Zcash Trademark Negotiations Were Quite Painful: Analyst

The Electric Coin Company (ECC), known as the firm led by the Zcash creator Zooko Wilcox, has been hosting the Zcash trademark event with the Zcash Foundation (ZF) participating as well as other industry figures this Wednesday.

Even though many expected the talks to be smooth, sources with the knowledge of the trademark negotiations told the media that the talks were actually a lot more complicated than either party originally expected. This was especially the case with the regards to the mutual ability to veto the trademark usage.

And while the branding issue seems trivial to many observers, this process took months and actually became a bellwether of the privacy coin and its decentralized aspirations. As ECC announced this Thursday, this is “a novel agreement for which there appears to be no precedent.”

The organization spoke about the Zcash trademark event and highlighted one provision in particular, which states:

“No party has independent authority to declare that a specific chain of Zcash can actually be called Zcash. There must be agreement from both parties, and neither party can unilaterally override the will of the community.”

Wilcox is in the Zcash news today for telling the media last week that the Zcash trademark negotiations were emotionally painful for him. As he described, they were compared to “watching a baby bird leave its nest.”

“As a person, I am devoted to zcash and can never stop working for zcash and all that it means for humanity,” he said. “As the ECC, of course, we can only work for the community if they hire us to do so.”

Ever since the ECC startup started the launch of the Zcash (ZEC) privacy coin in 2016, Wilcox has been the de facto public face of the cryptocurrency. That is why he believes that the trademark agreement is a sign of the project and how it is “rapidly moving to a status” where he does not have the power to “make something happen or stop it from happening.”

All in all, Wilcox is a wealthy man who benefied from the Zcash founders’ reward which delegates a portion of the newly mined coins to the founding team. However, he said that he is all-in with the money he earned.

“I’ve pledged half of all the money I expect to see in the world to fund the foundation,” Wilcox said and agreed that it requires a great deal of risk and faith in the community for a project like Zcash to succeed.