Zcash Co-Founder Sean Bowe Proposes Ending ZCG Grants Funding

Zcash co-founder Sean Bowe proposed ending the automatic Zcash grants funding stream on Monday, publishing a draft network-rule change that would cut off the 8% share of newly created ZEC flowing to the Zcash Community Grants (ZCG) program. Bowe estimates the grants treasury already holds about $125 million, enough to run for years without fresh inflows.

The draft arrives during a wider debate over how long Zcash should keep funding its own development. ZCG draws from a developer fund that directs 20% of block rewards across grant channels, a structure set to run until the network’s third halving in 2028. Bowe’s plan targets one portion of that fund, leaving the miner share and a separate coinholder-controlled fund in place.

“It’s time to turn off the ZCG funding stream,” Bowe wrote on X, adding that the program holds more than $125 million and will collect millions more before any change takes effect.

Under the proposal, the 8% allocation would move to the Network Sustainability Mechanism, a reserve built to support mining rewards as block subsidies shrink over time. The redirected coins would remain in that reserve for the rest of the grants stream’s existing term. The committee would keep every asset it has already received and continue awarding grants from that balance.

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The ZCG dashboard showed roughly 91,453 ZEC and $8.8 million, with $2.4 million committed to grantees. Bowe values the remaining balance at about $125.3 million using an illustrative price of $1,300 per ZEC. Even at $500 per coin, he estimates the treasury would cover about five years of spending at an assumed $10 million a year.

The Financial Privacy Foundation, which administers the grants, reported just over $1.5 million in program expenses for the first quarter, or roughly $6 million annualized. At the network’s target pace, the committee receives about 144 ZEC a day, far above its current spending.

A five-member committee, elected by a community advisory panel, selects grants without a separate coinholder vote. A second program receives 12% of newly created ZEC and puts its grants to quarterly holder votes. Bowe wants to preserve that larger allocation.

The draft follows criticism of a grants-funded outreach effort that demonstrated private payments at an adult-industry convention over the weekend. The team behind it, ZECsy, had sought $550,000 for work spanning adult-industry events, crypto conferences, and workshops, and the committee approved startup funding and nine initial milestones worth about $461,500 in a split August vote. Bowe’s draft does not cite that grant, resting instead on the program’s reserves and continuing inflows.

Bowe’s draft sets no activation date and would require a change to Zcash’s network rules, meaning it must move through the community’s improvement-proposal process before any upgrade. The idea echoes a September call from Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi, who argued the development fund had grown large enough to risk politicizing grant decisions and should not outlast its current term.

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