Monero has surpassed Zcash as the leading privacy-focused cryptocurrency by market capitalization after governance conflicts within the Electric Coin Company led to a 15% price drop on Thursday and raised questions about the ongoing development of the competing protocol.
What happened: exodus of leadership
The entire team at Electric Coin Company resigned on Thursday following a dispute with the board of directors of its non-profit parent foundation. Josh Swihart, CEO of ECC, described the departure as a forced constructive break with the Bootstrap board.
The developers established a new company after this dispute.
ZEC dropped by about 15% during the day before slightly recovering, extending a decline since the November highs that briefly pushed the token into the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.
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Why it matters: Competition on privacy
Monero now has a market capitalization of approximately $8.4 billion, compared to $7.1 billion for Zcash. Around $460 on Thursday, Monero is trading near the $490 threshold briefly reached at the end of December.
This reversal contrasts with the period from mid to late 2025, when traders favored ZEC as the primary bet on privacy thanks to wallet integrations supporting private transactions.
Andreessen Horowitz's crypto division said this week that privacy will be the key competitive advantage in 2026.
Monero faced its own challenges during this period, including its largest blockchain reorganization ever recorded in September.
This incident reignited concerns about the risk of reorganization and mining centralization, even though it did not disrupt the protocol's long-term operation. Traders are monitoring how the departure of the ECC team will affect the development roadmap for protocol updates and ecosystem growth initiatives.
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