The AI analysis I shared did not take into account several important numbers that are worth putting on the record so the community can evaluate the current situation clearly.
• ~$10M — the approximate size of the ECC treasury that Bootstrap retained when the ECC team was forced to depart: close to 34,000 ZEC plus other assets. This included the swap fees generated by the team over the previous months.
• $8M — the settlement that was paid to Bootstrap as part of the separation so the ZODL team could continue maintaining and developing the Zashi wallet.
• $2.67M — the retroactive coinholder grant Bootstrap is now attempting to claim for our work on Zashi (now Zodl).
Taken together, Bootstrap has already received or retained roughly $18M connected to the work of the former ECC team, before the additional grant they are now attempting to claim. If the ZEC held in the ECC treasury was not liquidated, its value has increased alongside the recent rise in ZEC price following the ZODL seed round announcement.
The $8M payment ensured continuity for users and avoided forcing them to migrate wallets, face confusion, or lose trust in Zcash due to internal disputes. The alternative was to abandon Zashi and build a new wallet from scratch, leaving the existing one in the hands of four individuals with no operational or technical capacity to support or maintain a product like that.
The $8M payment greatly exceeded multiple independent valuations by more than 4x. Assessments by independent firms concluded that the IP was worth substantially less.
The payment amount is especially relevant to the current discussion because Bootstrap has already been excessively compensated for the wallet through this settlement. The attempt to collect the retroactive coinholder grant on top of that is an attempt to be paid twice for the same work.
Meanwhile, our entire team was left with no capital and significant legal and settlement debt.
The damage these four people caused to the momentum our team built for Zcash over the last two years is difficult to quantify. The recent ZEC price chart offers only a small glimpse of what was disrupted. What the team had to endure, and what we had to give up, simply to keep building Zashi and ensure that users were not affected by internal turmoil is hard to overstate.
But we moved forward and kept doing what builders do. Since then, we’ve turned the page and raised $25M to continue building Zodl, which created significant positive momentum for the ecosystem.
The four Bootstrap members also kept doing what they do. This time their efforts are directed against the orgs responsible for administering the coinholder grant program. This new wave of pressure relies heavily on legal interpretations and fiduciary arguments; the same tactics have previously been directed at the members of our team and appear to be Bootstrap’s most developed capability.
Their letter states that they “want to get back to building,” which is a curious claim. Building what? Bootstrap does not build. It is a committee of four people who have been largely absent from Zcash development and ecosystem work until the recent rally. They’ve offered no coherent plan for how they will use the substantial funds they’re sitting on to advance Zcash, nor explained why the ecosystem should place such trust in them.