Zcash co-founder Sean Bowe has proposed ending the automatic flow of new ZEC tokens to Zcash Community Grants (ZCG), arguing that the program already has enough money to support projects and was not designed to manage a treasury of its current size.
Bowe’s draft proposal would redirect ZCG’s 8% share of the Zcash block subsidy to the Network Sustainability Mechanism. The change would apply until the current funding period ends in 2028, while leaving the funds ZCG has already accumulated untouched.
According to Cointelegraph, Bowe outlined the proposal in a post on X and shared a draft on GitHub. He said ZCG held more than $125 million in funding and would receive additional money before the automatic payments ended. The proposal therefore focuses on changing the destination of future allocations rather than taking funds away from the grants organization.
How the proposed change would work
Zcash block subsidies are newly issued ZEC rewards associated with the network’s block production. Under the current arrangement, ZCG receives 8% of that subsidy to finance grants and other projects connected with the Zcash ecosystem.
The proposed redirection would send that allocation to the Network Sustainability Mechanism. The mechanism is designed to keep ZEC out of circulation and gradually return it through future block rewards. In practical terms, the proposal would shift the network’s future funding stream from an immediate grants budget to a reserve intended to support longer-term sustainability.
The draft does not call for ZCG to surrender its existing holdings or cash. Its current treasury would remain available for grant funding, subject to the organization’s existing commitments and decisions.
ZCG treasury and wider funding debate
ZCG’s dashboard showed 91,453 ZEC and $8.8 million in cash as of Wednesday, alongside $2.4 million in outstanding grant commitments. The ZEC holdings were valued at about $111 million at the time of the report.
A separate development lockbox held 72,351 ZEC, worth approximately $89 million, according to ZecStats. Together, the figures highlight the scale of funds connected to Zcash’s development and grants infrastructure, although the two pools serve different purposes.
The future of Zcash’s developer funding has already attracted debate. In September, Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at crypto venture capital firm Dragonfly, proposed ending the developer fund when its current funding period expires. He argued that the fund could face politicization as its value approached $100 million.
Bowe’s proposal would not immediately end support for Zcash-related projects. Instead, it would stop the automatic addition of new ZEC to ZCG and preserve the organization’s existing resources for continued grant-making.
ZEC market picture
Moneyiar market data recorded Zcash at $1,217.5366787048 as of October 25, 2026, at 22:38 (+03:30). ZEC was up 1.24% over 24 hours and 9.57% over seven days.
The market data provides a snapshot of ZEC’s price performance around the discussion, but it does not indicate how the proposed funding change will affect the token or whether the GitHub draft will be adopted.
