Original Author: Kuri, Deep Tide TechFow
On January 7th, the core development team of Zcash collectively resigned.
It's not just one or two people being emotional; it's the entire Electric Coin Company, about 25 people in total, led by the CEO, who all left.
This company has a short name, ECC, and is the main developer behind Zcash. You can understand it as the group of people who write the code have quit.
After the news came out, ZEC plummeted by 20%.
A fun fact: Zcash is almost ten years old.
Launched on October 28, 2016, which is even earlier than the entry time of many people into the cryptocurrency field. Its selling point at that time was "private transactions," where the sender, receiver, and amount were all encrypted, and nothing could be seen on the blockchain.
But in reality, after nine years online, less than 1% of ZEC transactions have actually used this feature.
The remaining 99% are still running barefoot.
Nine years have passed, the product has no users, and the team is still struggling on. The token price dropped from over $3,000 when it first launched in 2016 to $15 in July 2024.
Then, by the end of 2025, ZEC suddenly surged.
It was still hovering around $40 at the beginning of the year, but on November 7th, it surged to $744, with a market cap exceeding $10 billion, and it re-entered the top twenty.
The narrative of privacy coins, which had been dormant for years, has suddenly become attractive again.
Okay, the coin's price increased nearly 800%, and then, "the development team ran away."
This story sounds like a middle-aged man's script. He bought a Porsche, then got divorced. He got a year-end bonus, then it all fell apart.
When there's little money, everyone is a comrade-in-arms; when there's more money, they start fighting over who's in charge.
What's the issue? A wallet called Zashi.
Zashi is a mobile wallet launched by ECC at the beginning of 2024, emphasizing "privacy features enabled by default." It is the most important user entry point in the Zcash ecosystem.
The ECC team wants to privatize Zashi, bring in external investment, and turn it into a startup company that can secure financing and iterate quickly.
But ECC is not an independent company. In 2020, ECC was placed into a non-profit organization called Bootstrap, which is a U.S. 501(c)(3) structure.
In short, this structure is specifically designed for charitable and public welfare organizations. The advantage is that it is tax-exempt, but the disadvantage is that any profits cannot be distributed to individuals, and the disposal of assets must be decided by the board of directors.
We did it that way back then to comply with regulations and avoid pressure from the SEC. During a bear market, no one really cares about these details anyway, since there's no money to be made.
Now the Bootstrap board says no.
The board's reasoning is:
We are a non-profit organization with a legal obligation to protect the interests of donors. Privatizing Zashi might be illegal, could lead to lawsuits, and could invite political attacks. They also gave an example: Look at OpenAI, which wanted to transition from non-profit to for-profit status and ended up being sued by so many people.
ECC's former CEO, Josh Swihart, does not see it that way. He stated on Twitter that the board's actions constituted "oppressive governance," preventing the team from "effectively and respectfully carrying out their duties."
He used a legal term called "constructive discharge," which means that although the person wasn't formally fired, the working conditions were altered to such an extent that they became unbearable, effectively forcing the person to leave.
25 people were forced to leave together.
Meanwhile, Swihart named four board members: Zaki, Christina, Alan, and Michelle. He combined the first letters of their names, calling it "ZCAM."
ZCAM. Sounds like SCAM. Not sure if it's intentional or not.
Among these four people, Zaki Manian has the most interesting story.
He is a veteran in the Cosmos ecosystem and was once a core member of Tendermint. He resigned in 2020 after a public dispute with the founder Jae Kwon.
In 2023, the FBI told him that two developers in a project he was in charge of were North Korean agents. After learning this, he concealed the information for 16 months before disclosing it. In October 2024, Jae Kwon publicly accused him of "gross negligence" and "betraying the community's trust."
Now, he is a member of the Zcash board.
The day after resigning, the former ECC team announced the establishment of a new company, codenamed CashZ.
They said they will use the Zashi codebase to build a new wallet, which will launch within a few weeks. Existing Zashi users can migrate seamlessly.
"We are still the same team with the same mission: to create an unstoppable private currency."
No new coins issued, no starting from scratch, just changing the shell and continuing on.
The most ironic thing about this matter, we feel, is the timing.
When ZEC was $15, no one cared who managed the wallet. But when it rose to $500, the value of Zashi became a matter of life and death.
Only when you have money do you realize who your real family is.
Similarly, the conflict between non-profit organizations and startup teams had different outcomes: in the case of OpenAI, the board lost, while in the case of Zcash, the team left.
It's unknown who wins, but this contradiction is indeed prevalent in crypto projects.
Swihart wrote a statement on CashZ's official website explaining why he left:
"The nonprofit foundation model is a relic of the compliance era in the crypto industry. During that time, projects needed a 'compliance buffer' to protect themselves. However, these buffers brought bureaucracy and path divergence. Startups can scale quickly, but nonprofit organizations cannot."
He also said, "Anyone who has spent a few years in the crypto industry knows that the entanglement between non-profit foundations and tech startups is a never-ending source of drama."
It's truly endless drama.
In 2023, when Zooko stepped down as CEO, there were already reports of disagreements between him and Swihart. In January 2025, Peter Van Valkenburgh, a board member of the Zcash Foundation, also resigned.
A ten-year-old coin, most of the ones that were supposed to leave have already left.
Someone asked on Twitter: Will Zcash die?
The chain is still running. The code is still there. Only the people writing the code have changed.
Swihart is right—tensions between non-profits and for-profit companies are a common issue in this industry. Cosmos has had such conflicts. So has the Ethereum Foundation. And the Solana Foundation has as well.
The difference lies only in the manner and intensity of the argument.
Zcash chose the most straightforward approach.
Break up.