Crypto was built by people willing to move before everything was obvious. zkSNARKs were born in that same spirit. We came to Zcash to make things, break things, experiment in public, and help build a cultural layer around technology we believe deserves far more attention. zkSNARKs are 10,000 identities representing conviction in where Zcash goes next. Owning one means participating in that story culturally: as collectors, artists, builders, traders and early believers helping shape what gets built around this ecosystem. Think of zkSNARK holders as early patrons of a new Zcash cultural economy. Zilk Road. Now we build. Our ambition for Zilk Road is bigger than a marketplace. We want it to become a home for culture on Zcash: where collections launch, artists release work, collectors discover things, builders experiment, and people from outside Zcash find their way in. zkSNARKs sit at the center of that. We want to bring great artists, builders and communities from across crypto into Zcash and give them the infrastructure, distribution and audience to experiment here. Over time, holders should be able to choose where they participate: Art. New collections. Trading. Education. Infrastructure. Things we haven't thought of yet. One zkSNARK could open one territory. More zkSNARKs could let you participate across several or go deeper into one. Each can develop its own access, knowledge, drops and experiences. Your zkSNARK becomes your seat inside the ecosystem we're building. Building the ecosystem. As Zilk Road grows, we want what it creates to strengthen the ecosystem around it. Funding builders. Commissioning artists. Supporting new collections. Acquiring culturally important art. Advancing privacy infrastructure. Creating new experiences for zkSNARKs holders. We're still designing exactly what that looks like. We'd rather build carefully than make promises today that don't survive tomorrow. But the direction is clear. The vision. zkSNARKs are the foundation. Zilk Road is the territory we're building around them. Holders are the earliest participants in what that territory becomes. If Zcash grows, we want its cultural layer to grow with it. Hold your identity. Build through the chaos. $ZEC // @zilkroad_

Doing something new is rarely clean. New ideas create friction. Things break. Not everyone gets it immediately. We made people interact with Zcash before asking them to care about Zcash. From pre-launch through the auction, we built Zilk Road to make an otherwise confusing path into ZEC feel intuitive, seamless, and fun. The auction was completely blind. Bidders submitted their maximum. The top 8,000 bids cleared at one price. Losing bids were refunded in full. Winners received everything above the clearing price back. Once the auction settled, $19M+ was promptly returned to bidders. Meanwhile: 42,000 new wallets created across Noir, Zodl, and Vizor. ~$40M in blind auction bids. ~20M routed through @auroraisnear, powered by @NEARProtocol. Record-breaking activity across the Zcash network. Tens of thousands of bids later, people who had never touched ZEC are now inside the ecosystem. New wallets. Shielded ZEC. New communities discovering what Zcash actually does. That is not a distraction from the mission. That IS adoption. Zcash does not need another thousand people tweeting about privacy. It needs millions of people discovering why privacy matters by actually using it. As for royalties: we got that wrong. 5% wasn’t necessary, and it works against what we’re building. The blind auction was a free market: blind bids, no influence from us. Secondary should follow the same principle. No fee in the middle. All royalties collected to date will go toward Zcash builder grants. Royalties are 0% from here. We’re going to keep experimenting. Some things will work. Some won’t. When we get something wrong, we’ll fix it. The goal stays the same: Bring more people into Zcash. Give them a reason to stay. Build culture worth staying for. Build and fund products that advance privacy for everyone. ZILLIONS_