Zcash News: Ex-Devs Debuts “cashZ” Wallet Following New Startup Launch

Zcash’s former developers have announced that they have launched a new project which is centered on the privacy coin. They also launched a new wallet as part of the new project.

Former Zcash Team Reorganizes After ECC Exit

The team who developed Zashi are now ready to contribute to another new company after resigning from the Electric Coin Company (ECC)

This was confirmed by Josh Swihart, ex-chief executive officer of the ECC, the body which managed Zashi. The team of engineers who developed the protocol launched a for-profit startup known as CashZ. Currently, they are working on its first product. This is a new wallet which can be directly derived from the codebase of Zashi.

We are all in on Zcash.
We need to scale Zcash to billions of users.
Startups can scale, but nonprofits can't.
That's why we created a new Zcash startup.https://t.co/ZurjfTxnPi pic.twitter.com/ksnwLewpPp

— Josh Swihart 🛡 (@jswihart) January 8, 2026

This was less than a day after Swihart announced that the whole staff at ECC has stepped down. This was due to some issues involving its board of directors over some disputes,

Despite this division within the Zcash organization, Swihart was quick to state that there has been no change in the goals for this team. There shall be neither awouldblockchain or a new token. There woulc also be no attempt to divide the ecosystem.

CashZ has recently rolled out a brand new website. The group has explained their plans for a smooth transition process for individuals who were previously using the website known as Zashi.

“After you’ve joined the waitlist, just sit tight for a few weeks while we boot up cashZ. Once it’s live, we’ll make sure the migration for every Zashi user is as easy as what you experience in Zashi today,” the website said.

Swihart is pretty candid regarding his thoughts on the role of non-profits in the crypto development process. He feels that the systems of governance developed in these times of regulatory challenges are now holding back innovation.

Foundation Responds to Developments

In a recent X thread, the Zcash Foundation made it very public that no single organization is in control of the network. The foundation let it be known that, from the node operators down to many independent contributors, the blockchain was intentionally globally distributed.

It basically just proved that the network remains the same. It has also continued with operations as usual after recent organizational changes. Blocks are being produced, transactions are settling as they should, and user privacy is intact.

“This structure ensures that changes within a single organization or across many of them, while meaningful, do not compromise the integrity or continuity of the Zcash blockchain,” they shared.

More recent proposals stress adaptability in the Zcash’s structure. Very recently, Shielded Labs proposed the shifting of the transaction fee structure from a static median-based dynamic fee structure. The fees are meant to vary depending on the level of transactions in the previous blocks.