Zcash Devs Split From Electric Coin Company, Plan To Create New Firm

Electric Coin Company CEO Josh Swihart says the firm's entire team left and will start a new company over disagreements with the nonprofit board that supports Zcash.

“Over the past few weeks, it’s become clear that the majority of Bootstrap board members [...] Specifically Zaki Manian, Christina Garman, Alan Fairless, and Michelle Lai (ZCAM), have moved into clear misalignment with the mission of Zcash,” Swihart said on Wednesday.

“Yesterday, the entire ECC team left,” he said. “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.”

“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.

“We’re founding a new company, but we’re still the same team with the same mission: building unstoppable private money,” he added.

Swihart said the Zcash protocol is unaffected by the team’s departure and will continue to operate as normal.

Zcash’s code is public, open-source and no single company or entity owns the protocol. Anyone can run a node, maintain a fork, or submit code changes. The network relies on miners, validators, and users to remain active.

Former ECC CEO Zooko Wilcox, who handed the reins to Swihart in 2023, defended the Bootstrap board in an X post on Wednesday.

“I've worked closely with Alan Fairless, Zaki Manian, and Christina Garman for more than 10 years, through many intense and difficult situations, and with Michelle Lai for about 5 years. Based on my experiences, I believe them all to be people of exceptionally high integrity,” Wilcox said.

Zooko also reiterated that the Zcash protocol will continue to operate as normal: “The Zcash network is open source, permissionless, secure, and private, and nothing that happens in this conflict can change that. You can safely continue to use Zcash,” he added.

Source: CoinTelegraph