Zcash Falls 16% as ECC Team Exits Bootstrap Governance Rift
- Zcash price dropped 16% as the daily chart confirmed a strong technical breakdown.
- The entire Electric Coin Company team exited Bootstrap after governance disputes.
- Developers plan a new firm while the Zcash protocol remains open source and active.
Zcash fell hard as the daily chart showed a breakdown, and as CEO Josh Swihart said, the entire Electric Coin Company team left Bootstrap. The ZEC/USDT pair closed near $393.98 on Binance, down 16.09%, according to TradingView data. The session opened around $469.54, topped near $483.63, then dropped to about $381.00 before the close.
The daily structure shows Zcash shifting from a strong rally into a corrective phase. Price previously pushed toward the $700 area in November, then momentum stalled. That high swing set the anchor for the Fibonacci retracement levels shown on the chart.
Source: TradingView
Since then, price has traded below a wide gray resistance zone centered roughly between $540 and $575. Zcash tried to recover into that area during late December and early January. The move did not hold, and the price turned lower again.
Technical Levels Show Rejection and Key Support at Risk
After the November peak, Zcash declined into early December. From that low, price climbed inside a rising parallel channel marked by two upward-sloping trendlines. The channel tracked higher lows and higher highs into early 2026, before the latest sell-off broke the lower boundary.
The drop also took the price below the 0.382 Fibonacci level near $466.59. Zcash then failed to hold the 0.236 retracement around $401.10. The close near $393.98 left the price just above that 0.236 level, which keeps the market near a closely watched support zone.
If price slips further, the next major reference on the chart sits near the 0.0 retracement around $295.23. On the upside, the 0.5 level near $519.53 lines up with the shaded resistance band. Above that, the 0.618 level sits near $572.46, followed by 0.786 around $647.82 and the full retracement near $743.82.
Related: Zcash Bulls Test: ZEC Rally Meets Critical Resistance as Institutional Demand Surges
Governance Split Adds Pressure as Leaders Give Different Views
As markets absorbed the price move, Swihart said the full Electric Coin Company team left Bootstrap and plans to form a new company. “Yesterday, the entire ECC team left,” he said. “In short, the terms of our employment were changed in ways that made it impossible for us to perform our duties effectively and with integrity,” he added.
Swihart said the dispute followed what he described as misalignment with Zcash’s mission among most Bootstrap board members. He named Zaki Manian, Christina Garman, Alan Fairless, and Michelle Lai of ZCAM. He also said the decision aimed to protect the team’s work from governance actions he described as harmful.
The departing developers said they plan to build what Swihart called “unstoppable private money,” while keeping the same privacy and censorship resistance focus. Swihart also said the Zcash protocol remains unaffected because the codebase is open source and no single company controls the network. He added that public listings naming him as Bootstrap executive director were outdated.
Zcash founder and former ECC CEO Zooko Wilcox backed the Bootstrap board and said Zcash remains permissionless, secure, and safe to use. With the chart breaking down and the development team split now public, can Zcash steady its roadmap while price tests the $401.10 area again?
