a new era (for me personally)
[This is the medium where I post personal stuff. For an archive of my posts as the CEO of the Electric Coin Co, see https://medium.com/@zooko_25893 .]
The Board of Directors of the Electric Coin Co—which consists of Alan Fairless, Michelle Lai, Zaki Manian, Christina Garman, and myself—has decided to make Josh Swihart the CEO of the Electric Coin Co, taking over that role from me.
I have known and worked with Josh for a long time. While he and I have often disagreed about how we should do things, we’ve never disagreed by why. We share the mission of putting irrevocable, sovereign economic freedom into the hands of every person on earth. I’m excited about Josh’s product focus and looking forward to seeing what he and the ECC team do together.
For the last eight years of my life, I’ve worked continuously on Zcash. I was blessed with the best team ever—people who could’ve done anything, but who chose to do this because they believed in the mission. I will always be grateful to them.
Together, we created—for the first time—the technology of economic freedom for the internet. We showed the world not only that it is possible, but also that it is good—that normal, honest people are on the side of freedom. Zcash has been adopted by uncountable people from all over the world. Privacy is for everyone. Privacy is normal.
For me personally, Zcash took over not only my life but also my identity. It was hard for others to see Zcash as something separate from me. Sometimes it was hard for me to do that myself. It has been an incredible experience, and I’ll always be grateful that I had the opportunity to live out one of my science fiction dreams in reality. However, in the long run, I don’t think this conflation of Zcash with me personally is healthy for me, and I don’t think it’s healthy for Zcash. Zcash’s role in human history is, and will be, much bigger than any individual.
So what am I gonna do now? This transition has been like waking up from a dream. I’m still blinking and rubbing my eyes. I’ve been thinking about all the interesting new technologies that are coming out and how they can impact us and our society. Anything that I could commit to would need to be focused on human freedom, because freedom is what breathes life into everything that we love and value.
And, I think that anything that I would commit myself to in the future would need to include Zcash, because the Zcash community is freedom’s best hope. They (we) are far-flung, mostly invisible, highly skilled, and unshakeably committed to our mission. They (we) are best positioned, at this moment in history, to bend the arc of history toward the good.
Give me a couple of months to think about how I can best help, and I’ll get back to you. Long live Zcash!!!
[See the Electric Coin Co’s blog post about this transition here: https://electriccoin.co/blog/welcoming-a-new-season-at-ecc-a-message-from-the-bootstrap-board-of-directors/]
