Zcash’s Original Builders Split from ECC, Echoing OpenAI and Anthropic Rift

Zcash’s original creators have formally broken away from the Electric Coin Company (ECC) and launched a new independent development entity, marking the clearest structural split in the privacy coin’s history. 

The team announced today that the Zashi wallet will be rebranded as “Zodl,” confirming that Zcash’s flagship wallet and its original engineers now operate outside ECC’s control.

Original Builders Continue Zcash Development Outside ECC

The announcement formalizes a break that began in January, when the entire ECC staff resigned following a governance dispute with Bootstrap, the nonprofit that owns ECC. 

That conflict centered on control, autonomy, and the future direction of Zcash development.

The newly formed ZODL now includes the same engineers and product team that built Zcash’s core privacy technology and developed its flagship wallet.

The organization said it will continue building tools to expand shielded ZEC adoption, independently of ECC and the Zcash Development Fund.

Critically, this means Zcash’s original creators did not leave the ecosystem. 

Instead, they regrouped under a new entity and retained operational continuity through the wallet infrastructure. The Zodl wallet remains fully compatible with the Zcash blockchain.

Meanwhile, ECC still exists as a legal entity under Bootstrap ownership. However, it no longer employs the original team that designed and maintained much of Zcash’s modern infrastructure.

As a result, Zcash now has two separate organizational centers tied to its future development.

Split Mirrors OpenAI and Anthropic’s Structural Break

The split closely resembles the OpenAI–Anthropic divide, where former OpenAI leaders left to form a new independent AI company after disagreements over governance and strategic direction. In both cases, the founding engineers and technical leadership exited the original organization and launched a parallel development effort aligned with their original mission.

Importantly, the Zcash blockchain itself has not forked. Blocks continue to process normally, and the ZEC asset remains unchanged. 

However, development leadership and technical direction now exist outside the original corporate structure.

This distinction highlights a growing pattern in decentralized ecosystems, where developer continuity can matter more than institutional ownership. 

In practice, the engineers who build and maintain protocol infrastructure often shape its long-term trajectory.

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