Zcash's roots trace back to the 2013 Zerocoin research project: a group of scientists (including Alessandro Chiesa, Christina Garman, Eli Ben-Sasson, Eran Tromer, Ian Miers, Madars Virza, and Matthew Green) sought a solution to Bitcoin's privacy gap, presented at the 2013 San Jose Bitcoin conference. In 2014, they recruited Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn, a long-time “cypherpunk” and security specialist (previously a developer at DigiCash), to lead the project.
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2015: the Zerocoin Electric Coin Company (later Electric Coin Company, ECC) is founded, with roughly $720,000 in seed funding from Naval Ravikant, Pantera Capital, and Fenbushi Capital.
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October 2016: Zcash officially launches, using zk-SNARK (zero-knowledge) technology that optionally enables fully private (“shielded”) transactions alongside traditional, transparent ones — with a fixed 21-million supply, similar to Bitcoin.
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2017: the non-profit Zcash Foundation is founded, to support development independently of ECC.
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February 2019: Zcash Company renames itself Electric Coin Company, handing the “Zcash” trademark to the Zcash Foundation.
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December 18, 2023: Zooko Wilcox steps down as ECC CEO (succeeded by Josh Swihart), remaining on the Bootstrap Project board before becoming Chief Product Officer at Shielded Labs.
Important distinction: development is supported not by one company but by two independent organizations (Electric Coin Company + Zcash Foundation), splitting 20% of the mining reward (the “Dev Fund”).