Zcash Open Development Lab
A development lab for Zcash protocol and privacy wallet
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About Zcash Open Development Lab
Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) is the core development team behind the Zcash privacy protocol and the Zodl wallet (formerly Zashi). Its primary business is maintaining the Zcash blockchain's underlying codebase (e.g., librustzcash) and building user-facing privacy tools. The core value proposition is "private holding, spending anywhere": users can transact with shielded ZEC that hides sender, receiver, and amount by default, while remaining compatible with the broader crypto ecosystem through cross-chain swaps and hardware wallet support.
The market pain point ZODL addresses is the trade-off between privacy and usability. Traditional privacy coins face delisting pressure and regulatory scrutiny, while transparent blockchains expose financial data. ZODL's solution is a protocol that uses zero-knowledge proofs to offer verifiable, private payments, plus a simple wallet that defaults to privacy. In the past six months (March–September 2026), ZODL shipped Zodl 3.3.x on iOS and Android, adding Keystone hardware wallet connection management and SDK upgrades. Core development unified transparent UTXO handling in zcash_client_backend, advanced sync engine refactoring, and began supporting full-block scanning. The team also implemented the first in-wallet coin-holder voting via Zodl for the NU7 upgrade, with community review ongoing. Discussions on reducing block time from 75 to 25 seconds converged. On-chain metrics show shielded supply grew from ~11% to ~30% of all ZEC by end-2025, with shielded transaction share reaching 86.5% in March 2026. A notable negative: ZODL temporarily removed its app from Russian app stores due to local regulatory and network restrictions, limiting availability for users in that region.
Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) was founded in January 2026 after the entire ECC engineering and product team resigned due to governance disputes with Bootstrap, the nonprofit board overseeing ECC. In March 2026, ZODL raised over $25 million in seed funding from Paradigm, a16z crypto, Winklevoss Capital, and Coinbase Ventures, among others. The flagship self-custody wallet Zashi was rebranded to Zodl, continuing its mission of private transactions. Since its 2024 launch, Zodl has driven over 400% growth in Zcash's shielded pool activity and processed over $600 million in ZEC swaps. These milestones mark ZODL's emergence as the core developer of Zcash, ensuring protocol continuity and advancing financial privacy.
Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) has made significant progress in the past six months. In March 2026, a critical vulnerability in zcashd was discovered and patched, which could have allowed Sprout pool inflation; the bug was not exploited, and a fix was deployed by a supermajority of mining pools. In late July 2026, Ironwood (NU6.3) activated on mainnet at block height 3,428,143, introducing a new shielded pool with formal verification and independent audits. The Orchard pool is now restricted, with funds migrating through a turnstile mechanism, ensuring supply integrity. Zodl 3.9.0 was released, featuring a new sync engine (Slipstream) for faster wallet synchronization and guided migration tools. Additionally, Zodl 3.5.0 introduced the first shielded coinholder polling feature, enabling private on-chain votes for ZEC holders, with the upcoming NU7 poll as its first use case. Future roadmap focuses on completing the Orchard-to-Ironwood migration, expanding governance participation, and further hardening the protocol through formal verification.
Josh Swihart, Co-Founder & CEO, former VP at Electric Coin Co., led Zcash ecosystem growth.\n\nPaul Brigner, Chief Policy & Compliance Officer, ex-Coinbase/Verizon, heads policy initiatives.\n\nTony Margarit, CFO, oversees finance and operations.