<div id="readability-page-1"><div><div><p>Source: Josh Swihart, founder of Zcash wallet ZOLD (formerly Zashi); Translated by: Jinse Finance Claw</p><p> I enjoy reading various theories about why Zcash has been consistently strong over the past year. But few people delve into the details. Let's look back three years, and I'll try to explain why this phenomenon occurred and how it has evolved to its current state. Three years ago, Zcash offered revolutionary cryptographic technology, but the overall situation was less than ideal. The price of ZEC was around $30 and remained at that level for a considerable period. Less than 11% of the supply was shielded. The community forums were in poor condition, dominated by governance disputes and internal conflicts. At the time, two organizations (ECC and Zcash Foundation) had de facto veto power over the evolution of the protocol through a US trademark agreement. Simultaneously, these two organizations continued to receive funding from a fixed development fund, which was not directly related to actual implementation. Today, ZEC is priced at approximately $600, an increase of about 1500% in a year. About 31% of the supply (over $3 billion in USD) is in a user-custodied, shielded state. The percentage of shielded transactions rose to 86.5% by mid-March. Tachyon was incorporated into a community-coordinated scaling plan and received funding. NU6 completely abandoned its direct funding model and reset the protocol's long-term funding mechanism. ZODL completed a $25 million funding round from institutions such as Paradigm, a16z crypto, Winklevoss Capital, and Coinbase Ventures. None of this happened by chance. Below are the key &#34;unlocking points&#34; and the reasons for the accelerated growth. </p><h2>The Governance Unlock</h2><p>For the first eight years of Zcash's existence, it allocated 20% of each block reward to two fixed organizations: the ECC and the Zcash Foundation (later known as the Zcash Community Funding Program). This created a vested interest monopoly. These organizations controlled governance and had no real pressure to increase their influence. The community also lacked any effective means to redistribute resources. I witnessed firsthand the impact of this distorted incentive mechanism during my time working at the ECC.</p><p>The situation changed. In May 2024, the ECC unilaterally announced that it would no longer accept direct funding. This move forced a solution to the problem. The old model could not withstand the refusal of its biggest beneficiaries. Network Upgrade 6 (NU6) reduced direct funding and allocated 8% of the funds to the Zcash Community Fund (ZCG) for ecosystem funding; while depositing 12% of the funds into a protocol-controlled lockbox for ZEC holders to retroactively distribute funding to those who made tangible contributions.</p><p> This model explicitly stipulates time limits. The 8% and 12% funds will expire after the third halving at the end of 2028. The community can decide whether to renew, but this is not mandatory, as an overwhelming consensus from the community is required to decide whether to continue providing these funds in any way. Then, in August 2024, the ECC officially notified the termination of the trademark agreement. This allowed the ECC and ZF to exercise 2/2 multi-signature control over the agreement. Six months later, the Zcash Foundation (ZF) announced that it would no longer use the trademark for governance. The monopoly on Zcash governance was broken, and token holders and other groups in the ecosystem were able to voice their opinions. No single institution, including ZF's ZCAP, could monopolize the decision-making power of community opinion. Zcash was finally released. In January 2024, we (then the ECC) shifted our focus to user adoption. This decision represents a radical shift, a stark departure from the direction of previous years. For years, the engineering team focused on cryptographic research, the core protocol, and providing superior cryptographic privacy for Zcash, but new users were scarce. In fact, by 2023, the community had even shrunk. On the X forum, Zcashers users complained about stagnant prices and regulatory issues, questioning whether &#34;privacy coins&#34; would eventually see a breakthrough. 60% of posts on the X forum were negative or neutral. A survey of users conducted by ZURE (aka @peacemongerz, current Head of Marketing at ZODL) showed that ZEC holders had an NPS score as low as -60, indicating significant dissatisfaction. We listened to our users and began building the features they truly needed. This has always been our guiding light, directing the development of the Zodl wallet, the Zallet CLI wallet, and every aspect of the core protocol. Zashi (later renamed Zodl), launched in March 2024, is the most prominent embodiment of our new strategy: default encryption, hardware support, and exchange with other tokens. We've built a world-class private currency with a clean and user-friendly interface. The impact is evident. By the end of 2025, the transaction-shielded ZEC supply had grown from approximately 11% to approximately 30%, an increase of over 400% in absolute ZEC value. All tokens in this pool are held in custody by their owners. The transaction-shielded proportion had climbed to 86.5% by mid-March. Since last October, the Zodl wallet has processed over $600 million in ZEC swap transactions. This is not centralized trading activity, nor is it asset accumulation by a treasury holding assets without ever touching the blockchain. These are genuine individuals choosing to protect their privacy and hold their own keys. </p><p><img src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://img.jinse.com.cn/7463933_watermarknone.png?x-oss-process=image/auto-orient,1/interlace,1/resize,w_1440,h_1440/quality,q_95/format,jpg" width="600" height="396" original-src="https://imageproxy.pbkrs.com/https://img.jinse.com.cn/7463933_watermarknone.png"/></p><h2>Narrative Unlock</h2><p>Zcash's positioning was problematic. The label of &#34;privacy coin&#34; categorized it as something that would lead to its delisting by exchanges, scrutiny by regulators, and avoidance by institutions. The project's true value was overshadowed by the concept of &#34;selective crypto payments under a Bitcoin-style monetary policy,&#34; whose encryption technology ensures both the verifiability of crypto transactions and the protection of privacy.</p><p>Today, Zcash has become an unstoppable private currency and one of the most important projects globally.</p><p> Zcash is the protocol, ZEC is the asset, and Zodl is the gateway that unlocks trading channels through privacy protection, granting users freedom of speech, freedom of trade, and autonomy. This is its structural advantage. The protocol is community-governed, the scarce asset is used for private storage of value and can be used for consumption, and the gateway can compete based on product quality, without being subject to protocol governance. This is the unstoppable trinity of private currency. Using this framework, exchanges, ETF issuers, and infrastructure providers can support the asset without taking a stance on how users use the protocol. This is crucial for opening up ZEC access across various chains. Robinhood's listing, Multicoin's disclosure of holdings, Grayscale's ETF filings, and Foundry's launch of a Zcash mining pool are all documented here. Now, investors who previously couldn't appreciate its value can understand its value proposition. </p><h2>Organizational Unlock</h2><p>In January 2026, the entire ECC team resigned due to a dispute with the board of directors of Bootstrap, a US nonprofit organization (a 501(c) 3 organization), and formed the Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL). The core of the dispute was a power struggle: whether a small group of uninvolved board members or the team itself was better suited to make the decisions needed to expand ZEC to billions of users. The board prioritized its own interests, forcing the team to leave and join a mission-driven organizational structure.</p><p>Nonprofit organizations struggle to scale. Zcash needs to build consumer products at startup speed, requiring startup-level funding, rapid hiring, and efficient decision-making.</p><p> ZODL raised $25 million from Paradigm, a16z crypto, Winklevoss Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Cypherpunk Technologies, Chapter One, Balaji Srinivasan, and other institutions, powerfully demonstrating the strength and recognition of the team and its mission to scale. The entire industry seems to have united like the &#34;Avengers.&#34; The strongest indicator of market sentiment is the size of protected liquidity pools. People are moving ZEC to self-protected accounts and protected addresses not for reselling, but because they trust and believe in ZEC's value; they value ZEC. The pool share has grown from 11% to 31%, representing hundreds of thousands of individuals choosing to custody their funds and protect their privacy. LunarCrush data shows that ZEC discussion has increased by 15,245% in the past year, while Bitcoin discussion has increased by 190%. ZEC ranks second in the entire cryptocurrency market (AltRank #2). The market sentiment index reaches a positive value of 81%. GitHub contribution speed increased by approximately 20% year-on-year. Forum posts have clearly shifted from governance complaints to discussions about products and technology. </p><h2>Future Directions (Where Now)<br/></h2><p>In short, the three short-term priorities are: user experience, scalability, and post-quantum security adaptation.</p><p>In the Zodl project, we will further optimize the user experience: improve overall performance, enrich exchange options, improve the asset inbound and outbound process, and launch more features that users have long requested, without sacrificing product usability. @zkDragon and his team have also joined the collaboration to help further improve the ecosystem, including the development and performance optimization of on-chain voting functionality for wallet holders.</p><p>Scalability upgrades will be implemented through faster block generation (block interval reduced from 75 seconds to 25 seconds) and the Tachyon protocol, led by @ebfull and his engineering team. Tachyon reconstructs the protocol architecture around a stateless wallet with recursive zero-knowledge proofs, completely eliminating the synchronization bottleneck that has hindered the popularization of privacy assets for many years, with throughput targets comparable to Visa and Mastercard.</p><p> During this process, the official team will gradually phase out the outdated zcashd consensus nodes and fully migrate to the modern zebrad node software maintained by the Zcash Foundation and developed based on Rust. Simultaneously, the Zodl-developed Zallet command-line wallet will be launched. The quantum recoverable wallet is expected to officially launch within a month, and the complete post-quantum security plan will be implemented within 12-18 months, building a strong security defense for user assets and addressing the cryptographic security iterations that all formal financial systems will face in the next decade. The above timelines are based on the current R&amp;D progress and pace. Subsequent network upgrades will incorporate these key plans into protocol iterations in batches according to maturity, with specific details still being discussed and finalized through the ZIP proposal mechanism. In short, Zcash will be faster, easier to operate, more feature-rich, more scalable, and equipped with post-quantum security protection in the future. </p><h2>Development Landscape</h2><p>The vitality and growth of the ecosystem today are rooted in the key decisions made in 2023–2024, and the continuous and in-depth accumulation thereafter. We restructured inefficient funding and governance mechanisms, created products with excellent user reputation, and continuously led the iterative evolution of the Zcash protocol. With clear goals and firm principles throughout, the entire ecosystem has been able to grow steadily.</p><p>Three years ago, many people questioned whether Zcash could survive; now, everyone is discussing how large it can grow. And I have no doubt about it: we will ultimately prevail.</p></div></div></div>

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<p>The Zcash wallet ZOLD's founder, Josh Swihart, reflects on ZEC's remarkable recovery from $30 to $600 over three years. Initially plagued by governance issues and low adoption, Zcash has seen a 1500% price increase, with 31% of its supply now shielded. Key changes included a shift in governance, reducing direct funding to the ECC, and a focus on user adoption. The launch of Zodl, a user-friendly wallet, marked a significant strategy shift, emphasizing user needs and privacy features, contributing to ZEC's resurgence in the market.</p>

- Zcash has experienced significant growth over the past three years, with its price increasing from around $30 to approximately $600, and the percentage of shielded transactions rising to 86.5%.  
- Key changes include a shift in governance after the ECC ceased direct funding, a focus on user adoption, and the formation of the Zcash Open Development Lab, which secured $25 million in funding to accelerate product development.  
- Future priorities include enhancing user experience, scalability through faster block generation, and implementing post-quantum security measures to strengthen asset protection.

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From $30 to $600: ZOLD founder deconstructs ZEC's three-year comeback.