Zcash Developer Activity 2021 Low, ZEC Drops 40% Amid Management Controversy
Developer activity related to privacy-focused cryptocurrency Zcash has fallen to its lowest level in years, as governance disputes and prolonged price declines weigh on the project's ecosystem.
Data shared by market intelligence firm Sentiment in a Thursday X post shows that since November 2021, developer activity tied to Zcash has dropped to its weakest level. At the same time, the Zcash (ZEC) token has fallen by 40% in the past two months.
“Historically, increased growth activity leads to prominent altcoins outperforming the pack. The opposite effect is true for those who ‘let off the gas' and are constantly innovating and improving,” Sentiment said.
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The slowing developer activity comes amid a governance dispute between the electric coin company, the main development team behind Zcash, and Bootstrap, which supports the protocol.
The electric coin company recently said it will separate from Bootstrap and form a new company, citing what it described as “malicious management practices,” Cointelegraph reported Thursday.
In its official response, Bootstrap said board members discussed Zash, a self-guarding crypto wallet built for private Zcash transactions, to “privatize foreign investments and alternative structures.”
On Thursday, ECC developers announced that they are working on a new wallet, cashZ, which will launch in “a few weeks.”
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The open source nature of the Zcash protocol is undisputed: Zcash Foundation
In response to the governance crisis, the Zcash Foundation assured investors that the privacy protection protocol will not be affected by governance disputes thanks to the Zcash open source codebase designed to be “resilient” so that no single party can control the protocol.
“This structure ensures that changes in one or more organizations, even if meaningful, do not compromise the integrity or continuity of the Zcash blockchain,” wrote the foundation in a response published on Thursday.
Despite the confirmation, the price of the Zcash token has fallen by 14% in the past week, and at the time of writing it is trading at $433.
Still, whales are undaunted by the management controversy, as whales added a total of $1.17 million worth of ZEC tokens last week, while fresh wallets added $2.14 million, according to crypto information platform Nansen.
Privacy coin Zcash competitor Monero (XMR) on Thursday surpassed the market capitalization of ZEC, according to CoinMarketCap, regained the position of the leading privacy-preserving cryptocurrency.
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