Zcash Implodes: Entire ECC Team Resigns Over ‘Malicious’ Bootstrap Board Governance
Zcash drops 20% as CEO Josh Swihart and the entire ECC staff resign, blaming the Bootstrap board for ‘malicious’ obstruction.
The Architects Walk Out
The entire engineering and leadership team behind Zcash has resigned. In a catastrophic governance failure for the privacy protocol, Electric Coin Company (ECC) CEO Josh Swihart announced the mass exodus on X late Wednesday, citing “malicious governance actions” by the overseeing Bootstrap board.
The market reaction was instant and violent. Zcash (ZEC) plummeted 20%, crashing from recent highs of $475 to trade near $381 as liquidity evaporated. The move effectively decapitates the protocol’s primary development arm, leaving the roadmap in limbo just months after Grayscale’s ETF filing had reignited institutional interest.
The ‘Constructive Discharge’
This was not a negotiation tactic. Swihart stated the team was “constructively discharged,” a legal term implying working conditions were made impossible, following a dispute over the privatization of the Zashi wallet. The core conflict lies between the ECC’s startup ambitions and the Bootstrap board’s non-profit rigidity. Following a dispute over the privatization of the Zashi wallet.
Swihart specifically named board members Zaki Manian, Christina Garman, Alan Fairless, and Michelle Lai, accusing them of blocking external investment essential for scaling the protocol.
The terms of our employment were changed in ways that made it impossible for us to perform our duties effectively and with integrity.
Enter ‘CashZ’
The talent isn’t leaving the ecosystem; they are forking the organization. The departing team immediately announced the formation of CashZ, a new commercial entity built on the open-source Zashi codebase. Their stated goal is to bypass the “poorly governed nonprofit” structure of Bootstrap and aggressively scale Zcash adoption.
While the Zcash protocol itself remains permissionless and operational, the schism creates a dangerous vacuum. Institutional investors, who poured millions into ZEC in late 2025 anticipating a structured ETF rollout, now face a fragmented developer landscape. The Bootstrap board, now holding the keys to a hollowed-out ECC, has yet to announce a contingency plan for maintaining the core client.
