Zcash Plunges Double Digits After ECC Team ‘Constructively Discharged’
In a statement, the board said that the disagreements stemmed from recent proposals to privatize the Zashi mobile wallet.
In brief
- The CEO of the Electric Coin Company said his entire team was “constructively discharged” following a disagreement with its non-profit board members.
- The board said in a statement it was due to potential issues surrounding plans to privatise Zashi, a Zcash-centric mobile wallet.
- It said the plans could allow donors to sue and “jeopardize the entire Zcash ecosystem.”
The price of Zcash has plunged by double digits after the entire team of the Electric Coin Company—which created and contributed to the popular privacy coin—left the company.
Zcash is down 18.2% in the past 24 hours to $397.27, according to CoinGecko data. It’s also down 24% over the past 7 days. Zcash had a very strong year price-wise, rising over 670% amid more mainstream interest in privacy coins.
In a tweet, Josh Swihart, former CEO of the Electric Coin Company, said his entire team was “constructively discharged” following a disagreement with the majority of Bootstrap’s board members, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit created to support Zcash.
Over the past few weeks, it's become clear that the majority of Bootstrap board members (a 501(c)(3) nonprofit created to support Zcash by governing the Electric Coin Company), specifically Zaki Manian, Christina Garman, Alan Fairless, and Michelle Lai (ZCAM), have moved into…
— Josh Swihart 🛡 (@jswihart) January 7, 2026
He said that specifically, Zaki Manian, Christina Garman, Alan Fairless, and Michelle Lai had “moved into clear misalignment with the mission of Zcash.” Swihart said he and the team would be founding a new company with the same mission of “building unstoppable private money.”
The former CEO didn’t give any details about the project—such as what it is called, when it will roll out, or whether a new token might emerge.
In U.S. employment law, “constructive discharge” is when a worker’s resignation can be classified as not voluntary, because the employer has created a “hostile or intolerable work environment” or has used “forms of pressure or coercion” to force the employee to leave.
Swihart assured users that the Zcash protocol itself “is unaffected” by the team’s departure. He added: “This decision is simply about protecting our team’s work from malicious governance actions that have made it impossible to honor ECC’s original mission.”