Zcash's 100x Myth: An Idealistic Revenge

Written by: Eric, Foresight News

On the candlestick chart, the only two positions exceeding $1,500 are only a few centimeters apart on a mobile phone, but ZEC took nearly 10 years to reach them. This "old relic," when it was first launched, reached a peak of 25 BTC/ZEC on Bitfinex and even an absurd price of 3299.99 BTC/ZEC on Poloniex (a "nominal price" equivalent to more than 2 million US dollars), while Bitcoin was only around 700 US dollars at that time. However, that frenzy didn't last as long as the current Meme coin. From its sixth day of launch, November 2, 2016, until September 14 of this year, ZEC never reached above $1500 again. Just a year before its return to its peak, its price was hovering around $40. Ten years have passed, and Bitcoin has increased hundreds of times. EOS came and died, Terra came and exploded; wave after wave of star projects were hailed as gods, only to quietly disappear. Meanwhile, some "zombie" cryptocurrencies, technically excellent but with hopeless prices, still languish in neglected corners of exchanges, occasionally surging a few days in line with the market before silently plummeting back down. Among them, Zcash, carrying the prophecies of a group of utopian enthusiasts from the last century in America, miraculously recovered from its all-time low of less than $16 in July 2024, achieving nearly a hundredfold increase in just two years. The Cypherpunk Obsession. In the 1990s, Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn worked at David Chaum's DigiCash. The gears of fate began to turn the moment Zooko stepped through the doors of DigiCash. This "blond-haired kid" with long hair in his youth later became a renowned cryptographer and co-founder of Zcash, and also proposed the famous "Zooko Triangle": a trilemma in network protocols. David Chaum, the founder of DigiCash, can be considered the grandfather of cypherpunks. In 1983, he published the paper "Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments," whose core technology, blind signatures, allowed banks to make payments anonymously without the recipient's knowledge. On May 27, 1994, DigiCash processed the first true electronic cash transaction. Subsequently, companies including Mark Twain Bank, Deutsche Bank, and Credit Suisse adopted the technology to experiment with small-amount anonymous payments. At its peak, thousands of users and hundreds of merchants participated. However, this product, which predates Bitcoin by 20 years, was far too advanced for the market, where even credit card transactions were difficult to manage. Zooko was present on the day his company went bankrupt in 1998. This seed had been planted in his heart for nearly two decades. After DigiCash shut down, Zooko didn't give up. He turned to MojoNation, a decentralized network that allowed strangers to rent out their hard drives and bandwidth to each other. The token circulating in the system was called Mojo. This project naturally ended in failure, but Zooko's beliefs never wavered. He wanted a system that wasn't controlled by others. In 2009, the Bitcoin mainnet officially launched, and Zooko was among the earliest advocates. However, after the initial excitement wore off, he saw a fatal flaw: Bitcoin's ledger was completely public; anyone could see how much money was in your wallet and who you had done business with. Bitcoin is a better eCash, but still not the perfect currency in Zooko's mind. The "Six Horsemen of the Apocalypse" of Zcash. The cryptography community, like Zooko, is constantly searching for the "perfect" answer. In 2013, cryptographers at Johns Hopkins University proposed the Zerocoin protocol, which evolved into the Zerocash paper the following year. The core of the paper is the zk-SNARKs algorithm, which is mentioned and used countless times in the current Web3 industry. This allows "everyone to verify the legitimacy of a transaction, but no one to know the content of the transaction." While the concept of zero-knowledge proof wasn't first proposed by Zerocash, Zerocash was the first truly practical design that simultaneously achieved decentralization and end-to-end encrypted privacy. Zooko later stated in several interviews that he was "extremely excited" when he saw this paper. In 2015, Silicon Valley investor Naval Ravikant wrote a check for $715,000 when Zoo was founded. In subsequent funding rounds, 17 investors raised approximately $3 million, including Barry Silbert of Digital Currency Group and Pan. With everything in place, the Zcash mainnet launch was just around the corner. Zooko and ECC prepared the most ceremonial "opening ceremony" in cryptocurrency history for Zcash's launch. zk-SNARKs require a set of public parameters, and the process of generating these parameters produces a kind of "toxic waste." Whoever obtains this waste can print money out of thin air without anyone noticing. You can think of these parameters as Zcash's "initial password." Whoever controls the password can forge zero-knowledge proofs to increase issuance or double-spend. On the day of launch, a total of six people participated in Zcash's parameter generation ceremony. The three who registered their identities included Zooko himself, Zcash technical advisor Andrew Miller, and Coin Center research director Peter Van Valkenburgh. To avoid being targeted, one participant, using the alias Moses Spears, was later revealed to be Derek Hinch, a security engineer at the NCC Group. The NCC Group was secretly hired to both faithfully execute the ritual and attempt to "attack" it from within for security verification. Another participant, using the alias Fabrice Renault, remained anonymous until 2022, six years later. In October 2016, six people across three continents remotely relayed the task, each using a physically isolated computer to generate their own set of parameters, then destroying the random numbers along with the hardware afterward. Some people wrapped their machines with electromagnetic shielding to prevent signal leakage, while others simply set fire to their computers. If even one out of six people is honest, and if one out of six sets of parameters is correct... On October 28, 2016, the Zcash mainnet launched. In its economic model, Zcash almost completely copied Bitcoin, with a total supply of 21 million coins, halving approximately every four years. Even because Zcash's average block time is two and a half minutes, the block reward was designed to be 12.5 ZEC. However, due to Zcash's slow-start mechanism, the supply of ZEC on the market was extremely limited, causing prices to plummet. As supply increased, prices were halved and then halved again within days, falling below $50 by early 2017. Besides the "lack of supply," the ECC team also had its own agenda: for the first four years, 20% of each block reward went directly to the founding team and employees. During the days when ZEC prices climbed back into the four-figure range, Wang Chun, co-founder of F2Pool, posted on X a chat log from six years ago showing Zcash members confusing EST and EDT times. He then followed up with a post criticizing the practice of directly distributing a portion of block rewards to the early team. Although the price rose, the unreliability and chaos, compared to the then-popular Hy, were indeed the defining characteristics of Zcash's early days. And this, it seems, foreshadowed the bumpy road ahead. From Spotlight to Oblivion In September 2017, Snowden tweeted that Zcash's privacy technology made it the most interesting alternative to Bitcoin. By 2017, Snowden had already obtained asylum in Russia. Although four years had passed since the 2013 revelation of the US government's massive collection of citizens' private information, its impact was already significant for the then-nascent cryptocurrency industry. In an era when faith was still a topic of discussion, Snowden's endorsement instantly amplified that faith. At the peak of the bull market in January 2018, ZEC reached around $800. Snowden's sudden comments on Zcash initially led many to believe that the application of zero-knowledge proofs to cryptocurrency challenged Snowden's cherished right to privacy. However, in 2022, the YouTube account Zcash Media released a video in which Snowden himself admitted that he was involved in the Zcash launch event. According to a report by Fortune magazine and Zooko's own recollection, Zooko became interested in Snowden after hearing him give a privacy-related speech at Bard College. Afterwards, Zooko, through Marcia Hofmann (a senior lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation EFF), connected with Snowden, who agreed to participate in the Zcash launch ceremony on the condition that he would not receive any compensation, would not hold any shares, and would act purely in the public interest. The privacy advocate's endorsement and the crypto bull market frenzy became Zcash's last highlight before its resurgence this year. However, Zcash was still too ahead of its time. Early zk-SNARKs generated a privacy transaction that took nearly a minute to process on a computer with a large amount of memory. Most users, for convenience, directly transferred funds using transparent addresses. The world's most private currency, yet its most private features go unused—a truly ironic situation. Even more disheartening is that the first chain to adopt ZK technology went unused, yet its technology fed others. Vitalik Buterin championed zk-SNARKs, and in 2017, Ethereum, through the Metropolis upgrade, first verified zk-SNARK proofs. The spark of zero-knowledge proofs was thus ignited throughout the industry. Winter has come, but can spring be far behind? What followed was an eight-year, three-tiered strangulation. The first tier came from regulation. In 2018, following the massive Coincheck theft scandal, Japan's Financial Services Agency pressured Coincheck to delist XMR, Zcash, and DASH. OKEx Korea followed suit in 2019, and ShapeShift followed suit in November 2020. The logic was simple: exchanges didn't want trouble; privacy coins became a liability on compliance reports. In February 2024, Binance directly delisted XMR, creating a climate of fear throughout the entire sector. ZEC, by retaining transparent addresses and viewable keys, barely managed to survive with a semblance of compliance. This design compromise, seen as a stain at the time, later proved to be a lifeline. In August 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) subpoenaed the Zcash Foundation. Then-SEC Chairman Gary Gensler was challenging countless cryptocurrencies to "prove they are not securities," and Zcash was no exception. The second layer comes from the price of the coin itself. It peaked at $800 in 2018 and fell to around $30 in 2019. During the massive bull market of 2021, with Bitcoin and Ethereum reaching new highs, and even Dogecoin soaring, ZEC only rebounded to around $300, failing to even reach half of its previous high. For a crypto project, in July 2024, ZEC plummeted to an all-time low of $15.91, dropping out of the top 50 in market capitalization. That year, it was declared dead countless times; conference attendance dwindled year after year; its ranking on trading platforms steadily declined; and long-time holders jokingly referred to themselves as archaeologists, guarding an unearthed artifact waiting for its value to appreciate. The third layer of Bitcoin, once considered "the most interesting," originated internally. The expiration of founder rewards sparked a protracted governance war, with the community debating repeatedly how and to whom the development fund should be distributed. ECC underwent layoffs and cost-cutting measures, leading to financial difficulties. In December 2023, Zooko stepped down as CEO, handing the reins to Josh Swihart. While Zcash's price plummeted, construction continued. On October 29, 2018, Sapling was upgraded and activated, reducing transaction generation time from nearly a minute to a few seconds, making mobile wallets possible for the first time. On May 31, 2022, NU5... The upgrade, with Halo 2 recursive proof replacing trusted startup, eliminates the need for the cumbersome computer-burning ritual, unifying the process. Then came the new Zebra nodes and the Zashi mobile wallet, launched in early 2024, with default privacy and easy access with just a few taps. Privacy finally transitioned from a geek toy to something ordinary people can use with a simple scan; privacy transactions peaked at nearly 60%. These changes were also subtly reflected on the blockchain. The ZEC in the shielded pool climbed from 5% of the total supply a few years ago to over 4.5 million in Q4 2025, representing approximately 28% of the total supply. The second halving occurred on November 23, 2024, reducing the block reward to 1.5625. The total daily supply across the entire network is only [number missing]. They spent eight years finally converting a concept race car into a production car capable of high-speed driving. The explosion began on October 1, 2025. Naval Ravikant, one of the 17 investors ten years ago, wrote on X: "Bitcoin is insurance for fiat currency, Zcash is insurance for Bitcoin." He added that Bitcoin's public ledger made even Satoshi Nakamoto uneasy about using it. This statement was like a match thrown into a dry pile of wood; ZEC surged from $54 to over $156 within a week, and reached $700 a month later. US Dollar. Initially, everyone thought this was just another brief resurgence brought about by a big player's endorsement, but events unfolded beyond most people's expectations. Arthur Hayes' family office, Maelstrom, began building its position in ZEC in the third quarter of 2025, making it the second-largest holding after Bitcoin. He publicly stated that he would sell Bitcoin to make room for privacy positions, and even set a target price of $1,000 or even $10,000. The sword of Damocles that had been hanging over them for years finally fell. The SEC's investigation, which began in August 2023, ended in January 2026 without any action. In the same month, a false alarm also occurred, with the ECC... The entire team left due to a falling out with the parent company's board of directors, forming ZODL and securing Paradox within three months. For other projects, internal strife is practically a death sentence, but for ZEC, which was on the rise, cutting losses and starting anew weren't all bad news. Meanwhile, exchange channels were gradually opening up. In April of this year, Robinhood listed ZEC, providing an investment channel for US retail investors. On May 6th, ZEC surged nearly 30% in a single day, triggering a trading frenzy involving over 4670. A short position of $10,000. Grayscale established the Zcash Trust as early as 2017. On August 25, 2026, this trust was officially converted into a spot ETF and listed on the NYSE Arca under the ticker symbol ZCSH, marking the first time privacy coins entered US stock accounts. The listed company Cypherpunk Techn. Pricing Privacy. Zcash's ten years have essentially answered only one question: How much is a correct idea worth if it's born at the wrong time? The answer is $15.91. And what about if it's born at the right time? Ten years ago, everyone knew privacy was important, but because... Web3 was still too early, and ZK was too "cumbersome," failing to meet usability standards. Even today, ZK's rapid finality made ZKsync a top choice for tokenized RWAs in its early days, as seen in Brevis's ZK Data Coprocess. While Zcash is merely a "currency" for private transactions and has no connection to these advanced applications, privacy, empowered by Web3, has become a genuine need, regardless of whether the scenario is legitimate or illegitimate. For a long time after its inception, Bitcoin also served as a medium of exchange in the gray market, and this remains true today. Zcash took a decade to reach this stage, but this reflects the true dream of the cypherpunks of the 1980s who proclaimed "the strong demand freedom, the weak demand privacy." After nearly half a century of trials and tribulations, including skepticism, internal strife, and regulation, privacy is no longer a fleeting phenomenon at the end of each Web3 bull market when there's nothing left to speculate on. Instead, it has become a firework ignited by Web3, blooming brightly in the night sky.