The short version
- Zcash dev fund change proposed: Sean Bowe’s draft ZIP would stop sending 8% of new ZEC to Zcash Community Grants (ZCG) and move it to the NSM reserve, while ZCG keeps its $125.3M treasury.
- ZODL founder Josh Swihart calls that a “half measure” and wants both dev fund streams retired, including the 12% coinholder fund that adds about 216 ZEC a day.
- The crew is watching for a ZIP number and an upgrade date (nothing before NU8), and ZEC at $1,271 between $1,181 and $1,379.
The Zcash dev fund is under fire a day before the network turns 10. Longtime Zcash cryptographer Sean Bowe has drafted a rule change that would stop paying new ZEC to Zcash Community Grants (ZCG), a grants committee sitting on more than $125 million. ZODL founder Josh Swihart says that doesn’t go far enough.
ZEC trades at $1,271 at the time of writing, up 3% on the day, so the market isn’t treating the fight as a threat.
Bowe made his case on X:
It's time to turn off the ZCG funding stream.
ZCG has over $125M in funding, and will receive millions more before the spigot is turned off. The program was never designed to handle this amount of funding.
Draft ZIP:
github.com/zcash/zips/blo…
What Would Change in the Zcash Dev Fund?
Every Zcash block creates new ZEC: 80% goes to miners, 8% to ZCG and 12% to a fund where coinholders vote on each grant. Bowe’s draft ZIP ends ZCG’s 8% share and sends it to the Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM), a protocol reserve that holds ZEC back and pays it out later as block rewards.
ZCG keeps everything it already has. The draft counts 91,453 ZEC, $8.8 million in cash and $2.4 million in grants already promised. At $1,300 per ZEC that leaves $125.3 million, and about $123 million at today’s price.
That is a lot next to what the committee spends: $1.53 million in the first quarter of 2026, or about $6.1 million a year. Meanwhile the 8% stream adds 144 ZEC a day, roughly $183,000 at the current price, until the next halving in 2028.
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Why Swihart Calls It a “Half Measure”
The fight started late on October 26 in a Zcash forum thread by Maxime Desalle, who wants ZCG shut down entirely. His argument: coinholders are diluted to pay for ZCG, but they don’t elect it. He pointed to February, when coinholders voted 98.6% against Zcash Shielded Assets and ZCG kept funding them anyway.
Swihart wants more than Bowe’s version. “If dissolved, then no half measures, dissolve it all, both the ZCG and coinholder streams,” he wrote. The coinholder stream adds about 216 ZEC a day, which he calls “the same problem.”
His own draft would end both streams, pay out ZCG’s approved grants and send the rest of its treasury to the NSM, with one exception: a one-time legal defense fund for Zcash developers, picked by coinholder vote. He added that ZODL has received a coinholder grant itself and would lose that option.
Bowe wants the pieces voted on separately. His draft only stops new money; taking the existing treasury, which he says he’d also back, belongs in its own proposal.
Zcash co-founder Ian Miers questioned where the money goes, not the cut. He’d rather cap what any one group can get, and warned the NSM could become “a dev-fund-in-waiting” that “just pays miners with more steps.”
When Could the Zcash Dev Fund Change?
Not soon. Both are draft ZIPs with no number and no date. Ending a funding stream changes Zcash’s consensus rules, so it needs a network upgrade that node software and miners adopt.
NU7, which cuts block times from 75 to 25 seconds, is still due around November 5, and it was built without this change. The earliest home is the upgrade after it, NU8.
SIDE TRAIL: Zcash Price Climbs Back to $1,250 With NU7 Ten Days Away
Zcash Price: Does the Fight Matter?
Not so far. The ZEC price is up 148% since January 1 on Kraken, though still 25% below its September 26 high of $1,695. The October 21 high of $1,379 is the ceiling to watch; the October 23 close of $1,181 is the floor.
Note that this Zcash dev fund plan doesn’t cut the total number of new coins. It moves 8% of them into a reserve that pays miners later, which is exactly Miers’s point.
TRAIL MAP: Monero Price Holds $600 as Bitcoin Slides, Up 39% in 2026
For now it’s a forum fight among the people who built Zcash. Until a draft gets a ZIP number and an upgrade to ride in, nothing changes onchain.
In crypto since 2017, trading stocks for over 20 years. MBA. Follows the economic data and US markets closely.
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