Zcash’s sharp rebound did not happen by chance, according to Josh Swihart, who argues that ZEC’s roughly 1,500% rise reflects a multi-year reset across governance, product strategy, narrative positioning and organizational structure. In a detailed update, Swihart framed Zcash’s recent strength as a result of difficult decisions made in 2023 and 2024 that are now festering across the ecosystem.
Three years ago, Swihart He saidZcash had strong crypto but weak momentum. ZEC was trading at around $30, less than 11% of the supply was protected, and governance disputes dominated community discussions. He said the value of ZEC today is about $600, approximately 31% of the supply is protected, more than $3 billion of the value is held in user-controlled protected wallets, and protected transactions reached 86.5% in mid-March.
“Nothing happens by chance,” Swihart wrote. “Here were the reasons why growth accelerated.”
A governance reset has become central to the Zcash story
Swihart’s first interpretation focuses on governance. During Zcash’s first eight years, 20% of each block reward went to the same underlying organizations, including later Zcash community giving. In his view, this created an incumbency problem: organizations secured funding while also having significant influence on the direction of the protocol.
That changed in 2024, when Electric Coin announced that it would no longer accept direct funding. Swihart said the decision forced the old model to collapse. Network Upgrade 6 then cut off direct funding and redirected 8% to Zcash Community Grants, with 12% sent to a protocol-controlled escrow fund set aside for ZEC holders to retroactively distribute grants to contributors who provide measurable value. Both streams expire at the end of the third half in late 2028 unless renewed by overwhelming community consensus.
The issue of trademarks was also important. The ECC’s August 2024 notice terminating the trademark agreement, followed by the Zcash Foundation’s decision not to use the trademark for governance, ended a structure in which the ECC and ZF had effective veto power over the protocol, Swihart said.
“The stranglehold on Zcash governance has been broken, and token holders and other groups across the ecosystem have been able to have their voices heard,” he wrote. “No single body, including ZF’s ZCAP, has a monopoly on determining community sentiment. Zcash is finally set free.”
Zodl and use a shielded position to put the product back into focus
The second shift was the product. ECC reoriented in January 2024 toward user adoption after years in which the technical work produced strong privacy infrastructure but limited user growth, Swihart said. By 2023, the community was shrinking, X sentiment was strongly negative or neutral, and a ZURE survey showed ZEC holders had an NPS score of -60, he said.
Zashi later It was rebranded as Zodlbecame the clearest expression of this transformation. The wallet was launched in March 2024 with protected usage by default, hardware wallet support, and token swaps. Hedging supply rose from about 11% to about 30% by the end of 2025, an increase of more than 400% in absolute ZEC terms, while the portfolio has processed more than $600 million in ZEC swaps since October, Swihart said.
He emphasized that this activity was not merely a stock exchange or a negative accumulation for the treasury. “These are real people who choose privacy and hold their own keys,” Swihart wrote.
Swihart also argued that Zcash has a narrative problem. He said the “privacy coin” label placed ZEC in a category associated with delisting, regulatory scrutiny and institutional hesitation, while obscuring the actual proposition: opting in to protected payments, Bitcoin-style monetary policy, and verifiable private transactions.
He said the new framework around “unstoppable private money” made ZEC more visible to allocators and infrastructure providers. Swihart cited Robinhood’s listing, Multicoin’s disclosure of a position, Grayscale’s ETF filing and Inauguration of the foundry Zcash mining pool as examples of broader access and institutional participation.
ZODL raises $25 million as quantum work progresses
The organizational reassignment occurred in January 2026, when Swihart said the ECC team left to form Zcash Open Development Lab, or ZODL, after a dispute with Bootstrap’s board of directors. He said Zcash needs startup-style capital and speed to build consumer products at scale.
ZODL has since closed a $25 million round backed by Paradigm, a16z crypto, Winklevoss Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Cypherpunk Technologies, Chapter One, Balaji Srinivasan, and others. Swihart described the round as a strong signal of the team’s mission to expand Zcash adoption.
Near-term priorities now include user experience, scalability, and… Post-quantum readiness. Zodl is working on improved performance, more swap options, in-app and out-of-app coin holder polling, and in-demand user features, Swihart said. In terms of scalability, Zcash is targeting block times of 25 seconds, up from 75 seconds, while Tachyon aims to restructure the protocol around stateless wallets holding redundant zero-knowledge proofs.
“Net, Zcash will be faster, easier to use, more feature-rich, more scalable, and more post-quantum secure,” Swihart concluded.
At press time, ZEC was trading at $570.36.
Featured image created with DALL.E, a chart from TradingView.com
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