Zcash has risen more than 2,300% in a year and sits inside the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization list, as per CoinGecko data. A prominent critic has argued that the record says nothing about whether the coin earned the position.
The case rests on four things that are matters of record rather than opinion: how the coin was launched, how its funding was structured afterwards, how its development organization collapsed in January, and a vulnerability that sat in its main privacy pool for roughly four years.
Chun Wang, posting as @satofishi, set out the argument on September 8, criticizing the rally as a narrative bid and saying a large market capitalization does not mean a coin has earned its place.
The Launch Terms
For its first four years, 20% of every Zcash block reward went to founders, staff, advisors, and early investors under what was called the Founders’ Reward. That allocation totalled up to 2.1 million ZEC, or 10% of the 21 million supply cap.
Wang contrasts this with Bitcoin, where block rewards went to miners alone. When the Founders’ Reward ended at the first halving in November 2020, a development fund taking a similar share replaced it—a coin that writes itself into the block reward, he argues, should not be sold as clean, neutral money.
The structure is documented and was disclosed from the outset. The Founders’ Reward concluded on schedule, and the development fund that followed was approved through the project’s governance process rather than imposed.
Optional Privacy
Wang’s second argument is that privacy was the sales pitch rather than the product. Transparent addresses remained the easy path for exchanges and simple wallets, and for most of Zcash’s life most coins sat in the open.
The data supports the historical claim. Roughly between 26% and 31% of circulating ZEC now sits in shielded pools, up from around 8% in 2024—a sharp rise, but one that leaves the majority still transparent. Wang’s formulation is that optional privacy is marketing while default privacy is the protocol, a distinction that separates Zcash from Monero, where shielding is mandatory.
The January Exodus
The governance claim is the most heavily documented. On January 7, 2026, the entire Electric Coin Company team resigned. The Crypto Times reported the departure, with then-chief executive Josh Swihart describing it as a constructive discharge and naming Bootstrap board members Zaki Manian, Christina Garman, Alan Fairless, and Michelle Lai as having moved into misalignment with the project’s mission.
ZEC fell around 20% on the news, trading near $395. The team launched CashZ, a new wallet venture, the following day.
Wang treats this as structural rather than incidental—a base-layer team that cannot remain in the same building as its nonprofit board, he argues, is not decentralized but broken at the top.
Bootstrap attributed the conflict to governance and legal considerations, emphasizing compliance with nonprofit law. The Zcash Foundation stated on January 8 that no single entity, team, or organization controls Zcash and that the protocol is open source and continued operating unaffected throughout.
The Orchard Vulnerability
The final claim concerns the soundness bug disclosed in the Orchard shielded pool, which Wang says had been present for about four years. In principle it could have allowed counterfeit ZEC to be created without a clear on-chain trail, and because the pool is private, nobody can prove counterfeit coins were never made.
The Crypto Times reported the market response, a fall of roughly 40% in a single day, with ZEC wicking as low as $250. The Ironwood upgrade activated on July 28 at block height 3,428,143, closing the old pool and forcing coins through a turnstile that enforces fixed supply.
Wang’s reading is that Ironwood was cleanup rather than a reason for a top-tier valuation, and that money whose private supply cannot be audited the way Bitcoin’s can, and which needed an emergency fix after a four-year vulnerability, does not qualify as hard money.
The counterargument is that the turnstile mechanism exists precisely to make the supply verifiable going forward and that the vulnerability was disclosed and remediated rather than exploited—no evidence of counterfeit issuance has been presented.
Against the Market
The critique arrives with ZEC near record levels. The token crossed $1,000 for the first time on September 5 and has since traded above $1,190, supported by Grayscale’s spot ETF on NYSE Arca, a tightening float, and short liquidations.
Wang’s position is that those are the records of a story coin rather than a top-ten asset. He allows that Solana and Hyperliquid can be disliked for their own reasons while still clearing real usage and argues Zcash has cleared a listing and a squeeze instead.
Also Read: ZEC Price Prediction for September: Will It Cross $2,200?
