From $30 to $600: ZOLD Founder Breaks Down ZEC's Three-Year Comeback Journey

Source: Josh Swihart, founder of Zcash Wallet ZOLD (formerly Zashi); compiled by Golden Finance Claw

I really enjoy reading these theories about why Zcash has continued to strengthen over the past year or more. But few people ask about the details. Let’s look back over the past three years, and I will try to explain why this phenomenon occurred and how it has gradually evolved to the present.

Three years ago, Zcash already offered groundbreaking cryptographic technology, but the overall situation was not ideal. The price of ZEC was about $30, and it remained at that level for quite some time. Less than 11% of the supply was in shielded (private) transactions. The community forum was in poor shape, mainly dominated by governance disputes and internal conflicts.

At that time, two organizations (ECC and the Zcash Foundation) had actual veto power over protocol development through a U.S. trademark agreement. Meanwhile, these two entities continued to receive funding from a fixed development fund, which was not directly tied to actual execution results.

Today, ZEC is about $600, up roughly 1500% in a year. About 31% of the supply (worth over $3 billion USD) is in user-controlled shielded wallets. The proportion of shielded transactions rose to 86.5% in mid-March. Tachyon was incorporated into the community scaling plan and received funding support. NU6 completely eliminated direct funding models and reset the protocol’s long-term funding mechanism. ZODL completed a $25 million funding round from Paradigm, a16z crypto, Winklevoss Capital, and Coinbase Ventures.

None of this is accidental. Below are the key “unlock points” and reasons for the accelerated growth.

Governance Mechanism Unlock (The Governance Unlock)

In the first eight years of Zcash, 20% of each block reward was allocated to two fixed organizations (later also called Zcash Community Grants). This created a monopoly of vested interests. These organizations controlled governance and had no real pressure to increase their influence. The community also had no effective way to reallocate resources. I personally witnessed the impact of this distorted incentive mechanism during my time at ECC.

Things changed. In May 2024, ECC unilaterally announced it would no longer accept direct funding. This forced the issue to be resolved. The previous model could not withstand the scenario where its biggest beneficiaries refused to participate. Network upgrade NU6 reduced direct funding and allocated 8% of the funds into the Zcash Community Fund (ZCG) for ecosystem grants; simultaneously, 12% was deposited into a protocol-controlled escrow, allowing ZEC holders to retroactively distribute funds to those who made tangible contributions.

This model explicitly set a time limit. The 8% and 12% funds will mature after the third halving in late 2028. The community can decide whether to renew, but it’s not automatic, as it requires overwhelming community consensus to continue providing these funds in any form.

Then, in August 2024, ECC officially issued a notice to terminate the trademark agreement. This enabled ECC and ZF to control the protocol via 2/2 multisignature. Six months later, the Zcash Foundation (ZF) announced it would no longer use the trademark for governance. The monopoly over Zcash governance was broken, allowing token holders and other ecosystem groups to voice their opinions. No single entity, including ZF’s ZCAP, can dominate community decision-making.

Zcash was finally released.

Product Unlock

In January 2024, we (then ECC) shifted our development focus toward user adoption. This was a fundamental change, a stark departure from previous years’ development directions.

For years, the engineering team focused on cryptography research, core protocol development, and providing excellent cryptographic privacy for Zcash, but few new users joined. In fact, by 2023, the community even shrank.

On the X forum, Zcash users complained about stagnant prices and regulatory issues, questioning whether “privacy coins” would eventually find a development opportunity. Over 60% of posts on X were negative or neutral. A survey by ZURE (also known as @peacemongerz, now ZODL marketing lead) showed ZEC holders’ NPS score as low as -60, indicating strong dissatisfaction.

We listened to user feedback and began building features that users truly need. This has always been our guiding principle, leading us to develop the Zodl wallet, Zallet CLI wallet, and various core protocol improvements.

Zashi (later renamed Zodl) launched in March 2024, representing our new strategic direction: default encryption, hardware support, and token swaps with other assets. We aimed to create a world-class private currency with a simple, user-friendly interface.

The impact is clear. By the end of 2025, the proportion of ZEC in shielded transactions increased from about 11% to roughly 30%, representing over 400% growth in absolute terms. All tokens in this pool are self-custodied by owners. The proportion of shielded transactions reached 86.5% in mid-March. Since October last year, the Zodl wallet has handled over $600 million worth of ZEC swaps. These are not centralized exchanges or treasury holdings that never touch the blockchain. They are genuine individual choices to protect privacy and hold their own keys.

Narrative Unlock

Zcash’s positioning was problematic. The “privacy coin” label caused it to be categorized into a class that exchanges delist, regulators scrutinize, and institutions avoid. Its true value was buried under the concept of “selective encrypted payments under Bitcoin-like monetary policy,” where its cryptography ensures verifiable encrypted transactions while protecting privacy.

Now, Zcash has become an unstoppable private currency and one of the most important projects globally. Zcash is the protocol, ZEC is the asset, and Zodl is the gateway that unlocks transaction channels through privacy protection, empowering users with free speech, transaction freedom, and autonomy. This is its structural advantage. The protocol is community-managed, scarce assets store value privately and can be used for consumption, and the gateway can compete based on product quality without being constrained by protocol governance. This trifecta makes private currency unstoppable.

Using this framework, exchanges, ETF issuers, and infrastructure providers can support the asset without taking a stance on how users utilize the protocol. This is crucial for enabling ZEC access across different chains. Listing on Robinhood, disclosures by Multicoin, Grayscale ETF filings, and Foundry launching Zcash mining pools—all help investors who previously couldn’t recognize its value understand its proposition.

Organizational Structure Unlock

In January 2026, the entire ECC team resigned due to disputes with the board of the U.S. nonprofit Bootstrap (a 501©3 organization), and established the Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL). The core dispute centered on control: whether a small group of inactive board members or the team itself was better suited to make decisions needed to promote ZEC to hundreds of millions of users. The board prioritized its own interests, forcing the team to leave and join a mission-driven organizational structure.

Nonprofit organizations struggle to scale. Zcash needs to develop consumer products at startup speed, requiring startup-level funding, rapid hiring, and efficient decision-making. ZODL raised $25 million from Paradigm, a16z crypto, Winklevoss Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Cypherpunk Technologies, Chapter One, Balaji Srinivasan, and others, demonstrating the strength and recognition of the team and its mission to scale. The entire industry seems to have united like an “Avengers” team.

Current Market Sentiment

The strongest indicator of market sentiment is the size of the protected funds pool. Moving ZEC into self-custody accounts and protected addresses isn’t for resale, but because holders trust and believe in ZEC’s value, valuing privacy. The funds pool share grew from 11% to 31%, representing hundreds of thousands of individuals choosing to custody and protect their privacy.

LunarCrush data shows ZEC discussion volume increased by 15,245% over the past year, while Bitcoin’s discussion volume grew by 190%. ZEC ranks second in the entire crypto market (AltRank #2). The market sentiment index reached 81% positive. GitHub contributions increased by about 20% year-over-year. Forum posts have shifted from governance complaints to product and technical discussions.

Future Direction (Where Now)

In short, three immediate priorities: user experience, scalability, and post-quantum security adaptation.

In the Zodl project, we will further optimize user experience: improve overall performance, expand swap options, refine asset on/off-ramp processes, and launch more features aligned with long-term user demands—all without sacrificing ease of use. @zkDragon and his team have joined the collaboration, helping to further improve the ecosystem, including developing on-chain voting features for wallets and performance enhancements.

Scalability upgrades will be driven by faster block times (reducing block interval from 75 seconds to 25 seconds) and the implementation of the Tachyon protocol, led by @ebfull and his engineering team. Tachyon reworks the protocol around a stateless wallet carrying recursive zero-knowledge proofs, eliminating the synchronization bottleneck that has hindered privacy asset adoption for years, aiming for throughput levels comparable to Visa and Mastercard. During this process, the old zcashd consensus nodes will be phased out gradually, replaced by the modernized zebrad nodes maintained by the Zcash Foundation and developed in Rust, along with the launch of Zodl’s self-developed Zallet CLI wallet.

A quantum-resilient wallet is expected to go live within a month, with full post-quantum security features planned for 12–18 months, strengthening user asset security against future cryptographic upgrades that all legitimate financial systems will face in the coming decade. These timelines are based on current development progress and pace.

Subsequent network upgrades will incorporate these key plans in phases, depending on maturity, through the ZIP proposal process.

In summary, Zcash’s future will be faster, easier to operate, more feature-rich, more scalable, and equipped with post-quantum security defenses.

Development Landscape

Today’s ecosystem vitality and growth are rooted in the key decisions made in 2023–2024 and the ongoing efforts since then. We restructured inefficient funding and governance mechanisms, built highly regarded user products, and continuously led the evolution of the Zcash protocol. With clear goals and firm principles, the entire ecosystem has steadily expanded.

Three years ago, many questioned whether Zcash could survive; now, everyone discusses how large it can grow. And I have no doubt: we will ultimately succeed.