On 8 November 2026, Zooko Wilcox answered a Zcash Community Forum thread about the ZCG lockbox. The draft ZIP he wrote with Sean Bowe and Jason McGee would stop ZCG’s 8% of the block subsidy from landing in a treasury the committee can spend, hold that stream in a new lockbox until some later ZIP decides who may open it, and move 50,000 ZEC from the existing ZCG treasury to the Network Sustainability Mechanism. We did not ship that ZIP. We shipped a memecoin — the zcg memecoin — so the ask has a coin of its own. It does not lock ZEC, and it is not a Zcash product.
He asked for a sealed ZCG stream. The coin is the unofficial answer, not the mechanism.
- The askTreat the 8% the way he says the coinholder 12% is already treated: a spendable treasury that stops growing, and a lockbox that receives the new issuance.What he wrote
- The mechanismHis tables, at an assumed $1,300 per ZEC: ZCG’s spendable balance falls, a new lockbox fills through 2028, and 50,000 ZEC moves to the NSM. The 12% is left as it is.His figures
- The cointhe zcg memecoin is an independent token named for that argument. Holding it does not vote on the ZIP, fund ZCG, or move the 8%.What we shipped
What Zooko asked for
The opening post, by T. S. Felstead (vaspholdings), said the proposal turns off ZCG’s tap and leaves the coinholders’ bigger tap running. Zooko’s reply — post 4, signed as Shielded Labs — says that description is wrong, and states the structure he wants instead.
From the reply
“The bigger tap is already off! Or rather, the bigger tap is already going into a lockbox, just like our ZIP Future Dev and Legal Defense Fund Lockbox proposes to do to the ZCG 8% funding stream.” The proposal, he wrote, is not shutting off the 8% while leaving the 12% running. It “establishes a current treasury and a safe long-term lockbox, the same way that the 12% is currently structured.”
Under ZIP 1016, 8% of the block subsidy goes to Zcash Community Grants and 12% to the Coinholder-Controlled Fund. Both streams are scheduled to end at the third halving in November 2028. Zooko, Bowe, and McGee’s draft — zcash/zips pull request 1428, the Future Dev and Legal Defense Fund Lockbox — would redirect ZCG’s incoming 8% into a new lockbox that cannot be spent until a future ZIP, and would require the ZCG committee to transfer 50,000 ZEC from its treasury to the NSM. He described the oversized treasuries as success problems, pointed at ZCG’s own note that its live treasury is larger than it is comfortable with, and called the ZIP a compromise and a next step in Zcash governance.
That is the ask. A lockbox for the ZCG stream, a smaller spendable ZCG treasury, a 50,000 ZEC transfer to the NSM, and the coinholder 12% left on the structure it already has. He did not ask anyone to mint a token. The memecoin is our project, built because he said this in public.
How his ZIP would move the money
These are his figures, published in that reply, in millions of US dollars at an assumed $1,300 per ZEC. They assume the ZIP activates on 15 December 2026. Julian and Felstead both noted that the flat treasury rows assume no further payouts: the table shows where he thinks the money sits, not how long it would fund grants.
| Fund | Today, 8 Nov 2026 | Nov 2028, no change | Nov 2028, his ZIP |
|---|---|---|---|
| ZCG treasury, spendable by ZCG | 127 | 267, still receiving the 8% | 69, issuance stopped |
| Future Dev & Legal Defense Fund lockbox | — | — | 133, receiving the 8%, unspendable until a future ZIP |
| CCF treasury, coin vote plus ECC, ZF, and Shielded Labs | 91 | 91 | 91 |
| CCF lockbox, unspendable until a future ZIP | 98 | 308 | 308 |
| NSM, for future issuance | 0.5 | 0.5 | 65 |
On his activation day, 15 December 2026, the new ZCG lockbox is still empty. The $133 million is issuance between then and November 2028. The NSM is already at $65 million on activation day, which is 50,000 ZEC at his price. The ZCG treasury step on the same table is $127 million to $69 million, which is not the same subtraction. We are reproducing the table he posted, not auditing it. The draft is the specification. A droplet in his key means a fund still receives issuance; a lock means it cannot be spent yet.
Read that way, the mechanism is simple. New ZCG coins stop arriving in a committee treasury and start arriving in a box nobody can open. The coins already in the ZCG treasury stay spendable, minus the required transfer to the NSM. The coinholder side does not change: a spendable Coinholder-Controlled Fund treasury, plus a lockbox that keeps filling because, on his account, the 12% is already pointed at that box rather than at a grants programme.
Felstead’s later plumbing note matches the pipes and disputes the conclusion. He describes the 12% as already running into a sealed lockbox, opened once so far by ZIP 271, and only then into the coinholder bucket for retroactive grants. Putting a bucket under a tap, he wrote, does not mean the water has stopped. The 2024 split — prospective grants on the ZCG side, coinholder-directed grants on the other — was a choice the advisory polls settled, not an accident his ZIP is merely tidying up.
The criticism of the lockbox
This is Felstead’s objection, the one Zooko was answering. It is not Zooko’s view. The thread title is his summary: one tap off, the bigger one left running.
Only one stream is sealed
If a higher ZEC price makes ZCG’s 8% too much, it makes the 12% too much as well. At the draft’s $1,300 illustration the 8% is about $68 million a year. Felstead’s matching sum for the 12% is about $102 million a year: 216 ZEC a day. A proposal that changes only the stream coinholders do not control is choosing which stream survives.
A lockbox is not a grants programme
The new box has no spending rules, no owner, and no way to pay for the legal defence it is named for when the bill arrives. You can postpone deciding who spends the money. You cannot postpone the consequences of moving it. He would rather both ZIP 1016 streams expire on schedule in November 2028, with no new mechanism and no new lockbox.
The donation is mandatory
The draft says the ZCG committee shall transfer 50,000 ZEC to the NSM. A transfer required by rule is not a donation. At Zooko’s price that is $65 million; at $500 per ZEC it would be $25 million. The number of coins is fixed. The value is not.
Who the compromise was with
Felstead’s questions to Zooko, ebfull, and aquietinvestor are still questions: why reverse the 2024 split for ZCG only, why this coin amount, who speaks for the new box, and what was traded to leave the 12% untouched. This site does not invent answers for them. The five questions are on the next page.
What we shipped
the zcg memecoin is a memecoin. It is not an implementation of pull request 1428, not a lockbox, not a change to Zcash issuance, and not a claim on ZCG’s treasury or the NSM. Zooko asked the Zcash community to seal the committee’s incoming 8% until a later ZIP names a spender. We answered that public comment by minting a coin about it, outside the protocol, with no authority over the stream he was discussing.
There is no relay, no threshold ceremony, and no node set behind this token. Those would be a story about a product we did not build. The coin does not custody ZEC, does not represent a share of the 8%, and does not pass or block a ZIP. If the draft is approved, Zcash changes and this coin does not become the lockbox. If the draft fails and ZIP 1016 simply runs on, that is the outcome Felstead said the current rules already describe, and this coin still will not be ZEC.
The name is deliberate and limited. ZCG is the committee whose tap the proposal would close. Using the initials does not mean the committee issued the coin, reviewed it, or receives anything from it. The public record of the argument is the forum thread, and the public face of the coin is x.com/zcgcoin.
Sources
Zooko, post 4, 8 November 2026 →“The ZCG Lockbox: One Tap Off, the Bigger One Left Running” · Zcash Community Forum
Draft ZIP, pull request 1428 →Sean Bowe, Zooko Wilcox, and Jason McGee · Future Dev and Legal Defense Fund Lockbox, and a 50,000 ZEC transfer to the NSM
The opening post and Felstead’s follow-ups on 9 November 2026 are in the same thread. His preferred rule is the one already written: both streams end in November 2028 under ZIP 1016. Zooko’s preferred rule is the new lockbox.
the zcg memecoin is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or reviewed by Zooko Wilcox, the Zcash Foundation, Electric Coin Company, or ZCG. Nothing here is financial advice. The dollar figures above are his, at a price he assumed, and they are not a quote of the ZEC market.