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The Zcash Foundation closed the archetypal 4th of 2026 with $36.7 cardinal successful nett liquid assets and a cleanable measure of wellness from U.S. regulators, according to its Q1 2026 study released this week.
Key Takeaways
- The Zcash Foundation closed Q1 2026 with $36.7M successful nett liquid assets and $817,618 successful full operating expenses.
- The SEC concluded its probe into the Zcash Foundation with nary enforcement action, removing a large regulatory overhang for ZEC.
- ZF plans NU7 implementation and Z3 stack advancement successful Q2 2026, with Zcon7 scheduled for Cancun this fall.
Zcash Foundation Reports $36.7M Treasury, SEC Clears Investigation successful Q1 2026
The report covers a three-month play that Executive Director Alex Bornstein called 1 of the astir consequential successful the Foundation’s history. The 4th opened amid governance upheaval astatine Electric Coin Company (ECC), wherever the full improvement squad resigned successful aboriginal January pursuing a quality with Bootstrap, the nonprofit overseeing ECC.
ZEC dropped sharply connected the news, but the Zcash web continued processing blocks and settling transactions without interruption. The Foundation moved rapidly to code the transition, publishing a connection reaffirming that nary azygous enactment controls the Zcash protocol.
When ECC’s DNS seeders stopped responding, ZF deployed replacement seeders successful the United States and Europe wrong days. The Foundation besides announced a autochthonal Rust DNS seeder built connected the zebra-network crate, featuring per-IP complaint limiting and integrated Prometheus metrics.
On the regulatory front, the SEC notified the Foundation that it had closed its investigation, which began with a subpoena successful August 2023, without recommending enforcement action. The solution removes a important ineligible question that had surrounded the privacy-focused task for astir 3 years.
The Foundation’s simplified equilibrium sheet, unaudited and valued astatine end-of-quarter prices, showed full liquid assets of $36,701,379 against full liabilities of conscionable $12,714, leaving nett liquid assets of $36,688,666. ZEC holdings of 85,412.34 coins, valued astatine $248.22 per coin, made up 58.6% of the portfolio. USD and USDC combined accounted for 33.5%, with BTC rounding retired the remainder astatine 7.9%.
Image source: Zcash Foundation reportQ1 operating expenses totaled $817,618, averaging astir $272,539 per month. Team compensation was the largest azygous enactment point astatine $592,565. Program expenses came successful astatine $98,068, wide overhead astatine $93,960, and assemblage and lawsuit costs astatine astir $28,600 combined.
Engineering output was notable. The squad shipped 3 large Zebra releases. Zebra 4.3.0 addressed 2 captious vulnerabilities: CVE-2026-34202, a distant denial-of-service flaw rated CVSS 9.2 that could clang a node via crafted V5 transactions, and CVE-2026-34377, a statement logic mistake rated CVSS 8.4 that could let a malicious miner to induce a concatenation split. Both were patched and publically disclosed.
The Z3 stack, which integrates Zebra, Zaino, and Zallet with built-in Tor support, saw meaningful progress. Work besides precocious connected FROST v3.0.0, a multi-party signing protocol with cheater detection enabled by default and stronger zeroization. The Foundation expects to finalize FROST v3 and ZIP-312 successful 2026.
Image source: Zcash Foundation reportNU7 sentiment polling gathered input from ZCAP members, coinholders, and the Engineering Caucus crossed 5 countries. ZCAP turnout deed 57%, with coinholder information astatine 7.25% of circulating ZEC. Broad statement emerged astir Project Tachyon and Orchard Quantum Recoverability, which drew enactment from implicit 90% of some groups.
Proposals, including Zcash Shielded Assets and Consensus Accounts, showed important divergence betwixt the 2 panels. On March 24, the Foundation hosted Zcomm 2026, a virtual lawsuit featuring 4 sessions implicit 8 hours with speakers from Web3Privacy Now, Aztec, DWeb, and the Ludlow Institute. Combined unrecorded viewership crossed parallel streams reached astir 500.
In February, the Foundation welcomed Scott Onder to its board. Onder serves arsenic Chief Investment Officer astatine Mercy Corps and co-founder of Mercy Corps Ventures, with a portfolio spanning 38 early-stage ventures crossed Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia.
Looking ahead, Q2 priorities see NU7 implementation, Z3 stack advancement, and Zebra show benchmarking. The Foundation is besides readying the Zcash Dev Summit successful Rome alongside ZKProof8 and Eurocrypt, with Zcon7 acceptable for Cancun successful the fall.
ZEC has traded betwixt astir $585 and $632 successful caller sessions, up 10% to 15% implicit 48 hours arsenic of May 20, with request for privacy coins arsenic a superior catalyst.
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