Zcash Zealots Rejoice, ZEC Foundation’s New Mascot Revealed: Zeal

During the entire month of June, the Zcash Foundation conducted an “experimental governance process”, which was first announced back in April. The results to this process were released at Zcon0 on June 28.

It appears that some community members among the foundation will be selected based on their voices made throughout the community. Both the Chairman and Executive Director, Andrew Millers and Josh Cincinnati shared the following:

“Our approach – which we anticipate will evolve over time – will be to appoint a “Community Governance Panel”, consisting of a broad collection of people who have contributed in some way to the Zcash community via some public and visible presence.”

The duo also shared the challenges they believe need addressing including:

• Can we make it broad representative
• Not stacked with insiders to the Zcash Foundation directors, or to the Zcash Company
• The selection outcome is transparent

According to the results, the two individuals that were selected include Ian Miera and Amber Baldet.

In terms of the ballot proposals placed, voters had the option of either “rejecting” or “accepting” statements made in relation to possible changes moving forward. Some of the proposals were based on Zcash community and ASIC resistance, a potential proof-of-work algorithm and opening discussion on monetary policies.

Another fun ballot proposal was conducted to see whether members can come up with a suitable, “official Zcash mascot”. Users were given the option to pick two from a list that consisted of, Zeal, a collection of zebras, waterbear, squirrel, axolotl, and a talking horse. By majority rules, the community supposedly settled for Zeal.

Based on a post made by the Zcash Foundation, they are excited with the Zeal solely for its symbolism. In particular, the Foundation believes that it is hard to identify a single zebra among several, which to them reflects difficulty in identifying “shielded addresses and transactions in the full Zcash anonymity set.”

The Foundation also conveyed support in the Community Governance Panel’s choice of mascot and plan to incorporate “zeal imageries into visual identity going forward.”