Zcash Devs Sprint Ahead: New Wallet Launches After Electric Coin Company Exit

Developers aren't waiting around. Just months after cutting ties with the Electric Coin Company, the Zcash team has pushed a brand-new wallet live—proving decentralized development can move faster than corporate bureaucracy.

Building Outside The Castle Walls

The launch slashes through the typical roadmap delays. No more waiting for quarterly board approvals or stakeholder sign-offs. This is open-source agility: identify a need, code the solution, ship it. The new wallet focuses on core functionality—private transactions remain the non-negotiable heart of the project—while streamlining the user experience that sometimes lagged behind competitors.

Why This Speed Matters

In crypto, velocity is survival. Projects that iterate quickly capture mindshare and market share. This rapid deployment signals a healthy, active community capable of self-governance and execution. It answers the critical question whispered after the ECC split: 'Can they actually build without the founding company?' The wallet is a tangible 'yes.'

A Nod to the Pragmatists

Let's be real—another wallet launch doesn't exactly make Wall Street bankers tremble. But for a privacy-centric asset often debated more for its philosophical merits than its daily utility, a smooth, user-controlled tool is a step toward practical relevance. It's about making digital cash actually spendable, not just a speculative asset on a spreadsheet. After all, what's the point of perfect financial privacy if you never actually use the money?

The move is a defiant stride toward independence. It proves the protocol's development isn't housed in a single corporate office, but in a global collective of keyboards. The next phase? Seeing if users actually download it—because in the end, code is just theory until it's running in someone's pocket.

The new wallet, codenamed cashZ, will launch in the coming weeks. Swihart added that it WOULD be seamless for current Zashi users to move over to the new wallet. Of course, no technical details were given, but it was an attempt to reassure Zcash users after the sudden organizational change.

Zcash Team Leaves ECC Independently

The decision to leave Electric Coin Company was the result of internal conflicts focused on nonprofit laws and the organization’s governance structure. Swihart emphasized that despite the exit, the mission of the team remains the same.

“The entire team behind Zashi remains fully committed to Zcash’s development,” he said, emphasizing that no new tokens are being created. “We’re not launching a new thing; we focus on scaling Zcash.”

To do this, Swihart said, the group felt it was necessary to create a new, standalone organization focused solely on developing Zcash.

Zcash Embraces Fast-Growth Strategy

In a lengthy note published today on the project’s website, Swihart cited deeper motivations for the change. He called Zcash a child of the cypherpunk ideals of privacy and personal liberty and said it deserves an organization that fully understands and advocates on behalf of that mission.

He also argued that privacy in crypto should be considered commonplace, on the same footing as the privacy of physical cash. To this day, defending those rights requires a lean team able to MOVE fast and act decisively without getting bogged down by the labyrinth of nonprofit bureaucracy.

Swihart indicated a basic difference in emphases: nonprofits hang on to tight rules, while startups are designed to run fast and create new paths. He noted that the meeting of nonprofit foundations and tech startups has spurred periodic conflicts across the crypto space.

Another catalyst for change is the rising star that is ZEC. Swihart cites two years of building momentum, which have transformed the experiment into a breathing, mutating organism. If Zcash is to take a seat at the same table as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, it needs to adopt a system designed to scale.

Zcash Price Sees Small Bounce

The corporate upheaval sent the ZEC price into a tailspin, plummeting more than 21% as the dust settled, slipping under the $400 mark on Thursday.

The ZEC did nudge upward in early Friday trading following the wallet reveal, briefly flirting with the $430 mark. Yet the token stays well shy of its record highs. From its 2016 peak of $3,191, ZEC has fallen roughly 86%, and it sits about 38% below its 2025 high NEAR $700, according to CoinGecko data.

Despite the unpredictable tide of price movement, the swift response from the development team and focus on ZEC might spur a sense of rejuvenated trust in the long-time supporters of the privacy coin.