The Zcash Foundation is shaking up its leadership.

On Tuesday, the nonprofit that supports the $7.7 billion privacy protocol announced two new appointments: Pili Guerra moves from engineering manager to head of engineering, and Danika Delano takes on the role of chief operating officer.

The foundation said the promotions reflect its commitment to promote from within and recognise the talent that’s been instrumental to its success.

It’s not the first major change to the Zcash Foundation’s leadership in recent weeks.

On November 1, the foundation’s board appointed Alex Bornstein as executive director. Bornstein stepped in as interim executive director in March.

Zcash is a blockchain protocol focused on privacy. It lets users send so-called shielded transactions, which hide transaction details by encrypting data. Users can also choose to send transparent transactions which are publicly viewable like those on Bitcoin or Ethereum.

The Zcash Foundation is a nonprofit that supports financial privacy infrastructure, primarily on Zcash.

The new appointees are very much at home with the open-source, privacy-first ethos of the Zcash Foundation.

Before joining the foundation in 2020, Guerra worked at the Tor Project, a non-profit that develops and maintains the Tor browser and its associated infrastructure. The Tor browser is used for anonymous web browsing, typically on the dark web.

She also worked at Red Hat, a firm that develops open-source software for businesses.

Delano also joined the Zcash Foundation in 2020. In her previous role as operations director she oversaw the foundation’s grant programmes, and organised Zcon, the foundation’s annual conference.

1,000% rally

The foundation’s leadership moves come as privacy-enhancing crypto projects experience a renaissance after years of investor apathy.

Zcash’s ZEC ($474.80) token has led the change, skyrocketing over 1,000% this year. The tokens of other crypto privacy projects, such as Monero and Railgun, have also soared.

Galaxy Digital attributed Zcash’s rise to real infrastructure progress and growing attention to crypto privacy in a recent report.

Interest rose sharply last month when former BitMEX chief Arthur Hayes predicted the ZEC token will hit $10,000 in a viral post on X.

On November 7, the ZEC token hit a high of $723, its highest value since 2018. It has since given back some of its gains, and trades around $470.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.