What the Zcash grants committee approved this year, from the forum records: > $18,510 for a booth at Exxxotica, a trade show for the porn business plus a crypto conference. Team's own report: 20 wallet downloads at the conference, none counted at the expo, the venue had no Wi-Fi. > $550,000 to the same team five months later, nine more months of booths and workshops. > A proposal to make the fund's purpose handing coins to people with "financial barriers": adult industry workers and their clients, abortion funds, protesters, refugees. The text calls the examples "intentionally provocative". One of the people credited on it is on the $550,000 team, and posted about the fund: "Let's get us paid." > $455,000 for testnet tooling behind Shielded Assets, four months after holders polled 98.6% against Shielded Assets. Why none of it needs holder approval: 8% of every new ZEC goes into this fund. About 91,500 ZEC sit there, roughly $115M. Five people allocate it. Holders do not elect them, a forum group of about 200 does, and by one critic's count, undisputed in the thread, 72 of those 200 have received money from the fund. The new purpose needs no vote either, the coins are already allocated. This is where most on-chain treasuries end up: a budget with no owner, spent by the people closest to it. Every chain that funds itself this way faces the same choice, and the cost only goes one direction. Cut it now and some grantees are angry. Cut it in three years and you have three more years of grantees, each with a stake in keeping it.