The entire engineering team behind the Zashi wallet resigned from the Electric Coin Company (ECC) late Friday, immediately announcing the formation of a new commercial entity, cashZ. The mass exit, led by former ECC CEO Josh Swihart, stems from a governance fracture with the non-profit Bootstrap board, sending Zcash (ZEC) tumbling.
The Governance Split
In a public statement, Swihart described the resignation as a "constructive discharge", a legal term implying working conditions were made impossible. He cited "malicious governance actions" by the Bootstrap board, specifically naming members Zaki Manian, Christina Garman, and Alan Fairless, as the catalyst for the split. The core dispute appears to be the friction between the non-profit’s bureaucratic constraints and the team’s desire to aggressively scale user adoption.
"Startups can scale, but nonprofits can’t. That’s why we created a new Zcash startup. We are all in on Zcash.". Josh Swihart
The ‘cashZ’ Pivot
The new entity will launch a wallet also named cashZ, a direct fork of the open-source Zashi codebase. Crucially, the team confirmed they are not launching a new token. The startup aims to monetize through value-added services atop the Zcash protocol, unencumbered by the 501(c)(3) restrictions that governed the ECC. Existing Zashi users were promised a seamless migration path to the new wallet.
Market Reaction
Markets reacted violently to the uncertainty. Zcash (ZEC) slid 20% in the hours following the announcement, trading down to $430 as liquidity thinned. While the protocol itself remains decentralized and operationally unaffected, the exodus of its primary development unit raises long-term questions about the ECC’s remaining technical capacity.
