Zcash developers quit, form new company after board clash

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.

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