In 2013, a group of scientists got together to solve Bitcoin’s biggest problem: privacy. Their original solution was Zerocoin, a proposed privacy extension to Bitcoin, but they quickly pivoted and recruited additional scientists to build a standalone protocol known today as Zcash. The Zerocoin Electric Coin Company (now Electric Coin Co.) was formed in 2015 to create the protocol, and Zcash was launched in October 2016. The Zcash Foundation was formed in 2017 to further support Zcash, and in 2020, the Zcash Major Grants organization launched to help fund additional developers and community projects.