Zcash Community Divided Over $125M Grants Treasury

Overview

• Developers and founders posted competing reform drafts on Oct. 29–30 that would stop Zcash Community Grants’ 8% automatic block‑reward stream and either park future receipts in a protocol lockbox or redirect funds into the Network Sustainability Mechanism.
• Gemini founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss publicly urged on Oct. 30 that ZCG be shut down and that ZEC holders gain direct control over development funding, saying the committee lacks sufficient accountability.
• A joint draft from Tachyon Group, Zooko Wilcox and Jason McGee would send the 8% future stream to a new Future Dev & Legal Defense Fund lockbox with no spending key and require ZCG to transfer 50,000 ZEC to an unspendable address credited to the NSM balance.
• Proposal authors estimate ZCG holds about 91,453 ZEC, valuing the treasury near $125 million using a $1,300/ZEC assumption, but they warn the dashboard figures are unreconciled and market moves or halving events would change runway estimates.
• No proposal has been approved; any change requires community acceptance, one or more ZIPs and a network upgrade after NU7, and the choices pose a trade‑off between tighter governance and the steady funding developers say is needed for security and privacy work.