Zcash Developers Quit ECC After Board Dispute, ZEC Price Drops
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- Zcash project’s core developers have resigned from the Electric Coin Company, following a governance dispute.
- Following this internal struggle, ZEC dropped over 8% in 24 hours.
The privacy-focused altcoin Zcash’s primary development team resigned from the Electric Coin Company (ECC). The CEO, Josh Swihart, announced that the departures are the result of a disagreement with the company’s Bootstrap board and were announced earlier today in a post on X.
Over the past few weeks, it's become clear that the majority of Bootstrap board members (a 501(c)(3) nonprofit created to support Zcash by governing the Electric Coin Company), specifically Zaki Manian, Christina Garman, Alan Fairless, and Michelle Lai (ZCAM), have moved into…
— Josh Swihart(@jswihart) January 7, 2026
As stated by Swihart, numerous board members, specifically Zaki Manian, Christina Garman, Alan Fairless, and Michelle Lai (ZCAM), had come into disagreement with the firm’s founding goal. He argued that recent governance moves had altered ECC’s employment terms in a manner that the team could barely tolerate.
Swihart claimed the resignations were not completely voluntary; rather, he called it a “constructive discharge.” Where the departed developers are launching a new company with the same purpose. With that, he declares that the Zcash protocol is still operating and unmodified, but development leadership is making the switch.
As Zcash’s code is transparent and open-source, with no particular company managing the protocol. So, any individual can run a node, manage a fork, or contribute code changes. The miners, validators, and users are required for the network to function.
Internal Changes Impact ZEC Price
This internal struggle led the ZEC price down in the last 24 hours, as it slipped more than 8% and is currently trading at $454.87. After this news, from this morning, the price has been continuously declining from $490. Meanwhile, the daily trading volume surged by 12%, reaching $780 million.
In spite of this price decline and internal challenges, there was a positive statement given by Grayscale. Their Q4 report was released in late 2025, which mentioned that privacy-centred altcoins performed well enough, particularly Zcash, because it integrates privacy options, shielding for users’ activities, indicating the demand for privacy-based blockchain solutions.
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