl, Blake Benthall (emersonian), Mylo Bennett and Alison Stevenson, and daira posted it on 31 October 2026. On 5 November 2026 fabacab, whom the thread addresses as Violet Rollergirl, posted a revision that drops the first version's list of example recipients and adds a method for assessing grants. It is one of several proposals over ZCG's future, including one to end the Development Fund entirely.

What it changes

As of the revised text:

• The size of the stream does not change. The FS_FPF_ZCG_H3 funding stream, ZCG's 8% of the block subsidy, "SHALL continue at its existing value and for the duration specified in ZIP 214 Revision 3".
• The pool is renamed the Zcash Adoption Pool (ZAP), the grant programme ZAP Grants and the ZCG Committee the ZAP Committee. The requirements of ZIP 1015 and ZIP 1016 still apply.
• Adoption is defined as "an increase in the number of natural persons who hold ZEC directly or transact directly in ZEC on the Zcash network". Grant funds are to be further disbursed for that purpose, and assessment must obtain reasonable confidence, on the evidence in the application, that they will be.
• New: an assessment method. A grant's contribution is taken as proportional to the number of distinct parties in its disbursement chain, from grant recipient to end recipients. Assessment should weight that fan-out and the share of recipients for whom shielded ZEC is an operational requirement, and the metric is "distinct shielded receives, not transaction count".
• New: limits on evidence. Assessment should not require evidence that is not realistically obtainable or would compromise recipients' privacy, and information on recipients must be limited, aggregated or anonymised, and collected only with informed consent.
• Removed: the Examples section, which listed possible end-recipients including sex workers, abortion funds, refugees and trans people accessing hormones, and said "Some of these examples are intentionally provocative." Categorization of grant recipients is now a non-requirement, though the ZAP Committee may publish non-normative guidance, "including on recipient categories expected to contribute most to adoption".

The case for it

The revision recasts the case as security. It separates computational attacks, which the 80% miner reward is allocated against, from political attacks such as exchange delistings, deplatforming and hostile legislation, and calls the 8% stream the native allocation that can be directed against them. Its central claim: "Adoption converts the party with no economic dependency on Zcash into a stakeholder of it." It adds that "The breadth of allocations is actually a security property of Zcash, not a distributional preference."

fabacab writes that the proposal was modified "to reflect more widespread agreement and to focus more heavily on the important security benefits that adoption provides to the Zcash network". paulbrigner replied: "The updated ZIP is outstanding and has my full support." strahncryptography, who had objected to the first version, replied "Same", writing that it "does not actually change the goals of ZCG" and removes the recipient classes, "although controversially renaming it".

The objections

Many of the first week's objections were to the examples list, now removed. These, made against the first version, go to parts the revision keeps.

Publius, on 31 October, asked how many recipients would keep using Zcash after a first transfer, writing that "Renaming the program and reaffirming its funding stream does not resolve those questions." The rest of that objection, to funding contested social causes, was aimed at the examples.

ACoffee would rather have voluntary giving, which "works better as an opt-in fund that holders choose to donate to, not a mandate funded by everyone's dilution." The stream is unchanged.

nikkolasg, on 3 November, asked the revision to require a reporting method: "how many people were asked, what they were asked, how many are still transacting a month later, and a ranked list of what stopped the rest". The revision names a metric and limits what evidence may be required, but adds no retention follow-up.

strahncryptography objected on 3 November that "This ZIP is the first time I have seen someone use a procedural/text loophole (in ZIP 1015) to justify something". Since the revision, strahncryptography has asked daira whether recipients would be verified as unique people and whether amounts given non-competitively would stay around $10.

On interests: asked "So… still no conflict of interest?", daira replied on 5 November, "Correct, still no conflict of interest", adding "I wrote most of the text". daira had written on 31 October that "Violet is a grant recipient"; fabacab describes onboarding sex workers as "the centerpiece of the ZECsy grant". fabacab also wrote on 3 November that they proposed the example wording, which the revision drops.

Where it stands

The ZIP is a draft with no assigned number. Pull request 1431 is open and still carries the first version, committed on 31 October; the revision sits in Violet Rollergirl's fork. nuttycom and ebfull approved it on 2 November as meeting the requirements for merging as a draft. On 3 November ebfull requested changes, writing that the ZIP editors had agreed governance-only ZIPs "should be directed into some new body rather than through the ZIP process" but had not decided how to apply that. daira replied that blocking them in the meantime is unreasonable, and that any block must also cover pull requests 1423 and 1428.

The thread passed 290 posts by 6 November 2026, with no vote. In another thread on 2 November 2026, strahncryptography asked for the competing drafts to go to coinholders together: "This should also be a ZIP presented alongside the Maxime Desalle, the Sean Bowe, the ZAP proposals, to coinholders for the vote in December." No vote has been scheduled.