Zcash Co-founder Sean Bowe Proposes Ending ZCG Funding Stream, Citing $125M Treasury

Zcash (ZEC) co-founder Sean Bowe proposed on Monday to end the 8% block reward share paid to Zcash Community Grants (ZCG), saying the program already holds over $125 million.

Bowe filed the change as a draft Zcash Improvement Proposal (ZIP) that would send that reward share to the Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM) until the stream’s scheduled end.

That mechanism withholds the coins from issuance and starts paying them back out as block rewards in February 2031. Under the draft, ZCG would keep its existing treasury and could still approve grants from it.

“The program was never designed to handle this amount of funding,” Bowe wrote on X.

It’s time to turn off the ZCG funding stream.

ZCG has over $125M in funding, and will receive millions more before the spigot is turned off. The program was never designed to handle this amount of funding.

Draft ZIP:

https://t.co/GAkRBeplwO

— Sean Bowe (@ebfull) October 27, 2026

ZCG Is Owed 110,049 More ZEC

Bowe’s figure comes from a dashboard linked on ZCG’s website. It listed 91,453 ZEC and $8.8 million in cash at an October 21 block. Approved grants still unpaid came to $2.4 million. Bowe valued the coins at $1,300 each to reach $125.3 million.

The same dashboard counts another 110,049 ZEC due to ZCG before the stream ends on November 24, 2028. According to the draft ZIP, at the dashboard’s price of $1,241.61, those coins are worth $136.6 million, more than the program holds now; and, according to a Financial Privacy Foundation report, ZCG spent $1.53 million in the first quarter of 2026 against that intake. The stream adds 144 ZEC a day, which Bowe put at $68.3 million a year at the same coin price.

Bowe’s draft landed alongside other proposals on the Zcash forum. For instance, Maxime Desalle’s proposal would also send ZCG’s remaining treasury to the NSM. Desalle cited a February coinholder vote in which 98.6% opposed Zcash Shielded Assets. ZCG approved another $455,000 for Shielded Assets work in June, he said.

Turnout was 7.25% of circulating ZEC, per the Zcash Foundation. In June, ZCG approved $455,000 for a QEDIT test network covering Shielded Assets and other deferred features, its minutes show.

Other Things That Should End

Josh Swihart, founder and CEO of Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL), said: “It’d be a mistake to kill only one part of the dev fund.” He added the 12% Coinholder-Controlled Fund, which accrues about 216 ZEC a day, should end too.

Swihart’s company is the one former Electric Coin Company staff formed after a governance dispute. Responding to Swihart’s plan, Bowe wrote that he would also personally back a separate proposal to strip ZCG’s existing treasury.

Ian Miers, one of Zcash’s founding scientists, objected to the NSM as the destination, stating that the reserve ultimately pays miners and could be redirected later. Bowe answered that the reserve exists anyway and the issuance has to go somewhere.

His draft is not part of Network Upgrade 7 (NU7), set to activate on mainnet on November 5. It would need a later upgrade before the ZCG stream expires.

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