Electric Coin Company’s entire Zcash team has resigned following a boardroom conflict with nonprofit Bootstrap, which is planning a new “unstoppable private money” venture as ZEC falls.
Summary
- Electric Coin Company’s entire Zcash development team resigned following a board split with Bootstrap’s nonprofit board, which oversees Zcash strategy.
- CEO Josh Swihart claims that board-driven changes to employment conditions have made normal work impossible and calls the situation “constructive discharge” as he plans a new private money company.
- Zcash’s open source protocol remains active, but ZEC’s price fell sharply after the news, exposing governance risks in hybrid crypto structures of nonprofits and corporations.
The entire team at Electric Coin Company, the development organization behind the privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash (ZCASH), has left following governance disputes with its overseeing nonprofit, according to public statements from the company’s leadership.
Zcash and the company behind it Electric Coin Company in governmental dispute
Josh Swihart, CEO of Electric Coin Company, announced the team’s departure and announced plans to form a new company to continue the privacy-focused development of cryptocurrency. The departure follows what Swihart characterized as a breakdown in alignment with Bootstrap, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit created to operate Electric Coin Company and support the development of Zcash.
Swihart stated that a majority of Bootstrap’s board members had become disengaged from Zcash’s mission. According to his public statement, he identified Zaki Manian, Christina Garman, Alan Fairless and Michelle Lai as central figures in that majority.
The CEO said that the changes imposed by the board in recent weeks have changed the employment conditions for the Electric Coin Company team, making it impossible for staff to perform their duties effectively. Swihart described the situation as constructive discharge, a term referring to working conditions that have changed so much that employees are effectively forced to resign.
The departing team plans to create a new company focused on building what Swihart described as “unstoppable private money,” while maintaining the emphasis on privacy and censorship resistance that has characterized Zcash’s development.
Swihart emphasized that the Zcash protocol itself remains unaffected by the organizational changes. The Zcash codebase is open-source and no company owns or operates the network, the statement said.
Zooko Wilcox, former CEO of Electric Coin Company and founder of Zcash, defended Bootstrap’s board, stating that Zcash remains permissionless, secure and safe to use. His answer showed that there were different perspectives on the causes and consequences of the split.
The Zcash token experienced a notable price drop after the announcement, eroding most of its December gains, market data shows.
The split highlights the tensions between mission-driven development teams and nonprofit governance structures in the cryptocurrency industry. Zcash has long positioned itself as a privacy-focused project, marketing itself as “private money” to users seeking transaction confidentiality.
The dispute also highlighted confusion around the organization’s roles, with Swihart acknowledging that public listings showing him as Bootstrap’s executive director were outdated.
Supporters of the outgoing team argued that separation from the Bootstrap board could strengthen development efforts, while critics expressed concerns about fragmentation and loss of institutional continuity.
The episode underlines the challenges facing decentralized cryptocurrency projects that rely on hybrid structures that combine nonprofits, corporations, and open source communities.
