Zcash Open Development Labs (ZODL), a new development group formed by the former core team of the Electric Coin Company (ECC), has raised over $25 million in seed funding to continue building a privacy-focused cryptocurrency ecosystem.
The round was backed 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 was formed after the entire ECC engineering and product team resigned in January amid a governance dispute with Bootstrap, the nonprofit committee that oversees ECC. The organization said the conflict made it difficult to continue working under the previous structure.
The team has since created ZODL to continue developing Zcash core software and tools.
One of the focuses is Zodl, a self-hosted mobile wallet formerly known as Zashi. The application allows users to hold ZEC and send shielded transactions, using zero-knowledge cryptography to hide the sender, receiver and transaction amount.
According to the project, the wallet has helped expand Zcash shielded pool activity by more than 400% since its launch in 2024. 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 expanded development. ZODL said it will continue to develop the Zcash protocol while building products designed to make private digital payments more accessible.
ECC itself remains under Bootstrap, while the engineers who build much of the network’s core software now operate through separate ZODL labs.
The price of ZEC has increased by more than 8.8% in the past 24 hours and is currently trading at $215. The overall crypto market has recovered, with the CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index rising by 3% in the same period.
Cypherpunk Technologies (CYPH), a digital asset finance company backed by the Winklevoss twins with a focus on ZEC, is up 2.7% during today’s trading session.
