Zooko just did something no crypto founder has ever done.
He publicly sided with the board that fired his entire development team.
Not neutrality. Not silence. Explicit endorsement of the people who pushed out the builders he hired.
Here’s what nobody’s seeing:
This isn’t a governance dispute. It’s a speciation event.
Two incompatible evolutionary strategies—“unstoppable private money” vs. institutional accommodation—could no longer coexist in the same organism.
The founder chose the institution. The revolutionaries chose exile.
The mechanism everyone’s missing:
When Zcash’s dev fund expired in November 2025, ECC lost guaranteed protocol funding. The board—stacked with institutional finance backgrounds and Cosmos interoperability expertise—now controlled the oxygen.
The team that built Zcash for a decade was told to adapt or suffocate.
They chose to breathe somewhere else.
But here’s the real alpha:
Cypherpunk Technologies (Winklevoss-backed, 1.76% of ZEC supply) has BOTH Zooko AND Josh Swihart as Strategic Advisors.
One entity. Both faction leaders. $58.9M war chest.
They’re not picking a side. They’re positioned to WIN regardless of which chain survives.
Watch their treasury announcements. That’s the signal.
The market sees “devs left = death.”
The pattern says otherwise.
ETH/ETC. Steem/Hive. BTC/BCH.
Developer talent determines the winner. Not tickers. Not trademarks. Not founder endorsements.
