A day after the Electric Coin Company (ECC) announced its breakup, the team behind Zashi said it is spinning out into a new, Zcash-focused company and will relaunch the Zashi wallet under a new code name: cashZ. What they’re doing - The new wallet, cashZ, will reuse the Zashi codebase. The team opened a waitlist for early access and told current Zashi users that migration will be designed to feel seamless once cashZ ships “in a few weeks.” - The announcement was signed by Josh Swihart and emphasizes the team’s continued commitment to Zcash: “The entire team that worked at Electric Coin Company and built Zashi is still 100% focused on full-stack Zcash development,” they wrote. “We aren’t launching any new coins, we’re just scaling Zcash.” Why they left ECC The developers framed the split as necessary to accelerate Zcash growth and preserve the project’s privacy-first ethos. They listed three core reasons for forming a standalone company: 1. Cypherpunk roots and privacy as a civil-liberties issue — The post called recent regulatory pressures “a decade of compliance theater,” arguing that privacy tools are more than a technical preference and sometimes require organizations to actively push back against unjust laws. 2. Governance and incentive alignment — The team argued that mixing nonprofit structures with venture-style startups creates chronic misalignment. They said nonprofits often focus on “rule-lawyering” while startups “rewrite the rules,” and warned of increased scrutiny around U.S. nonprofits and risks to tax-exempt status. 3. A need to scale — The objective is to grow Zcash to a size where it can’t be marginalized: “to be so small they can’t see you, or so big they can’t stop you,” the post said. Positioning and strategy - The developers described Zcash as undergoing “a complete rebirth” over the past two years, citing contributions from community members and projects including Sean Bowe, genzcash, and Shielded Labs, plus others who preferred to remain unnamed. - They positioned the new company as a lean, execution-focused vehicle better able to pursue “cypherpunk leadership” and move quickly without organizational friction. - The immediate, tangible deliverable is cashZ; the team said “actions will speak louder than words” and urged users to join the waitlist as they “boot up” the new wallet and push toward “onboarding billions to Zcash.” Market note At press time ZEC had recovered some losses from yesterday’s drop and was trading around $436. Bottom line: The Zashi team has formally split from ECC to form a dedicated Zcash company and relaunch the wallet as cashZ, emphasizing a sharper focus on privacy, faster governance, and aggressive scaling to mainstream Zcash adoption. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news