Zcash’s original creators have formally separated from Electric Coin Company and launched a new independent entity called ZODL, marking the clearest structural split in the privacy coin’s history.
The team confirmed that the Zashi wallet will be rebranded as Zodl, placing Zcash’s flagship wallet and its original engineers outside ECC’s control following a governance dispute with Bootstrap, the nonprofit owner of ECC.
The announcement formalises a break that began in January when the entire ECC staff resigned, citing disagreements over control, autonomy and the future direction of Zcash development.
ZODL now includes the same engineers and product leaders who built Zcash’s core privacy technology and said it will continue expanding shielded ZEC adoption independently of ECC and the Zcash Development Fund.
Although the organisational structure has changed, the Zcash blockchain has not forked, blocks continue to process normally and the ZEC asset remains technically unchanged.
ECC continues to exist as a legal entity under Bootstrap ownership but no longer employs the original team responsible for much of Zcash’s modern infrastructure, creating two parallel centres of influence within the ecosystem.
The split has been compared to the divide between OpenAI and Anthropic, where founding engineers departed over governance disputes yet continued development under a new independent structure aligned with their original mission.
At the time of reporting, Zcash price was $293.28.