Zcash Draft Proposes New Adoption Pool With Existing Grant Funding

Daira-Emma Hopwood’s Zcash Adoption Pool draft proposes keeping the grant funding stream in place while renaming its pool, program and committee around direct ZEC adoption. The proposal sets out a different approach to grants as Zcash approaches its NU7 network upgrade.

Created Oct. 30 and posted to the community forum Oct. 31, the proposal is marked “Draft” and has no ZIP number. It would rename the Zcash Community Grants (ZCG) funding pool as the Zcash Adoption Pool (ZAP), its grant program as ZAP Grants, and its committee as the ZAP Committee. Existing ZCG assets would carry over to ZAP.

It would preserve ZCG’s current funding level and duration, with grants focused on expanding direct ZEC ownership and transactions. Its authors framed the proposal around broader calls to abolish or restrict ZCG.

Under ZIP 1016, ZCG receives 8% of block rewards. A separate Coinholder-Controlled Fund receives 12%. The Adoption Pool draft concerns ZCG’s funding stream; it does not propose renaming the separate coinholder fund.

ZCG’s preliminary funding outline, posted Oct. 29, explores transferring about 36,200 ZEC from its roughly 91,500-ZEC holdings to the Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM), leaving about 55,200 ZEC. The outline estimates that the transfer combined with reduced future grant allocations would direct about 98,000 ZEC toward future block rewards. ZCG described the post as an initial outline and said a full proposal would follow.

The two documents outline different approaches to ZCG funding: the Adoption Pool draft would retain the stream and carry over existing assets, while ZCG’s outline explores a treasury transfer and lower future allocations. The NSM is a reserve for future miner rewards and is part of NU7, which is targeted for mainnet activation Nov. 5. Activation depends on the network reaching block 3,543,405; the upgrade also includes 25-second block spacing and disables version 4 transactions.