Zcash Wallet Zashi Rebrands to Zodl After Split From Electric Coin Company

• Zashi, the Zcash wallet developed by the Electric Coin Company, is rebranding to Zodl, but retaining the same user experience and features.
• The rebrand follows the exodus of the original team from ECC to form a new company after disagreements with the Zcash Foundation.

Zashi, one of the most popular and feature-rich Zcash wallets in the market, has now rebranded to Zodl. The rebrand comes barely two months since the original team behind the privacy-focused crypto exited the Electric Coin Company after internal disagreements with some of the other influential ecosystem factions.

The ECC team left to form the Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) after disputes with the Bootstrap Foundation, as CNF detailed in early January. Led by Josh Swihart, this team pledged to continue “building unstoppable private money,” and now it has a rebranded wallet to make buying, selling and using ZEC easier than ever.

In an announcement this week, the team said that the rebrand will not affect user experience. The rebrand will take effect in the next app update, with no user action required.

The new Zodl wallet will uphold all the features that made Zashi a hit. This includes built-in, best-in-class privacy, self custody that gives users complete control of their funds, and a consent-based setup.

With Zodl CrossPay, users can send their shielded ZEC to users in other networks, and they get to receive in the crypto of their choice, without revealing the sender’s details. It also comes with inbuilt swaps, supported by NEAR Intents, which do not rely on centralized platforms.

Other features include Zodl Pay where users can make real-life payments at retail stores directly with their ZEC and Shielded Notes, where users can send messages as privately as their ZEC, onchain.

Despite Zcash’s commitment to privacy, Weiss Crypto, the digital asset arm of Weiss Ratings, has backed the newly-launched Midnight Network as a superior privacy crypto network, as CNF reported.

The Zcash Civil War

The wallet rebrand builds on a civil war for the future of Zcash, whose implosion resulted in some of the original developers parting ways.

The ZODL team, led by Swihart, who was previously the de facto network leader as the ECC CEO, says it had no option but to exit for the good of the ecosystem. In its recent announcement, it reiterated its stand, stating:

Swihart’s team, composed mainly of developers, felt that the Zcash Foundation and Boostrap were restricting development. They wanted a bigger say on the network’s technical development. Bootstrap was most opposed and claimed its oversight was needed to avoid centralization.

The two factions also collided on funding. In the Zcash ecosystem, a portion of every block reward goes to the Development Fund, which ideally should go to development efforts. However, Swihart’s team felt that Bootstrap had prioritized other areas and the R&D continuity was under threat.

While the two parties engage in their civil war, other factions have sprung up with their own ideas on how Zcash should run. One of these is Shielded Labs, a nonprofit based in Switzerland, which wants to gradually transition the network into a proof of stake consensus protocol.

It has proposed Crosslink, a new PoS finality layer that will sit atop the original PoW mechanism. This would force ZEC miners to share their block reward with the PoS validators, which has not sat well with the miners. However, Shielded Labs could have its way as it has the support of one of the most influential voices in the industry: Vitalik Buterin.