Zcash slid sharply on Thursday after the key developers behind the privacy-focused blockchain announced they were leaving the Electric Coin Company (ECC). The mass exit follows a governance rupture with the board of Bootstrap, the nonprofit set up to support the project.
ZEC is down around 20% over the past 24 hours. The selloff reverses part of its 2025 gains as investors digest the sudden leadership collapse at the heart of one of crypto’s best-performing assets.
Josh Swihart, CEO of ECC and executive director of Bootstrap, announced the split on X. He stated the entire ECC team had been "constructively discharged." He claimed changes imposed by board members made it "impossible to continue operating with independence or integrity."
The departing team plans to form a new entity to continue development work aligned with Zcash’s original mission. They stressed that the protocol itself remains unaffected.
The "malicious" coup
The dispute centers on Bootstrap, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit created to govern and support ECC. Historically, ECC has been the primary steward of Zcash development.
Swihart alleged that a majority of Bootstrap board members had moved into "clear misalignment" with the project's mission. He specifically named Zaki Manian, Christina Garman, Alan Fairless and Michelle Lai.
According to Swihart, recent governance actions altered the terms under which ECC operated. This effectively stripped the development team of the ability to execute its mandate. He characterized the moves as "malicious governance actions" that risked undermining the project’s long-term credibility. The team chose to leave rather than operate under the revised structure.
The Bootstrap board has not publicly responded to the claims. Board members include senior figures from crypto infrastructure and academia. Bootstrap was originally positioned as a mechanism to professionalize oversight and reduce centralization risks around Zcash’s funding.
Governance failure
Zcash was one of the strongest stories of 2025. It rallied nearly 1,000% at its peak as institutional interest in privacy-preserving assets surged.
That price action brought renewed scrutiny to the project's governance. While Swihart emphasized that the code is immutable, governance disputes during bull markets are destabilizing. Investors have historically viewed ECC as the central pillar of Zcash’s technical direction. The prospect of the core team operating outside the Bootstrap framework introduces uncertainty around coordination, funding flows, and future upgrades.
We noted previously that technical adoption had stalled despite the price action. This leadership crisis compounds those structural issues.
This episode underscores a recurring failure mode in decentralized projects. As token valuations rise, nonprofit governance bodies often clash with for-profit development teams. The "check and balance" system, intended to protect the protocol, has instead decapitated its leadership.
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