Our Mission is to give every person in the world economic freedom — to do for cooperation what the Internet did for communication.
The organization we created to launch this project is a startup. This provides a tight-knit, focused team, rapid decision-making, and the possibility of generating additional funding, such as by building blockchain solutions for industry.
However in the long run it would not be appropriate for a single for-profit company to have this much power over the evolution of the Zcash technology. Ultimately, there will need to be an independent, inclusive, non-profit body to steward the technology in the interests of all users.
Today we are announcing the formation of The Zcash Foundation, which I hope will fill this role.
I hope that The Foundation will also serve as a forum for the Zcash community to work its way through governance issues such as the ones that are currently rending the Bitcoin community.
The Zcash Foundation is funded by the blockchain itself. A portion of the Zcash Founders’ Reward ¹, ² have been donated to the Foundation. These coins will be distributed incrementally over the next 3 and ⅔ years, until November 2021. The total amount donated is 273,000 ⓩ coins. At today’s price ($49/ZEC) that would be worth more than $13 million!
This has been made possible by donations from some of the founders of the Zcash project. I personally have donated half of all of the coins I was due to get from the Founders’ Reward, and many of my colleagues have donated as generously or even more so!
The initial Board of Directors of the Foundation is four of the people that I most trust and respect in the field. I personally am not a director of the Foundation, and none of the Directors are employees of the Zcash Company. Nor do I or the Zcash Company have the ability to defund the Foundation. So, it is already, at its birth, independent of me and of the Company.
Please read the Foundation’s Hello World blog post to see their initial plans and how you can get involved and help make Zcash live up to its potential!