A ten-year-old coin, Zcash, also faces a midlife crisis

On January 7th, the core development team of Zcash collectively resigned.

It’s not just one or two people having a bad mood; it’s the entire Electric Coin Company, about 25 people, led by the CEO, all leaving.

This company is called ECC, the main developer behind Zcash. You can think of it as the group of coders who have decided to quit.

Once the news broke, $ZEC plummeted 20%.

A fun fact: Zcash is almost ten years old.

It launched on October 28, 2016, even earlier than many people’s entry into the crypto space. Its selling point back then was “privacy transactions,” where sender, receiver, and amount are all encrypted, and nothing can be seen on the chain.

But the reality is, after nine years, less than 1% of ZEC transactions have actually used this feature.

The remaining 99% are still exposed.

Nine years in, the product is unused, and the team is still hanging on. The coin’s price has fallen from over $3,000 when it launched in 2016 to $15 as of July 2024.

Then, at the end of 2025, $ZEC suddenly surged.

At the start of the year, it hovered around $40, but by November 7th, it shot up to $744, with a market cap breaking $10 billion, re-entering the top twenty.

The narrative of privacy coins, dormant for years, suddenly became sexy again.

Good, the price increased by nearly 800%, and then, “the development team ran away.”

This story sounds like a middle-aged man’s script. Bought a Porsche, then got divorced. Received a year-end bonus, then split up.

When money is scarce, everyone is comrades-in-arms; when there’s a lot of money, disputes over who’s in charge begin.

What are they fighting over? A wallet called Zashi.

Zashi is a mobile wallet released by ECC in early 2024, featuring “default privacy mode.” It’s the most important user gateway in the Zcash ecosystem.

ECC wanted to privatize Zashi, bring in external investment, and turn it into a startup capable of fundraising and rapid iteration.

But ECC is not an independent company. In 2020, ECC was incorporated into a nonprofit organization called Bootstrap, a US 501(c)(3) structure.

Simply put, this structure is mainly used by charities and public welfare organizations. The advantage is tax exemption; the downside is that profits cannot be distributed to insiders, and asset disposal is subject to the board’s approval.

This move was originally for compliance and to avoid SEC regulatory pressure. In a bear market, no one cares about these details; there’s no money to distribute anyway.

Now, Bootstrap’s board says, no.

Their reason:

We are a nonprofit organization with a legal obligation to protect donors’ interests. Privatizing Zashi could be illegal, could lead to lawsuits, and could attract political attacks. They also cited an example: look at OpenAI, which wanted to convert from nonprofit to for-profit and was sued by many.

ECC’s former CEO Josh Swihart disagrees. He tweeted that the board’s actions are “malicious governance,” making it “impossible for the team to perform their duties effectively and with dignity.”

He used a legal term called “constructive discharge,” meaning although they weren’t fired outright, working conditions were changed so drastically that they were effectively forced out.

Twenty-five people forced to leave together.

At the same time, Swihart named four board members: Zaki, Christina, Alan, Michelle. He combined their initials into “ZCAM.”

ZCAM. Sounds like SCAM. Not sure if it’s intentional.

Among these four, Zaki Manian has the most story.

He’s a veteran of the Cosmos ecosystem, once a core member of Tendermint. He resigned in 2020 after a public feud with founder Jae Kwon.

In 2023, the FBI told him that two developers in a project he was responsible for were North Korean agents. He concealed this for 16 months before revealing it. In October 2024, Jae Kwon publicly accused him of “gross misconduct” and “betraying community trust.”

Now, he is a member of the Zcash board.

The day after his resignation, the former ECC team announced the formation of a new company, code-named CashZ.

They said they would use Zashi’s codebase to develop a new wallet, launching within weeks. Existing Zashi users could migrate seamlessly.

“We are still the same team, with the same mission: to create unstoppable private currency.”

No new coins, no starting from scratch—just a shell change to keep going.

What we find most ironic about this is the timing.

When ZEC was $15, no one cared who managed the wallet. When it rose to $500, the value of Zashi became a matter of life and death.

Only when there’s money do you realize who your family is.

The conflicts between nonprofit organizations and startup teams—OpenAI lost in the end, the Zcash team left.

Who won, nobody knows, but these conflicts are common in crypto projects.

Swihart wrote on CashZ’s official website explaining why they left:

“The nonprofit foundation model is a relic of the compliance era in crypto. Back then, projects needed ‘compliance buffers’ to protect themselves. But these buffers brought bureaucracy and ideological disagreements. Startups can grow quickly; nonprofits cannot.”

He also said: “Anyone who has spent years in crypto knows that the entanglement between nonprofit foundations and tech startups is the source of endless drama.”

Indeed, endless drama.

In 2023, when Zooko stepped down as CEO, there were reports of disagreements with Swihart. In January 2025, Peter Van Valkenburgh, the board member of the Zcash Foundation, also resigned.

A ten-year-old coin, almost all the key players have 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.

But Swihart is right—the conflict between nonprofits and startups is a common problem in this industry. Cosmos has argued about it. Ethereum Foundation has argued about it. Solana Foundation has argued about it.

The only difference is in the way and intensity of the disputes.

Zcash chose the most straightforward way.

Disband.