The story of the Zcash core team leaving and the crypto world's version of OpenAI drama

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Author: The Rollup

Translation: Peggy, BlockBeats

Editor’s Note: On January 8, Zcash (ZEC) core developer Electric Coin Company (ECC) CEO Josh Swihart published a post revealing that the ECC team has recently collectively left their original organizational structure and plans to establish a new company. The reason is that their higher governance body, Bootstrap (a nonprofit organization responsible for governing ECC and supporting Zcash), has shown a “significant and ongoing deviation” from Zcash’s core mission in governance direction.

ECC believes that the existing nonprofit governance structure has severely constrained project expansion in terms of fundraising, incentives, and execution efficiency. Therefore, they chose to leave collectively and continue promoting Zcash-related products in a profit-oriented manner; meanwhile, Bootstrap, the nonprofit governing board, considers this transformation path may trigger legal and political risks and cannot accept it.

Under this disagreement, on January 9, ECC’s former CEO Josh Swihart announced the formation of a new for-profit startup, CashZ (CashZ.org), focusing on productization and commercialization of Zcash wallets, attempting to push Zcash toward its envisioned “billions of users” through a sustainable profit model.

After the news broke, Zcash’s price dropped about 20%, reflecting market unease over the core development team’s collective departure.

Regarding this governance dispute, crypto podcast The Rollup provided a representative industry perspective. Co-founder and host Andy and Robbie reviewed the process of ECC team’s departure and rapid establishment of CashZ during a live broadcast, believing this is not a project collapse but a structural adjustment that was bound to happen sooner or later. In their view, the root of the conflict is not technical or visionary, but the tension between organizational form and expansion goals: when privacy protocols attempt large-scale adoption, nonprofit governance structures often become the first bottleneck.

Based on this judgment, Andy and Robbie are relatively optimistic about the founding of CashZ. They believe that, without creating a new public chain or issuing new tokens, but continuing to develop wallet products based on the existing Zashi codebase, a profit-oriented startup might offer a more realistic growth path for Zcash. This “departure” is more like a reorganization around execution efficiency and scalability rather than an ecosystem split.

From a broader perspective, Zcash’s controversy again highlights a recurring industry theme: when crypto projects enter the “scaling and implementation” stage, conflicts between nonprofit foundations and profit teams are often less about ideology and more about trade-offs between efficiency and risk control. Zcash may just be the latest example.

Below is the original text:

The Birth of CashZ and Team Departure

Andy: Yes, Josh just posted that tweet. Our position is very clear: we are fully committed to Zcash. Zcash must scale to billions of users. Startups can achieve scalability, but nonprofit organizations cannot. That’s why we established the new startup CashZ.

Rob: So they are essentially creating a brand new wallet.

Andy: Yes, but based on the same Zcash codebase, with the project codename being CashZ. If you are a Zcash user, you just need to join the waitlist.

In his tweet yesterday, Josh also mentioned that the situation has become very clear over the past few weeks: most board members responsible for managing ECC’s 501©(3) nonprofit Bootstrap—especially Zaki, Manny, Christina Garman, Allan Fairless, and Michelle Lai—have been named. This situation itself is already quite out of control.

Mission Misalignment and “Constructive Discharge”

Andy: He pointed out in the tweet that all this stems from a clear misalignment with Zcash’s core mission. After being handled by ZCAM (an entity related to Zcash community governance) as a “constructive discharge,” the entire ECC team chose to leave collectively.

Simply put, employment terms were unilaterally changed, making it impossible for us to perform our duties effectively and ethically. We are indeed forming a new company, but we remain the same team, bearing the same mission—to build an unstoppable privacy currency. It’s important to emphasize that the Zcash protocol itself has not been affected.

Rob: He also included a link explaining what “constructive discharge” means. By definition, it refers to situations where an employer creates a hostile or intolerable work environment, or exerts pressure and coercion in other ways, forcing employees to resign; legally, such resignations may not be considered voluntary.

Andy: Yes, influenced by this news, Zcash’s price obviously dropped about 20%.

Community Reaction and Zaki Manian Controversy

Rob: Arthur also started “mocking” the situation. No matter how it’s spun, this doesn’t look good. Balaji has always emphasized: Zcash can scale, must scale, and will eventually scale.

And now, Zaki has clearly borne the brunt of the blame. Some even accused him of “plundering and destroying” the Cosmos ecosystem, and now messing up Zcash’s team.

Andy: Oh my. Zaki has been in this industry for many years and has indeed done a lot of excellent work. At least on this point, I am willing to stand up for Zaki. Honestly, I don’t know exactly what happened internally.

Profit vs. Nonprofit Struggle (OpenAI Analogy)

Andy: Zooko once said that these people, including Zaki, Allan, and Christina, all have high integrity standards. Clearly, there is a fundamental misalignment in their understanding of Zcash’s mission at the ethical and moral level.

Rob: This sounds almost like the disagreement that happened with OpenAI back then: some believe only profit-driven organizations can truly achieve scale and deliver continuous value; others insist that a nonprofit structure is the better, safer choice.

Andy: Zaki later also issued a statement expressing regret over the outcome. From Bootstrap’s perspective, the board did discuss bringing in external investment and exploring “privatization” through alternative structures, working closely with legal advisors to ensure any path complies with US nonprofit law.

But it must be admitted that the institutional constraints faced by nonprofits are real, and navigating these restrictions in a constantly changing environment is extremely complex.

Rob: It sounds like Zaki is also pushing to establish a startup.

The Root Cause of the Final Dispute

Andy: Opponents believe that under the current version, the proposed transaction scheme introduces new vulnerabilities to political attacks on Zcash, and could even give any donor grounds to sue. Their core goal is to prevent systemic risks to the entire Zcash ecosystem. Some initial proposals, made “for everyone’s benefit,” ultimately became the fuse for division.

Rob: That’s indeed unfortunate, because from the outcome, the positions of both sides are not that far apart. Both want to transform the original nonprofit structure into some form of profit-oriented entity to sustain revenue, build, and expand Zcash. The reason they ultimately parted ways is simply that they could not agree on “how to safely make this step.”