Right this moment, with a purpose to higher serve the Zcash mission, we’re asserting a restructuring of ECC, together with layoffs of valued staff members. Going ahead, ECC will focus our time and experience on particular elements of the Zcash mission, and assist transition different elements to different organizations within the Zcash neighborhood.
We at ECC have been making an attempt to do an excessive amount of with too few sources, particularly within the final yr and a half because the bear market started to affect our funds. It has develop into clear this was limiting our skill to execute on the issues we’re finest at.
Zcash has grown and adjusted, and right this moment there are a lot of organizations exterior of ECC who’re additionally dedicated to the Zcash mission, a lot of them funded by the Zcash Dev Fund, together with the Zcash Group Grants committee, Zingo Labs, Nighthawk Apps, the Zcash Basis, Zcash Media, the Zcash World Ambassadors program, and plenty of different people and organizations. There are additionally the promised contributions to Zcash by QEdit and Shielded Labs and by the Filecoin and Anoma tasks. We’re grateful to those folks for his or her contributions to the Zcash motion, and by committing ECC to doing fewer issues and doing them effectively, we hope to additional empower them, making Zcash as a broad motion much more resilient and sustainable.
Restructuring ECC was a difficult resolution. It required that we lay off 13 workers — about half of our staff. Most of the folks we let go right this moment had been instrumental in bringing to market groundbreaking applied sciences and concepts that no different staff on this planet has been capable of ship. We’re unhappy to half methods with them and can at all times be pleased about the chance we needed to work with these unimaginable people.
Within the coming weeks, ECC will launch a revised roadmap centered on empowering ZEC holders and giving them a voice. This consists of:
Creating a wonderful consumer expertise for proof-of-stake ZEC
A pockets, constructed by and for Zcashers, that’s straightforward to make use of and accessible for anybody
A mobile-wallet SDK that’s helpful to different Zcash builders
US-based coverage work to make sure ZEC, self-custody, and staking stay viable within the USA
We’ll assist transition possession to the broader neighborhood of some capabilities ECC has undertaken previously.
Assist for zcashd exterior of ECC’s Roadmap
Protocol assessment for Zcash core protocols exterior of ECC’s roadmap
Alliances and trade help
World regulatory relations
Administration of digital properties, together with z.money and the Zcash-specific social accounts
Product advertising
Zcash associated PR and media engagement
Importantly, our immediate-term work on fixing third-party pockets efficiency points continues to be our highest precedence in the mean time, and we’re dedicated to releasing zcashd 5.6.0, an up to date lightwalletd, and new cell SDKs for iOS and Android quickly.
As with all transition, this restructuring of staff and priorities will take a while to completely settle, and there are another tasks and initiatives which are nearing completion — such because the relaunch of z.money and a proposal to foster neighborhood possession of this and different Zcash digital properties — that we’ll be delivering to the neighborhood within the close to time period. We’re nonetheless partaking on vital initiatives such because the Filecoin Basis grants and different actions that can profit the Zcash consumer.
That is arduous. I requested the entire ECC staff to hitch me in my work to serve human freedom. It turned our collective mission, and one thing we’ve all fought for day-in and day-out. Whereas we received’t all have the ability to proceed on this explicit path collectively, I’m assured that within the scope of historical past, every certainly one of us will look again proudly on what we did collectively for human freedom. I’m grateful for all of the staff members to whom we mentioned goodbye as workers right this moment, and for those that can proceed at ECC. We stay totally dedicated to our mission and imagine ECC is now in a a lot stronger place to serve the Zcash mission, each right this moment and into the long run.
I’ll be becoming a member of an ECC-hosted Twitter Areas on Friday, Might twenty sixth, to reply questions from the neighborhood. Please keep watch over @electriccoinco for particulars.