Zcash's Developers Exit The Company

yuzuki

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Jan 10 00:05

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#757

Zcash (ZEC) developers quit and form a new company. Given that the company doesn't seem to actually give a fuck about privacy and the actual mission of a privacy coin, I can't say I'm surprised. I'm curious to see what the developers are building next.

As always: Don't fuck with your engineers! You can run a company without a marketing, HR, support, and sales team, and pretty much fire all the redundant business people with MBAs and still have a functional company and product offering, but you can not get rid of the engineers and expect for things to continue on working.

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The entire staff of the Electric Coin Company, the developer behind the privacy-focused blockchain Zcash, resigned on Wednesday following a structural dispute with its parent non-profit board. CEO Josh Swihart announced the mass departure on X, citing a governance clash with the majority of the Bootstrap board of directors, which governs ECC.

Bootstrap is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit created to govern ECC and support the Zcash ecosystem. In his statement, Swihart named board members Zaki Manian, Christina Garman, Alan Fairless, and Michelle Lai as being misaligned with what he described as Zcash's mission. He said the protocol itself remains unaffected by the personnel changes.

“Yesterday, the entire ECC team left after being constructively discharged by ZCAM. In short, the terms of our employment were changed in ways that made it impossible for us to perform our duties effectively and with integrity,” Swihart wrote in the post.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, constructive discharge refers to a situation where an employee's resignation is not considered voluntary due to an employer creating a hostile work environment or applying pressure that forces the quit. It typically involves significant, severe changes to employment terms.

Swihart noted that the developers are forming a new company to continue building what he termed "unstoppable private money."

The Block has reached out to Swihart for further comment.

Prior leadership exits, reorganization

The resignations add to a series of senior departures across the Zcash ecosystem in recent years. Swihart himself ascended to the CEO role in December 2023 after longtime project leader Zooko Wilcox stepped down following eight years at the helm, while Peter Van Valkenburgh resigned from the Zcash Foundation board in January 2025.

The mass departure also comes weeks after ECC announced internal reorganization on Dec. 1. That plan consolidated core protocol and mobile engineering teams under a single lead and unified all marketing and communications. The stated objective was to align development more closely with user experience from the Zashi wallet and remove operational friction.

That reorganization followed a breakout period for the privacy-focused blockchain. On Nov. 7, ZEC eclipsed a $10 billion market capitalization, reclaiming a top-20 ranking by surpassing Hyperliquid, as previously reported by The Block. Investor Arthur Hayes noted in November that ZEC had become the second-largest liquid asset in Maelstrom's portfolio behind bitcoin, gaining roughly 750% since October.

ZEC has since pulled back. At last check, the token was trading around $456, down nearly 8% over the past 24 hours, according to The Block's prices page. ZEC remains up about 11% over the past 30 days but is still roughly 92% below its October 2016 all-time high of $5,941.80.

https://www.theblock.co/post/384737/zcash-developers-form-new-company

Edited: Jan 10 00:06

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virg1ni4anx1ety430

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Jan 16 13:29

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#835

Just like you, I'm not even "that" surprised with ZCASH
Funny that Brave introduced ZCASH support on their wallet just last year: https://brave.com/blog/shielded-zcash/

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glamorous_oak

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Jan 16 13:58

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#836

good radiance! hopefully this will finally stop all the astroturfing and brigading from the bag holder.

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HunterLion

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Mar 12 10:26

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#1015

Most crypto "success stories" share a common denominator: Israel's tech investment. Scratch beneath the surface of leading blockchain projects, and you'll consistently uncover Israeli experts, investors, developers etc...

Edited: Mar 12 10:27

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arnoldnakamura

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Mar 14 02:52

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#1022

This is exactly why Monero's governance model matters. No company, no board of directors, no premine, no dev tax, no single point of organizational failure.

Zcash had ECC (Electric Coin Company), Bootstrap, and Zcash Foundation — three entities with overlapping authority, conflicting incentives, and a 20% founder's reward that created ongoing governance tension. When the board and developers disagree, you get constructive discharge and the entire engineering team walks out the door.

Monero has none of that. No foundation. No company. No tokens reserved for founders. The protocol is maintained by a decentralized group of contributors funded through the Community Crowdfunding System (CCS) — where the community votes with their wallets on what gets built. Anyone can contribute, anyone can propose work, anyone can fund it. Nobody can fire the developers because nobody employs them.

The trade-off is speed. Corporate structures can move faster (Zcash shipped shielded transactions before Monero shipped comparable privacy tech). But Monero's approach means there's no single entity that regulators can pressure, no CEO they can subpoena, and no board that can decide to compromise on the privacy mission for business reasons.

Zcash also made privacy optional (transparent vs shielded addresses), which meant less than 10% of transactions actually used privacy features for most of its history. When privacy is opt-in, most users don't opt in — and the anonymity set for those who do is tiny. Monero made privacy mandatory by default. Every transaction is private. You can't accidentally deanonymize yourself or others by using the "wrong" address type.

The developer exodus is unfortunate for Zcash users, but the structural problem was there from day one.

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Zcash's Developers Exit The Company