Zcash Founder Appeals For a New “Dev fund” to Support Future Development of the Cryptocurrency

Zooko Wilcox, Founder of Zcash and CEO of Electric Coin Company (ECC) –the firm behind the privacy-focused cryptocurrency– is appealing for a new funding model for the development of Zcash.

Wilcox’s comments came shortly after multiple debates over the continuation of the project’s controversial founders reward. Recently, a part of the Zcash community forked off into a new network called Ycash because of the debates.

In a blog post on Medium Wednesday, Wilcox said:

“I hope that the community will decide to renew the ‘Dev Fund’ structure, allocating coins from future block rewards for core support functions such as software development, user support, business development, regulatory and government outreach, security auditing and monitoring, educational and marketing initiatives, new protocol development, and so forth.”

Furthermore, the founder of Zcash hopes that the community will “hire” the Electric Coin Company to carry out these tasks.

Unlike many ICO’s, which are just intended to raise money from public investors, the Zcash project was funded by a group of professional investors who put in a total of $3 million to fund the creation of the cryptocurrency.

The project was also set up with the plan that over the first four years, 10% of the total 21 million token supply of ZEC would be distributed to the founders (the founders’ reward) and miners. Wilcox said that the investors were given a “small slice” of ECC’s equity.

Wilcox commented:

“We decided to do this because we thought that having an independent entity from the Electric Coin Company would be an important part of the Zcash community’s decentralization and stability in the long run.” 

The ending of the founder’s reward in October 2020 means that a new development structure is needed and the Zcash community has a big stake in the eventual funding model:

“I opted for the initial Dev Fund to sunset itself, so that in the future, if Zcash were a success and a community were to grow up to support it, that community would have to collectively decide what to do next.” 

According to Wilcox the options ahead include allocating all new ZEC issued to the network’s miners, creating a new Dev Fund with a percentage of new coins issued, or “other alternatives.”

Wilcox said:

“This decision isn’t about the Electric Coin Company. If all of the employees of the Electric Coin Company were to board the same airplane tomorrow to go to an off-site meeting, and that plane were to crash with no survivors, the Zcash community would still be facing the exact same choice: shall we use some of the tens of millions of dollars that we’re spending on issuance every month to fund core support functions like protocol development, software support, security auditing, government outreach, educational initiatives, and business development, or shall we instead send 100% of that money to miners?”