PANews reported on March 9th that Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) has announced the completion of a seed round of financing exceeding $25 million. Investors include Paradigm, a16z crypto, Winklevoss Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and numerous industry investors. ZODL was founded by Josh Swihart, former head of Electric Coin Company (ECC). His team's Zcash wallet, Zodl (formerly Zashi), launched in 2024, has driven the growth of Zcash privacy pools by over 400% and facilitated over $600 million in ZEC exchanges since October of last year. The entire former ECC team has joined ZODL to continue overseeing Zcash protocol development and the construction of its self-custodied privacy finance platform.