The team behind the beloved Zodl wallet just pulled off a major win. Fresh off their split from Electric Coin Company back in January, the crew at Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) has secured over $25 million in fresh funding.
Paradigm, a16z crypto Coinbase Ventures, Winklevoss Capital, Cypherpunk Technologies, Maelstrom, and Chapter One have joined as well, along with Balaji Srinivasan, David Friedberg, and Haseeb Qureshi from Dragonfly.
Now this is a loud vote of confidence in ZODL and the unstoppable demand for real privacy tools. The group, led by former ECC CEO Josh Swihart, brought the full engineering and product squad that originally built the wallet (once called Zashi, now rebranded as Zodl wallet). They stepped away after clashing with the nonprofit overseeing ECC about the best path forward for Zcash as the go-to privacy protocol.
In their announcement on X, ZODL highlighted how this backing from top-tier crypto investors shows deep belief, not just in privacy as a core value, but in the bright future of the entire Zcash ecosystem.
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The funds will enhance the team’s growth, allow more engineering hires, and enable faster progress on the open-source Zodl wallet, which is considered significant for Zcash infrastructure.
Zodl wallet’s momentum
When it comes to momentum, Zcash ($ZEC) reacted strongly, climbing nearly 10% in the last 24 hours amid the buzz. Even with the broader market downturn early this year, ZEC has held strong.
Recent data shows that $ZEC is at around $215–$218, building on last year’s impressive run, where it surged almost tenfold at peak interest in privacy tech. Zodl wallet has enabled over $600 million in ZEC swaps since October 2025.
Plus, the shielded pool, Zcash’s killer feature that hides sender, receiver, and amount details using zero-knowledge magic, has exploded by more than 400% since launching in 2024. This funding round feels like a fantastic deal for anyone who cares about financial privacy in an increasingly surveilled world. With ZODL now independently driving innovation, the Zodl wallet, and Zcash privacy overall, things are heating up fast.
