Zcash was the leading crypto token on the market cap leaderboards last week. On Tuesday, the coin remained the fifth-best gainer among crypto assets behind Aptos (APT) at #4, with Sui (SUI) topping the week’s gains at +57%.
ZEC’s 7-day gains on Tuesday were +29%, but from the peak to high (between August 5 and August 12) of the most recent rally, its price gained 56% against the dollar.
So why did the price of Zcash rise more over the past week while the rest of the cryptocurrency sector took huge losses to recover over the same period, with heavy demand from aerial crypto investors evident in the recovery wider?
Most likely because Zcash founder Zooko has famously returned to lead the development and marketing of the privacy coin. Meanwhile, MetaMask, the most popular Web3 for Ethereum and the most widely used decentralized finance (DeFi) wallet in general, announced support for the asset.
ZCash Founder Zooko Is Back
In December, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox, now 50, stepped down as CEO of private crypto developer Electric Coin Company. In an open resignation letter posted on Medium, Zooko wrote:
“I will always be grateful to have had the opportunity to live one of my sci-fi dreams into reality. However, in the long run, I don’t think this combination of Zcash with me personally is healthy for me (or for) Zcash. Zcash’s role in human history is, and will be, far greater than any individual.”
Eight months later, Zooko revealed to Forbes magazine that he was joining forces with a Swiss nonprofit called Shielded Labs to spearhead the cryptocurrency he founded as an outsider.
It has the support of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, who recently said: “For something as important as Zcash, its entire future cannot be subject to the results of a small group of people who have quarrels with each other” .
MetaMask has announced support for ZCash
The recent Zcash price gains are more than hype about what the founder might do next at Shielded Labs. In addition to Zooko’s return to the zero-knowledge proof-of-concept cash anonymity project, markets learned in early August that MetaMask will now support integrations for Zcash.
“Who-hoo!” Zooko said on Tuesday, August 6. “Zcash comes to MetaMask thanks to MetaMask and the Zcash Community Grants Committee!”
He posted a screenshot of a post by the Zcash Foundation on the Zcash Community Forum that said:
“MetaMask has matched $150,000 to support the development of a MetaMask Snap that will support Shielded ZEC.”
The price of Monero also rose along with ZEC last week. There could be a bump in privacy coins in the crypto exchange markets after the Zcash rally.
Zcash is a privacy-focused anonymity coin, a fork of the Bitcoin codebase and blockchain.
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