Zcash (ZEC) price has cooled somewhat after a sharp September advance, slipping from a year-to-date peak near $1,590 to about $1,430. Buyers defended the area above $1,440, so the move looked more like a pause after a multi-day rally than a full reversal.
Even after the dip, weekly performance remained strong, and the token stayed among the better-performing large-cap crypto assets.
Institutional interest has been part of that backdrop: Grayscale’s Zcash ETF, listed in late August, has drawn substantial assets and is preparing a 3-for-1 share split that lowers the per-share price without changing investors’ total exposure.
The more consequential story sits off the chart.
As ZEC’s rally inflated the value of protocol-controlled reserves, a fight opened over the Zcash Development Fund — the lockbox that receives 12% of the block subsidy under the current NU6 rules, or 0.1875 ZEC per block, and holds those coins outside circulation until governance authorizes spending.
ZecStats put the balance at 63,962 ZEC, worth about $95 million when the argument broke into public view.
Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi set the terms of that fight. In a September 17 post, he said the community has already chosen an identity as “encrypted Bitcoin,” meaning fewer extra features and, eventually, protocol ossification so ZEC can function as a dependable store of value. He also said ossification is not ready yet:
Tachyon, quantum resistance, and formal verification against AI-driven attacks still require work that is unlikely to finish in a year or two.
The Dev Fund, he argued, was necessary when private capital would not support Zcash.
Under existing rules it expires in 2028.
Because the token’s price has multiplied the treasury, a few million dollars that a small group could allocate carefully has become a near-$100 million pool that will “become an institution” and get politicized.
Qureshi’s conclusion: keep the fund long enough to finish the remaining technical work, treat this as the last Dev Fund, then wind it down.
On the $ZEC Dev Fund debate:
The Zcash community has decided its identity is “encrypted Bitcoin.” It has rejected adding more bells and whistles to the protocol. To become encrypted Bitcoin, Zcash must become a dependable store of value, and that means eventually ossifying.
But…
— Haseeb Qureshi ＞|＜ (@hosseeb) September 17, 2026
Later work, if needed, should be financed organically by holders and allies, as Bitcoin does.
He opposed pure tokenholder voting as too volatile for a monetary asset and preferred temporary elected councils.
He disclosed that Dragonfly holds ZEC and that he personally invested in ZODL, which he said does not draw directly from the Dev Fund.
Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang has taken the other side on funding, calling an inflation-backed developer pool an elegant way to pay for public goods at a time of rising AI and quantum risk.
He still shares Qureshi’s wariness of unfiltered coin voting, warning that it can inject unpredictability that weakens trust in ZEC as money.
Winklevoss Capital analyst Maxime Desalle has gone further, arguing the subsidy itself weakens miner incentives and recreates grant-seeking politics, and that the community should scrap the structure rather than redesign it.
Naval Ravikant has attacked off-chain “community” stewardship as a trusted-third-party problem. The split is therefore not only about 2028. It is about whether Zcash remains a protocol with a standing treasury or becomes a scarcer, more ossified asset whose builders raise money the way Bitcoin’s do.