I'm writing this in my personal capacity not as community manager and my experience as a lawyer and this is to answer the accusation that founders are just swimming in their founder's reward. This is not based on any inside info but my own deductions. For marketing, although i'm not privy to how they spend it, you can see the ads that are popping up on Zcoin so there's some marketing ad spend going on there.
But let's get into the nitty gritty which I think a lot of people are not thinking clearly about.
First of all, Roger Ver's investment is real. It has been disclosed
EXPLICITLY in bitcoin.com publications (which Roger owns), confirmed by other independent members approaching him directly, regularly posts on his MemoryDealers account in Reddit in Zcoin and created a sub-forum for it in Bitcoin forums. He still remains invested.
https://news.bitcoin.com/zero-knowledge-zcoin-launching-soon/ (see the disclaimer)
https://www.reddit.com/r/ZCoinProject/First of all there were definitely certain agreements in place when obtaining investor funding for Zcoin (or as it was then named Moneta). This is what made the project possible in the first place.
It is common for these investors to choose to remain anonymous. Only Roger has stepped forward to confirm he is an investor but I don't think you can blame the founders for not disclosing the others especially since the investors are the one who funded Zcoin and their wishes should be respected. Note that backing a privacy coin can be controversial and not everyone may want to come forward. With Zcash, which is a much more high profile investment with serious marketing dollar, there's bound to be more investors who are willing to be public.
Now to the next point, I think it's naive to think that these investors didn't have certain stakes in the growth and reward of the coin. They need a return on their investment. With no premine, there's the founder's reward. The most logical thing is to assume that some investors are entitled to certain payouts. The whole project started when it was Moneta in 2015 and much time has passed and only about one month back was it launched. Now that a milestone has been achieved (coin launch and listing), some investors may want to recoup part of their investment back while others decide to hold. Where would this payout come from? It may be, to be paid in XZC or it may be 'interest' on their investment or a share of the founder's reward. If you watch Shark Tank, you'll know what I'm talking about. This also makes sense on a contractual standpoint.
Gary and Poramin both mentioned NDAs which are also common and they may not be able to disclose the identity, the size of the investment and their entitlements from their investment. Now they are asked to explain the wallets being drained, but bound by the NDA, now you can imagine the situation they are in. In frustration, Gary said well when Zcash is transparent about their expenditure, they will be too which was received negatively but the fact is a much larger project like Zcash that's involving a lot more money is not subject to scrutiny because big names are involved while with Zcoin, the only known big name is Roger. Again, Zcoin's funding is i think many many many many times smaller than Zcash's and yet I think it is impressive they managed to get out a
WORKING implementation of Zerocoin and minting.
Bounties are also being paid for website design, coding work, community management, recruitment activities, marketing and also with important partners to increase adoption.
If you follow their slack you know that Poramin is full time working hard to implement MTP and improve Zcoin and I'm in almost daily contact with Gary and Poramin.
WARNING: BolehVPN is at best a scam and at worst a honey pot.
Exhibit A is the post above, where Boleh's lawyer kisses Roger Ver's ass until his lips are chapped. Embracing a bad actor like Bitcoin Judas is a red flag.
Exhibit B is BolehVPN's embrace of the instamined scamcoin known as Dash (alias Darkcoin, Xcoin) despite its fake privacy theater and rejection of Monero's military or better grade crypto.
Exhibit C is BolehVPN's lawyer wittering on about obvious scams like Zcoin and Zcash, as if one of those scams is better than the other.
AirVPN.org and Cryptostorm.is are both world class options if you want a real VPN that is not associated with scumbags like BolehVPN, Dash, Roger Ver, Zcoin, and Zcash.
