Zcash developer activity has dropped to its lowest level since 2021, and the price of the privacy-focused cryptocurrency ZEC has fallen 40 percent over two months, Cointelegraph reported on Jan. 9.

Santiment said the decline in developer activity was the result of overlapping governance disputes and falling prices, with ZEC down close to 40 percent over the past two months. Santiment said, "When development activity increases, altcoins stand out, but in the opposite case they fall behind in competition due to a lack of innovation."

The Zcash ecosystem is being shaken by a governance conflict between Electric Coin Company (ECC) and Bootstrap, a nonprofit that supports the protocol. ECC recently announced it would leave Bootstrap and establish a new company. Bootstrap acknowledged that its internal board discussed a plan to privatise the Zcash wallet Zashi, deepening the conflict.

ECC plans to launch a new wallet, cashZ, within weeks. The Zcash Foundation stressed open-source-based structural stability and said that "changes in individual organisations do not undermine the integrity of the blockchain," but that did not appear enough to stop the slide.

ZEC fell 14 percent last week alone to about $433. Whale investors bought an additional $1.17 billion worth of ZEC despite the governance dispute, Cointelegraph reported.