Zcash’s flagship mobile wallet Zashi is getting a new name — and a new corporate home. In a Feb. 16 post on X, the team behind Zashi announced the wallet will be renamed “Zodl” in the next app update. The developers stressed the change is nominal for users: “no action required,” the update will happen in-place, and the wallet, team and user experience will remain the same. “It’s a new brand for a new chapter, but everything else stays the same: the wallet, the team behind it, and our commitment to Zcash,” the post said. The rebrand follows a more consequential shift behind the scenes: the entire original Zcash engineering team that built Zashi formally left the Electric Coin Company (ECC) in January and has reorganized as Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL). The team framed the move as an effort to continue development and support for Zcash-native, privacy-first payments “without reliance on the Zcash development fund,” while keeping continuity on shipping and support. On mission, the team doubled down on privacy rhetoric familiar to long-time Zcash followers: “We envision a world without mass financial surveillance… There is no sovereignty without privacy. Our banner has changed, but our mission has not.” For end users the impact is small: the app will update in place, branding will roll out across channels (including support on Discord), and no configuration is required. The larger change is governance and ownership — Zodl will now be presented explicitly as a product of ZODL rather than ECC, following several weeks of public dispute about who could control, finance and commercialize consumer-facing efforts around Zashi. That public dispute traces back to a clash in late 2025 between ECC leadership and Bootstrap, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit that governs ECC. In early January, former ECC CEO Josh Swihart said board actions left the team “no viable path inside the existing structure,” and that decisions by four Bootstrap board members “forced every person at ECC to exit the company, very quickly.” Swihart framed the departures as unavoidable and consequential. Bootstrap, for its part, says the flashpoint centered on plans to move Zashi into a for-profit structure to attract outside capital — a transaction it viewed as a related-party deal involving nonprofit-controlled assets. In a public statement and timeline, Bootstrap said talks about external investment and “alternative structures to privatize Zashi” intensified in late October 2025 and accelerated in December amid rushed deadlines, incomplete documentation and nonprofit fiduciary constraints. According to Bootstrap’s timeline, matters “rapidly escalated” around Dec. 20 when the board faced a Jan. 1 deadline to approve a deal, followed by leadership departures in early January and the broader team exit soon after. Market snapshot: at press time, Zcash (ZEC) was trading at $284.34. Bottom line: For users, Zashi’s rename to Zodl is mainly cosmetic and operational continuity is promised. For the Zcash ecosystem, the move formalizes a split over governance and commercialization that could shape how wallet development and funding proceed going forward. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news

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