Update: Zcash Devs Unveil ‘cashz’ Wallet After Exiting Electric Coin Co

Employees who left the Electric Coin Company en masse on Wednesday are launching a new Zcash wallet, citing the need to return to cypherpunk principles and to scale faster.

“The team from the Electric Coin Company that launched Zcash, and created the Zashi wallet, is now launching a new wallet for Zcash, using the same Zashi codebase we built,” said former ECC CEO Josh Swihart late on Thursday.

The code name for the wallet is cashZ and will be launched in a “few weeks,” he added. Users of the existing Zcash (ZEC) wallet, Zashi, will be able to migrate to the new one seamlessly. There were no other details about the new wallet.

The move comes just hours after the team exited ECC due to a clash over nonprofit rules and governance tensions.

On the website, Swihart gave more reasons why the team decided to start a new company. “First, Zcash is cypherpunk, and we need an organization built around that understanding,” he said.

Related: Zcash backer Bootstrap says split due to clash over nonprofit rules, Zashi future

Nonprofits focus on rule-following while startups focus on innovation, Swihart said.

Thirdly, Zcash has experienced a rebirth over the past two years and is no longer a small project. To compete with Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL), it needs an organizational structure built to scale rapidly.

ZEC saw a minor recovery after the announcement during early trading on Friday when it moved back to $430. However, the asset remains down 86% from its 2016 all-time high of $3,191 and is also down 38% from its 2025 high of just under $700, according to Coingecko.

Source: CoinTelegraph