Vitalik Buterin donates an undisclosed amount to Shielded Labs to support Crosslink

Shielded Labs, the Swiss-based Zcash development organization, has announced that Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, has made a donation to support the continued development of Crosslink, a security-focused upgrade to the privacy coin’s consensus architecture.

The donation will advance Crosslink from its current prototype stage towards a persistent, incentivized testnet and eventual production readiness.

The exact amount of the contribution was not disclosed in the announcement, and it’s also Buterin’s second donation to Shielded Labs, following an initial contribution in 2023 that supported the formation of a dedicated team focused on Crosslink.

“Zcash is one of the most honorable crypto projects with a steadfast focus on privacy,” Buterin said. “Shielded Labs’ Crosslink work will allow Zcash to be more secure and on a lower security budget, supporting its long-term sustainability.”

What is Crosslink, and how will Buterin’s donation support it?

Crosslink gives strength to Zcash’s existing proof-of-work consensus as it adds a parallel finality layer that protects against chain reorganizations and rollback attacks. 

According to Shielded Labs, “All block production and economic activity continue to occur on the proof-of-work (PoW) chain, while the finality gadget anchors blocks and provides stronger settlement guarantees.”

Crosslink reduces double-spend risk and increases confidence in transaction settlement by ensuring that confirmed transactions cannot be reversed.

The upgrade is designed to allow for shorter confirmation requirements for exchanges, improve reliability for cross-chain integrations, and provide the consistency required by applications that depend on predictable settlement.

Jason McGee, executive director of Shielded Labs, said the improvements would make Zcash easier to integrate into the crypto ecosystem while maintaining its existing security properties.

Buterin’s donation will support the launch of a persistent, incentivized testnet where participants can earn ZEC, as well as the transition into a productionization phase.  

Shielded Labs stated that “this phase will focus on design specifications, security analysis, audits, coordination with wallets and infrastructure providers, and proactive engagement with the Zcash community.”

Zcash development continues to gather support

The donation comes amid increasing institutional support for Zcash’s privacy-focused infrastructure. Zcash token ZEC saw a significant rise to end the last quarter of 2025 as a result of the appeal of its privacy feature. Privacy-focused crypto Monero also enjoyed this institutional awakening.

In January, Gemini exchange founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss donated 3,221 ZEC, which was approximately $1.2 million at that time, to Shielded Labs, marking their second contribution to the organization. 

Tyler Winklevoss wrote on X, “Privacy is normal and crucial for a free and open society. That’s why @cameron and I are supporting @ShieldedLabs and their important work and contributions to Zcash.”

The Winklevosses’ first donation, made in 2023, also supported the formation of the Crosslink team.

Shielded Labs operates independently of Zcash’s block reward-based development fund, relying entirely on donations from ZEC holders and supporters. The organization employs Zooko Wilcox, Zcash’s founder and former CEO of the Electric Coin Company, as head of product.

While the donations are a boost to the Zcash community, all was not so rosy at around the beginning of 2026, as the entire development team of the Electric Coin Company, the for-profit organization behind Zcash development, called it quits after a fallout with its non-profit board overseeing the company.

Zcash has faced challenges in recent years; it faced pressure from regulators like the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which subpoenaed it in August 2023. This also caused its token to be delisted from several large centralized exchanges in 2023, who cited compliance reasons. 

The Zcash Foundation announced in January 2026 that the SEC has closed that chapter of investigation after nearly 3 years, stating that it does not intend to recommend any enforcement action or other changes against it.

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