Zcash’s long-running debate over staking has reached a decisive impasse after Josh Swihart, founder of Zcash Open Development Lab and former head of Electric Coin Company, effectively blocked the Crosslink upgrade proposed by independent team Shielded Labs.
Swihart stated, "I don't believe this will benefit Zcash," arguing that the additional staking layer would overload the protocol, introduce new critical vulnerabilities, and weaken the network's Nakamoto consensus foundation. The proposal aimed to preserve traditional mining for coin issuance while adding a protective staking layer to prevent transaction rollbacks and hacker attacks.
To protect user anonymity, Shielded Labs had proposed fixing staking amounts in powers of 10 ZEC — such as 1, 10, 100 or 1,000 — so outside observers cannot identify participants inside the shielded Orchard pool. However, Swihart insisted that “Zcash should remain on classic Nakamoto consensus.”
The dispute dates back to 2021, when Zcash first explored a transition to Proof-of-Stake. Swihart, then returning as CEO, froze the project and called it a distraction from scaling. Shielded Labs later revived the concept, gaining financial support from Vitalik Buterin and the Winklevoss twins, who see ZEC becoming a yield-bearing asset.
Despite that backing, skepticism inside Zcash’s core persists. Swihart’s opposition signals that the project currently lacks the general consensus required for a code update.
