The Zcash community has just pressed the launch button for the Q3 Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Grants Program, and the voting portal open to Shielded ZEC holders is now live: 37 retroactive grant proposals are lined up neatly, each of which must be voted on separately as "yes" or "no". Voting will close on September 29 at 20:00 UTC, with a legal threshold set at around 420,000 ZEC, and participants are required to update their tools to Zodl before they can truly enter this "shareholders' meeting." Alongside this round of coinholder voting, another larger figure is being presented: nearly 100 million dollars in the Zcash developer fund, which is the core funding source for current ecosystem development, yet was stated at its inception to expire in 2028. Now, Dragonfly Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi has publicly suggested that the fund should be terminated when it expires, as in his view, this amount of money is already sufficient to support future development and is gradually revealing the risk of being "politicized." The Q3 coinholder vote intertwines with the debate over whether to continue the developer fund after 2028, pushing the entire Zcash to a prominent crossroads: who should make decisions about the funds for continuing construction on this chain in the future, and what governance structure should be embedded in the flow of these funds.

37 Grants and Shielded ZEC Voting

If the debate over the developer fund's fate after 2028 remains at a macro level, then the Q3 Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Grants Program is the first experimental field for this discussion to land on-chain. According to the current design, this round of retroactive funding is entirely led by coinholders. The community has collected 37 funding proposals in advance, and each must individually accept a “yes/no” vote, rather than being bundled into one large package for a one-time approval. This also means that coinholders are faced not with a simple “should we spend the money,” but rather must affirm or deny 37 different past contributions one by one, directly using the vote outcomes to determine which teams and projects can draw from the funding pool, representing an exploration of governance for retroactive public goods funding.

More importantly, the voting qualifications and procedures themselves are designed as a threshold. This Q3 voting is only open to Shielded ZEC holders, with a legal voting threshold set at around 420,000 ZEC. If this threshold is not met, the voting results cannot be regarded as genuinely representing the will of the coinholders. The voting deadline is locked at September 29 at 20:00 UTC, and the time window is not wide, while participants must also update their software or tools to the version called Zodl before they can complete the voting operation. This combination of “open only to Shielded ZEC + high legal threshold + precondition of technical upgrades” makes the Q3 plan seem like a nationwide referendum on the direction of funding, as well as a pressure test on the willingness of Zcash coinholders to participate and the technical barriers involved.

Developer Fund: The Cash Cow Supporting Zcash

Regardless of how complex the voting led by Shielded ZEC holders in Q3 is designed, the true source of funding remains that long-running "cash cow" — the Zcash developer fund. At its inception, it was enshrined in the rules as the core funding mechanism supporting the development of the Zcash ecosystem, providing budgets for protocol maintenance, feature iteration, and ecological infrastructure, largely ensuring the continuity and predictability of core development work. According to current rules, this machine is set to expire in 2028, meaning every argument about how to allocate and authorize the funds is not a fragmented budget dispute, but rather a queuing for a large amount of time-fixed funds.

The tension surrounding this machine partly arises from its sheer scale. Briefings indicate that the Zcash developer fund's value is reportedly close to 100 million dollars, but did not specify the criteria and timeframe for this valuation; in the cryptocurrency industry context, such a substantial and clearly defined long-term funding pool up to 2028 can easily be viewed as a power lever. Dragonfly Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi has reportedly publicly suggested terminating the developer fund when it expires in 2028 under the current rules, one reason being that he believes the existing amount is already sufficient to support future development, while also warning of the risk of this fund becoming "politicized." The briefing did not disclose the specific time and platform on which he made this statement, nor does it prove a direct causal relationship between this statement and the current Q3 retroactive funding vote, but in a broader industry context, large long-term funds are often questioned for potentially leading to centralized governance, resource rent-seeking, and politicization of discourse, and Zcash's developer fund is becoming a focal point for all these imagined risks.

Terminate the Developer Fund? Haseeb's Warning

Almost at the same time the community was engaged in heated discussions about the Q3 coinholder retroactive funding vote, an external "heavy hammer" fell on this money. Dragonfly Managing Partner Haseeb Qureshi publicly suggested that when the Zcash developer fund expires in 2028 under current rules, it should come to an end and not be renewed. In his view, this fund, seen as the core funding source for the Zcash ecosystem, is reportedly worth nearly 100 million dollars, a size large enough to cover the main expenses of future development, and continuing to pile money into it has limited meaning and would only make the battles around “who should allocate and on what basis” more rigid. He used a highly generalized term to remind the community: this fund is currently, or will ultimately be, “politicized.”

Haseeb's intervention was not described in the briefing as some kind of "trigger" — existing materials did not disclose the specific time and platform for him to express his views, nor is there any evidence that this statement has a direct causal relationship with the current Q3 retroactive funding vote, but it clearly changed the focus of the discussion: raising the issue from the current round of 37 proposals and the legal threshold of 420,000 ZEC to the fundamental question of whether Zcash should continue relying on a large centralized fund to maintain development after 2028. A voice from an external well-known investor has thus intruded into a discussion originally dominated by development teams, foundations, and coinholders, bringing the option of “termination or renewal” — which had seemed distant — to the forefront of the governance table for Zcash funding.

Bottom-Up Voting Colliding with Top-Down Fund

Both answers regarding where to spend money offered by Q3 retroactive funding and the developer fund are entirely different. The former places decision-making power directly on-chain: Shielded ZEC holders express their support or opposition to the 37 proposals with their votes, and who gets the money is no longer predetermined by a few people, but rather decided by the coinholders willing to stand up and vote, retroactively settling past contributions. The developer fund operates on a different logic — providing long-term funding support to specific development-related entities based on pre-written rules. At least until 2028, this nearly 100 million dollar “reservoir” will continuously receive injections, and its advantage lies in predictability and planning, but it also means that the direction of funding heavily relies on existing mechanism designs.

The true sharpness of the conflict lies in: who can bridge the river of funds and set barriers, and who can constrain the risks of rent-seeking and politicization? Haseeb Qureshi's suggestion is very direct — under current rules, the developer fund should be terminated in 2028, as its scale is sufficient. Allowing such a large centralized fund to continue existing is itself a magnet for political games. In contrast, the coinholder-led retroactive funding attempts to decentralize power across countless on-chain voting addresses, diluting the control of funds by any single institution through repeated specific votes. The briefing did not establish a causal chain connecting this round of Q3 voting to Haseeb's appeals but merely presented them side by side: on one side, Shielded ZEC holders are using votes to redraw the flow of funds, while on the other side is a public call regarding whether to terminate the centralized developer fund after 2028. Together, they expose the same underlying tension — whether the future development funds of Zcash will continue to be entrusted to a large fund, or be increasingly returned to coinholders willing to bear the consequences of decision-making.

The Future of Zcash After the Crossroads of Funding Governance

The choice facing Zcash at this moment can be condensed into one sentence: before the developer fund expires under current rules in 2028, should this centralized funding pool reportedly worth nearly 100 million dollars be renewed, have its rules rewritten, or, following Haseeb Qureshi's suggestion, brought to a close, returning more decision-making power to coinholders? On the other end, there’s the bottom-up path represented by Coinholder-Directed Retroactive Grants — the Q3 vote, which includes 37 proposals, requires participation from approximately 420,000 ZEC, and will close on September 29 at 20:00 UTC, will provide a snapshot of the real preferences of Shielded ZEC holders. Over the next three years or more, the community will likely balance between these two tracks: some will advocate for adjusting the allocation rules of the developer fund to weaken its centralized power, while others will push to expand or normalize retroactive funding, transforming coinholder voting from a "project patch" into a part of long-term budgeting. There may also arise compromise solutions that retain the base of the fund while enlarging the voting power of coinholders. Regardless of which path is ultimately chosen, the practical experience from this Q3 retroactive funding vote and the debate surrounding the future of the developer fund will be inscribed in the community's collective memory, becoming a crucial reference point for whether Zcash will continue to rely on a single large fund or shift towards a diversified mechanism led by the preferences of coinholders.

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