- The entire Electric Coin Company team behind Zcash development left the organization following governance changes.
- A new company will be formed to continue the same privacy-focused mission.
- The Zcash protocol remains unaffected despite turmoil in leadership and governance.
Electric Coin Company, the long-standing development organization behind Zcash, is preparing to launch a new company after a sudden and highly public split rooted in governance disputes.
According to public statements and reporting, the entire Electric Coin Company team broke away from its previous organizational agreement with Bootstrap, the nonprofit set up to support Zcash.
Notably, the departure was not presented as a routine resignation or a gradual transition.
Instead, company leadership described the situation as a breakdown in working relations that made continued collaboration impossible.
This marks a significant turning point for one of the cryptocurrency space’s most prominent privacy-focused projects.
Zcash has long positioned itself as “private money,” and the organizational split highlights growing tensions between mission-driven development teams and governance structures within nonprofits.
Governance conflict at the heart of the split
At the core of the dispute is Bootstrap, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit created to support Zcash by overseeing Electric Coin Company.
Josh Swihart, CEO of Electric Coin Company, publicly stated that a majority of Bootstrap board members had moved into clear disagreement with Zcash’s mission.
He specifically named Zaki Manian, Christina Garman, Alan Fairless, and Michelle Lai as central figures in that majority.
Swihart said changes implemented by the board in recent weeks altered the team’s working conditions.
According to his account, those changes made it impossible for the team to perform its duties effectively and with integrity.
As a result, the entire team left in what Swihart described as a constructive dismissal.
Constructive dismissal refers to situations where working conditions change so significantly that employees are effectively forced to resign.
This framing suggests the split was driven by governance actions rather than disagreements about technology or code.
The conflict also exposed confusion around roles and titles, and Swihart acknowledged that public listings showing him as CEO of Bootstrap were out of date.
A new company, but the same mission
Despite the split, Swihart stressed that the departing team is not abandoning its core vision.
He confirmed the former Electric Coin Company team plans to form a new company.
The goal of this new entity, he said, remains building “unstoppable private money.”
That language echoes Zcash’s long-standing emphasis on privacy, censorship resistance, and user sovereignty.
Importantly, Swihart and others emphasized that the Zcash protocol itself is not affected by the organizational changes.
Zcash’s codebase is open source, and no single company owns or controls the network.
This distinction matters for users and developers concerned with continuity and security.
Zooko Wilcox, Zcash’s founder and former CEO of Electric Coin Company, defended the Bootstrap board and stated that Zcash remains permissionless, secure, and safe to use.
His response underscored how leadership perspectives diverge sharply on the causes and consequences of the split.
Market reaction: Zcash price falls
ZEC, the native token of the Zcash network, saw a notable price drop following the announcement.
At the time of reporting, Zcash traded around $443.38, down 10.3% in one day, erasing much of December’s gains.
The decline reflects uncertainty about governance, leadership stability, and future development direction.
Supporters of the departing team argued that breaking away from what they view as hostile governance could ultimately strengthen development.
They see forming a new company as a way to protect mission-driven work from nonprofit board dynamics.
Critics, however, worry about fragmentation and loss of institutional continuity.
The episode highlights broader challenges faced by decentralized projects that rely on hybrid structures combining nonprofits, companies, and open-source communities.
Ultimately, while organizational dynamics shift, the open-source nature of the Zcash protocol provides continuity for users and developers as the ecosystem works through the governance dispute.