Zcash developers have announced plans to launch a new wallet for the privacy token less than a day after their sudden exit from Electric Coin Company.
“We are all in on Zcash. We need to scale Zcash to billions of users. Startups can scale, but nonprofits can’t. That’s why we created a new Zcash startup,” former ECC CEO Josh Swihart said in an X post as he unveiled the new wallet.
What is cashZ?
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Dubbed cashZ, the wallet has been designed with Zashi users in mind and will allow them to migrate to the new platform within “a few weeks” as the product officially launches.
CashZ will be based on the same codebase as Zashi and is being built directly on top of it. “Using the same Zashi codebase we built,” Swihart added.
Anybody can join the waitlist by visiting cashz.org and will be notified once the wallet has been launched. At press time, over 4,500 users had already joined the waitlist.
Swihart and his team had announced their exit from the Electric Coin Company on January 8, citing governance conflicts with Bootstrap, the nonprofit entity that controls ECC.
At the time, Swihart said constructive discharge was the main reason why the team left and alleged that the Bootstrap board, specifically members Zaki Manian, Christina Garman, Alan Fairless, and Michelle Lai, had imposed employment changes that made it impossible for the team to continue.
Notably, the board had also refused to approve the external funding of the Zashi wallet, which, according to the developers, was essential for scaling the project.
The board argued that such funding would violate US non-profit laws and fiduciary duties and could expose the organization to legal risks.
“This decision is simply about protecting our team’s work from malicious governance actions that have made it impossible to honor ECC’s original mission,” Swihart said at the time.
Devs to focus on scaling Zcash
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On the CashZ website, he went on to share more details, starting with a clear statement that the “entire team that worked at Electric Coin Company and built Zashi is still 100% focused on full-stack Zcash development.”
Further addressing any speculation about new coins or forks, he stressed that the goal of the new company is “scaling Zcash.”
“To do that, it required that we leave and start a new Zcash-focused company,” he added.
Among other reasons behind the move, Swihart argued that privacy in crypto is normal and that fighting for these rights requires an organisation with courage and agility.
“Nonprofits are about rule-lawyering, while tech startups are about rewriting the rules […] Basically, there’s no benefit in keeping a fast-growing technology company under a nonprofit when the substance of the organisation is a for-profit, and there might be real downside,” he said.
Lastly, Swihart said Zcash has undergone “a complete rebirth” over the past two years, and to compete with Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and other major players, it must be built to scale.
“Zcash must become so big they can’t stop us, and we must scale to succeed,” Swihart added.
ZEC price recovers
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After dropping to multi-week lows near $380, ZEC price had recovered back above $435 at the time of writing as community members appeared to be supportive of the team’s decision to continue building independently.
However, the token remains more than 80% below its all-time high of $3,191 and is also down 38% from its 2025 high of just under $700.
