what's Electric Coin Co.?
Electric Coin Co. is a cryptography and engineering company focused on building privacy-enhancing technologies for digital currencies. Founded by Zooko Wilcox, the company invented Zcash, a blockchain protocol that enables private and transparent transactions using zero-knowledge proofs, specifically zk-SNARKs, to shield sender, receiver, and amount details while maintaining a verifiable public ledger. Their work emphasizes economic freedom and accessibility to open financial systems, regardless of location or background. The company supports Zcash's ecosystem through development of core protocol upgrades, wallets like Zashi, and integrations for seamless user experiences. Electric Coin Co. engages in regulatory discussions, responsible disclosure, and trademark protection to ensure the project's sustainability and compliance. Their engineering efforts also extend to full-stack solutions, including mobile apps for storing, sending, and receiving ZEC with optional shielded transactions for enhanced privacy.
Electric Coin Co. staff resigned Jan 8, 2026, amid governance dispute, following Dec 1 reorganization.
Links
x.com/electriccoincoAnnounced internal reorganization on December 1, 2025, consolidating core protocol and mobile engineering teams under a single lead and unifying all marketing and communications.
ZEC posts +15.12% gains, placing 5th in a list of top-performing cryptocurrencies.
Retroactive grant voting closes with 1.2m ZEC participating (7.5% of token holders, $500m+ in value), approving $2.7m for Zashi development, $48k for Unstoppable Wallet ZEC integration, and $10k for Bitcoin VN integration with shielded swaps, while rejecting $2m for Pepper-Sync and $800k for CrowdStore.
Representatives met with Washington DC legislators alongside Union and CESS_storage to discuss privacy in cryptocurrency regulation.
Governance reform eliminates automatic allocations to ECC and Zcash Foundation, transitioning to fully grants-based development fund (January-March). Wrapped ZEC launches on Solana via Zolana bridge, partnerships expand to Flexa, Maya Protocol, and Hyperliquid, while shielded transaction volumes rise 9x with 30%+ of supply now shielded (April-June). Grayscale Zcash Trust AUM grows 228% to $151M amid Bitcoin whale accumulation (July-September), and November halving reduces block rewards to 1.5625 ZEC.
Starknet proposes adding a STARK verifier to enable L2s to run on Zcash without touching L1, positioning the protocol as a competitor to both Bitcoin and Ethereum.
ECC unveils Q4 roadmap.
THORSwap adds $ZEC support, driving 130% price increase and attracting new whale investors this week.
$ZEC achieves +109% price gain over 7 days, ranking as the #1 top performer among the top 100 crypto projects.