Former ECC Team Launches New Zcash Startup Amid Governance Dispute
The Zcash protocol remains unaffected despite recent governance tensions and restructuring discussions with Bootstrap.
The former Electric Coin Company (ECC) team is framing Thursday’s clash with Bootstrap as a startup pivot rather than a split. Josh Swihart, ECC’s former lead, announced the launch of a new Zcash-focused startup and a forthcoming wallet built on the Zashi codebase, tentatively named “cashZ.”
In a post on X, Swihart said the initiative aims to “scale Zcash to billions of users,” noting that “startups can scale, but nonprofits can’t.” He positioned the new company as a faster route to develop consumer products without being slowed by nonprofit governance structures.
The announcement follows a dispute with Bootstrap, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit overseeing Zcash and ECC’s work. The conflict reportedly revolved around control and restructuring of Zashi, with ECC leadership describing the team as “constructively discharged,” while Bootstrap cited legal and fiduciary constraints limiting approvals.
Swihart emphasized that the Zcash protocol itself remains fully operational and that the same engineers will continue building on the network under the new corporate structure.
Following the news of the split, ZEC experienced sharp volatility, with broader privacy coins also seeing market movement. Observers are now closely watching the new wallet initiative as the key signal of whether the restructuring will accelerate product delivery or risk further fragmentation in the privacy coin ecosystem.
