Zcash Plummets After Executive Exodus, New Leadership Appointed

The recent volatility in Zcash’s price is directly tied to profound internal strife at the Electric Coin Company, the nonprofit organization that created and continues to support the Zcash protocol. Earlier this month, the ECC lost its entire core team, including CEO Josh Swihart. In a public statement, Swihart claimed the board of Bootstrap—the nonprofit governing the ECC—had “moved into clear misalignment with the mission of Zcash.” The board countered that the disagreement stemmed from differences over a potential transition to a for-profit enterprise. This schism has fractured the project’s leadership at a critical juncture.

In response, Swihart and his former colleagues have announced a new venture named cashZ, aimed at “building unstoppable private money.” The project is expected to focus on full-stack Zcash development, including a new Zcash-focused wallet, and is currently enrolling users for early access. This splintering of the original development team creates uncertainty about the future direction of Zcash’s core protocol development and represents a significant reputational blow for a project that had ranked among 2025’s top-performing major cryptocurrencies, having risen over 636% year-on-year.

Concurrently, the Electric Coin Company has moved to fill its leadership vacuum by appointing Steve Smith as interim CEO. Smith joins after nearly three years at Tools for Humanity, the developer behind the controversial Worldcoin project, which is backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. This appointment has drawn sharp criticism on social media, with privacy advocates noting the uneasy fit of a Worldcoin executive leading a privacy-centric cryptocurrency like Zcash, given Worldcoin’s reliance on biometric data collection.

While the core team fragments, other Zcash-adjacent efforts are advancing. Shielded Labs, an independent development group that includes Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox as a contributor, recently secured approximately $1.16 million in funding from Gemini and Facebook founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. This investment signals continued institutional interest in the Zcash ecosystem’s potential, even as its primary supporting organization undergoes crisis. The health of the broader ecosystem may now depend on the balance between these external groups, the new ECC leadership, and the splinter cashZ project.

Market analysts are highlighting concerning trends in Zcash’s on-chain data. Illia Otychenko, Lead Analyst at exchange CEX.IO, provided Decrypt with metrics showing a stark decline in network activity since its peak in November 2025. “Transparent transactions are down roughly 79%, and Shielded (Orchard) transactions have fallen about 60% from their November peak,” Otychenko stated. This drop in core utility is a fundamental weight on the asset’s price, which has seen double-digit declines month-on-month.

However, Otychenko noted a paradoxical signal: network fees recently hit an all-time high, suggesting residual, high-value demand persists and could support prices in the short term. For the longer term, he believes performance “will hinge on how its management can execute its plans,” emphasizing that new leadership must balance growth with preserving Zcash’s privacy ethos. While offshoot projects like cashZ could benefit the ecosystem, their impact depends on driving “meaningful adoption or solv[ing] real user needs.”

The challenges for Zcash and privacy tokens extend beyond internal management. Rajiv Sawhney, head of international portfolio management at Wave Digital Assets International, told Decrypt that macro and regulatory factors are currently overshadowing altcoin-specific narratives. He pointed to the U.S. Senate’s inability to pass the CLARITY Act bill as creating a “persistent overhang on crypto prices, including privacy tokens.” Sawhney predicted Zcash is unlikely to see a “massive divergence” from broader crypto market performance, as geopolitical risks and regulatory uncertainty exert greater influence. This sentiment is reflected on prediction market Myriad, where users now place a 61% chance on Zcash’s next major move being down to $250 rather than up to $550.