Zcash was the leading crypto token in the market cap leaderboards last week. As of Tuesday, the coin remained the fifth-biggest gainer among crypto assets behind Aptos (APT) at number 4, with Sui (SUI) being the week’s gainers at +57%.

ZEC’s 7-day gains were +29 percent on Tuesday, but from the low to the peak (between August 5 and 12) of the recent rally, the price rose 56 percent against the dollar.

So why has Zcash’s price risen the most in the past week while the rest of the cryptocurrency sector has suffered major losses over the same period, even though the broader recovery rally is showing strong demand from diehard crypto investors?

Most likely because Zcash founder Zooko has conspicuously returned to lead the development and marketing of the privacy coin. Meanwhile, MetaMask, the most popular Web3 for Ethereum and the most used decentralized finance (DeFi) wallet overall, has announced support for the asset.

ZCash founder Zooko is back

In December, Zooko Wilcox, the now 50-year-old founder of Zcash, resigned as CEO of the cryptocurrency’s private developer, Electric Coin Company. In an open resignation letter published on Medium, Zooko then wrote:

“I will always be grateful for the opportunity to turn one of my science fiction dreams into reality. In the long run, however, I do not believe that this mingling of Zcash with me personally is healthy for me (or for) Zcash. Zcash’s role in human history is and will be much larger than that of any one individual.”

Eight months later, Zooko announced to Forbes Magazine that he would join forces with a Swiss nonprofit called Shielded Labs to run the cryptocurrency he founded as an outsider.

He is supported by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, who recently said: “For something as important as Zcash, the entire future cannot depend on the results of a small group of people fighting their egos among themselves.”

MetaMask announces support for ZCash

Zcash’s recent price surges are more than just hype about what the founder might do next at Shielded Labs. In addition to Zooko’s return to the zero-knowledge proof-based cash anonymity project, markets learned in early August that MetaMask will now support integrations for Zcash.

“Yay!” said Zooko on Tuesday, August 6. “Zcash is coming to MetaMask thanks to MetaMask and the Zcash Community Grants Committee!”

He posted a screenshot of a post by the Zcash Foundation on the Zcash community forum that said:

“MetaMask has donated $150,000 to support the development of a MetaMask Snap that supports Shielded ZEC.”

Monero’s price rose last week along with ZEC. It could be that there was a privacy coin slump on crypto exchanges following Zcash’s rise.

Zcash is a privacy-focused anonymity coin, a fork of the Bitcoin codebase and blockchain.