Zcash Community Grants (ZCG) has pulled its own plan to give up roughly 98,000 ZEC. The committee said in a forum post on November 3 that "the conversation has moved quickly" and it has "decided not to take this proposal forward."

That leaves the bigger question open: what happens to the slice of every new block that funds Zcash development. ZCG now says that call belongs to the community, through Zcash's usual governance process.

Why a Grants Body Offered to Take Less

The unusual part is who wrote the plan. ZCG receives about 144 ZEC a day, or 8% of newly issued ZEC. Its five committee members decide on individual grants without a token-holder vote on each award.

In the original proposal, the committee admitted the problem itself: "ZCG gets more ZEC than it needs. Its 8% of every block now brings in far more than it can spend well."

So its answer was to shrink its own income. ZCG later described the taper as something it shared "as a first look, to hear what you thought."

How the 98,000 ZEC Taper Would Have Worked

The plan had two parts, and together they added up to about 98,000 ZEC moving from ZCG to future block rewards:

  • Shrinking grants. ZCG and Coinholder Grants would each have shrunk by about 3% a month, ending at the 2032 halving. Under current rules, ZCG receives about 109,000 ZEC by the 2028 halving. With the taper, it would have received about 47,000, less than half.
  • Handing back part of the treasury. ZCG would have moved about 36,200 ZEC of the roughly 91,500 ZEC it holds into the Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM), keeping about 55,200. The committee described the 36,200 as the ZEC it received above the taper schedule.

The NSM is the piece doing the quiet work here. It's a reserve that pays miners slowly over decades, so coins sent there don't vanish. They come back out as mining rewards spread across many years. The mechanism comes from ZIP 237, which coinholders backed with 96.6% in September. ZCG built its plan on a tool the community had already approved, rather than inventing a new one.

Critics Wanted More Than a Taper

The pushback came from people who thought the plan didn't go far enough. In the forum thread, user Maxime Desalle argued the plan would extend ZCG's mandate to 2032 and called for the committee to be abolished. He pointed to what he described as a $455,000 grant for ZSAs, Zcash Shielded Assets, made after coinholders voted 98.6% against them. That's his account, and the brief behind this article doesn't independently confirm the grant.

Other proposals for the Dev Fund's future are circulating, including one tied to Zcash founder Zooko. Their exact terms haven't been confirmed against the original forum threads, so they're best treated as unsettled for now.

What Withdrawal Changes for ZEC Holders

For now, nothing in the payout changes. ZCG keeps receiving its 8% share, and its treasury stays where it is.

What has changed is who's steering. The group that receives the money has stepped back from proposing how much it should get. The next move is a community proposal that coinholders can weigh in on, the same route that carried ZIP 237 and its miner reserve in September. Whether the treasury ends up back in mining rewards, in a new fund or untouched now depends on which plan wins that process.