The Zcash Comeback: Why Insiders Say ZEC’s Price Run Isn’t a Fluke — And Just The Beginning

Zaki Munyan said Zcash had been “nearly dead” for much of his time on its board and in the community, before interest from other crypto communities began arriving in late 2024. A more usable wallet and Near Intents’ connection to the wider crypto ecosystem helped make Zcash easier to experience and access. He said renewed interest became visible in summer and September 2025, when newcomers could install an app and try the technology; what longtime users might see as a modest improvement could feel “magical” to someone new. Sudo recalled that when he joined the board at the end of 2023, members saw Zcash as having its last shot, with low prices threatening team cuts and difficult organizational decisions.

The speakers framed the price run as recognition of years of work on the wallet, cryptography, and infrastructure, rather than an isolated event. They compared Zcash’s moment to Bitcoin in 2016, arguing that early issuance schedules made appreciation difficult through Bitcoin’s first two halvings and that projects can benefit from surviving such periods. They described Zcash’s still-unfinished goal as private, scalable peer-to-peer electronic cash. Crypto Twitter and Bitcoiners were the clearest visible sources of current buying interest, while improved wallet experience gave people a tangible reason to stay engaged. The transcript offered no specific ZEC price target or figures for the run.

Sudo said restructuring left the organization with a more comfortable treasury, new talent, and greater capacity to fund experiments. The speakers also pointed to miners’ improved economics as ZEC rose, citing supply and hash-rate dynamics and the entry of Cypherpunk and Fortitude into Zcash mining. An S15 Pro payback estimate of under 90 days was offered tentatively, and $1,300 ZEC came up as an example in a question about mining costs. Cypherpunk was described as seeking to connect Zcash with finance through a reverse merger, not simply as a leveraged DAT; a speaker said it might have the largest Zcash mining fleet, “as far as they know.”

Zcash’s transparent and shielded funds let users choose their privacy trade-offs. One speaker said shielded-pool funds are difficult to distinguish from one another and that the anonymity set could number in the millions, compared with relevant groups of fewer than 10 in some alternatives. Zodl’s Tor option is intended to prevent indexer nodes from linking requests to a user’s IP address, although mobile wallets still rely on indexers. ZEC is available through Coinbase, Binance, Gemini, Solana DEXs, Hyperliquid, and Near Intents, which also provides a route back to Zcash. Pure.xyz was described as enabling small peer-to-peer purchases from Venmo into Zcash through zero-knowledge intermediaries, but not multimillion-dollar transactions.

An AI-assisted audit identified an Orchard soundness vulnerability that speakers said had existed for four years and could have allowed forged proofs and creation of ZEC. One speaker said ZEC briefly fell about 60% at its low after disclosure, with the decline settling at about 25%. The proposed response was to formally verify Orchard, freeze it, create the nearly identical Ironwood pool, and encourage users to migrate. More than 4 million coins had migrated from Orchard, Zaki said, with about 400,000—roughly 2% of the stated 17 million coin supply—remaining. Speakers described migration outcomes and user reports as a way to assess whether Orchard had been exploited. They said AI has reduced the cost of formal verification, previously too expensive for the ecosystem.

Zaki said Zcash is not yet fully quantum-safe, but a group including Evan from Celestia and Dave built Ironwood in about 30 days to lay groundwork for a future transition. He said cryptographers worry that a cryptography-breaking quantum computer could undermine current proof systems and enable unlimited coin creation, as in the Orchard vulnerability. Ironwood is cryptographically identical to Orchard, while a wallet-level addition is intended to let its proof system be turned off later so coins can migrate to post-quantum Zcash without users having to pre-migrate. Zaki described such a transition as complex and unlikely to be a one-time upgrade. Tachyon, a scalable version of Zcash measured in transactions per second, is the next step after Ironwood.

The speakers described an expanding ecosystem spanning wallets, protocol work, mining, and community groups, alongside engineering-driven governance that allows disagreement and leaves forking as an option. Coinholder polls on a custom-built Cosmos chain signal preferences but do not bind governance or directly change consensus rules; protocol changes proceed through the ZIP process and coordinated code updates. Zcash’s future scope remains contested: ZSAs exist on testnet, but proposals for shielded assets and DeFi face resistance from advocates who would keep Zcash focused on money and use other chains for those activities. The speakers said future shielded-pool work aims for internet-scale transaction volume, while stressing that expertise, security resources, and attention are limited and additions should be formally verified.