🚨 just had one of the biggest governance shocks in crypto history.
Not a hack. Not a chain failure. Not a fork.
The entire Electric Coin Company team resigned at once.
Here’s what actually happened 👇🧵
📅 On Jan 7, 2026, every single employee of ECC — the core dev org behind since 2016 — stepped down simultaneously.
This wasn’t a layoff. This wasn’t a reshuffle. This was a coordinated exit.
Why?
⚠️ According to ECC CEO Josh Swish article, the team was “constructively discharged” by the Bootstrap board majority.
In legal terms:
Working conditions were changed so severely that leaving became the only rational option.
A swish article says the board:
• Restricted ECC’s autonomy
• Blocked roadmap execution
• Shifted away from Zcash’s original privacy-first mission
• Created deep strategic misalignment
Result: The builders walked.
He publicly named board members involved in the decision:
– Zaki Mania not
– Christina Garman
– Alan Fairless
– Michelle Lai
This wasn’t quiet.
This wasn’t subtle.
This was a rupture.
🛠 What happens to the devs now?
The former ECC team says they may form a new independent company focused on privacy-preserving financial tech.
No name yet. No timeline. But the intent is clear:
Builders ≠ Governance.
🧠 Wilcox ( founder) responded calmly.
He emphasized:
• is open-source
• Permissionless
• Decentralized
• Technically unaffected
No board can “break” the protocol.
And he’s right.
⚙️ From a technical perspective:
• Network is live
• Nodes are running
• Shielded tx still work
• No rollback
• No halt
• No exploit
This is a governance crisis — not a protocol failure.
📉 Market reaction?
Immediate.
Zechariah dropped ~10–20% within hours, falling from ~480–500 to ~400–420 depending on exchange.
Context matters:
Zechariah had already After an 800%+ run in 2025, turbulence was bound to show up.
Moves like this don’t happen in calm markets.
