Owners of the Electric Coin Company (ECC), the same firm that founded Zcash, have agreed to donate the company to a new non-profit called the Bootstrap Project. The shift will come at an undisclosed date prior to the upcoming Zcash ‘Canopy’ network upgrade.
The Canopy upgrade is scheduled to take place in November of this year. According to ECC, the donation to the non-profit will help foster greater decentralization for Zcash and also provide tax benefits. However, recent regulatory interest in privacy-focused cryptocurrencies may also be driving the move.
The shift to non-profit ownership of the ECC was announced via a blog post on Oct 12. The post claims that a majority 0f the owners of the Electric Coin Company agreed to donate the company to Bootstrap.
The change in ownership will not involve an overhaul of the ECC’s current structure. Management, employees, and operations will all remain the same, but full ownership will transfer to Bootstrap.
The shift comes ahead of a scheduled network upgrade known as Canopy. Canopy will see changes made to Zcash developer rewards, which was due to expire in November 2020.
Under the community-agreed changes, ECC will continue to receive seven percent of mining rewards for the next four years. This is on the provision that rewards will not go towards fulfilling previous ECC work. They must strictly fund “furtherance of the mission” moving into the future.
Monday’s post claims that the hybrid “company/non-profit” structure will allow for greater community governance. However, it will also allow the ECC to “continue performing like a startup” commercially.
While Bootstrap’s Board of Directors will be the same as ECC’s initially, additional members will take positions by late 2021.
