Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL), a new development group formed by the former Electric Coin Company (ECC) core team, has raised over $25 million in seed funding to continue building the privacy-focused cryptocurrency ecosystem.
The round was supported by Paradigm, a16z crypto, Winklevoss Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Cypherpunk Technologies, Chapter One, Balaji Srinivasan and several crypto and technology angel investors.
ZODL was founded by former ECC CEO Josh Swihart. The lab emerged after ECC’s entire engineering and product team resigned in January following a governance dispute with Bootstrap, the nonprofit board that oversees ECC. The group said the conflict made it difficult to continue its work under the previous structure.
The team has since created ZODL to continue developing the core Zcash software and tools.
One focus is Zodl, a self-custodial mobile wallet formerly known as Zashi. The app allows users to hold ZEC and send shielded transactions, which hide the sender, recipient, and transaction amount using zero-knowledge cryptography.
Since its launch in 2024, the wallet has helped expand activity in the Zcash protected pool by more than 400%, according to the project. The app has also processed more than $600 million in ZEC swaps since October, according to the team behind it.
The new funding will support the hiring of engineers and the expansion of development. ZODL says it will continue to work on the Zcash protocol while creating products designed to make private digital payments easier to use.
ECC itself remains under Bootstrap, while the engineers who built much of the network’s core software now operate through the independent ZODL lab.
ZEC price has risen more than 8.8% in the last 24-hour period to now trade at $215, amid a broader crypto market recovery that has seen the CoinDesk 20 Index (CD20) rise 3% in the same period.
Cypherpunk Technologies (CYPH), a digital asset treasury company backed by the Winklevoss twins that focuses on ZEC, rose 2.7% in today’s trading session.
