The privacy-focused Ethereum project inspired by Vitalik Buterin's novel is closing after two security incidents in one week

Zipcoin is done. The Ethereum -based project announced an immediate shutdown on October 22, 2026, after a second security breach in less than a week left its team unable to vouch for the safety of its own code.

The token, ZC, reportedly fell 84% within a day of the news. For a project that launched in late September, that is a remarkably short arc from debut to obituary.

The announcement came through an X post from the project’s account, @zipcoincash. The team pointed to a full compromise of its codebase, discovered on October 21, as the deciding factor.

That was the second blow. On October 15, an incident tied to UNCX drained 1.1% of the ZC supply, along with other tokens.

The stolen ZC was dumped on the open market. The team then quietly bought tokens back, a detail it disclosed only as part of the shutdown notice.

With a fixed supply of 1 billion tokens, that first hack worked out to roughly 11 million ZC hitting the market.

Zipcoin’s team still controls wallets holding 2.2% of the total supply, or about 22 million tokens. It plans to sell those holdings after a short exit window for existing holders.

ZC peaked at a market capitalization of approximately $40 million, and its price had already slid substantially before the closure was announced.

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Zipcoin’s origin story was unusual even by crypto standards. The project took its inspiration from a fictional currency in Snowmoon , a novel by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

Buterin was not involved. The project stressed its independence from him, and it was not affiliated with the Ethereum co-founder in any way.

ZC was an ERC-20 token, the standard format for tokens issued on Ethereum. Its design leaned heavily on privacy and anonymity.

The headline feature was Privacy Pools, a tool for shielded transactions. Shielded transfers obscure who is sending what to whom, which is the whole point for privacy-minded users.

The project also offered something called the Book. Users could burn ZC tokens to post permanent messages on-chain.

A 1% tax on trades funded the project’s treasury. Each buy or sell sent a slice to the team’s coffers.

The quiet buyback after the October 15 hack deserves a closer look. Repurchasing stolen tokens may have been an attempt to steady the price. But holders learned about it only once the project was already shutting down, which raises fair questions about disclosure.

The UNCX link is another thread worth watching. The October 15 incident hit more than just ZC, so other projects connected to that event may face their own reckonings and questions from holders.

Zipcoin went from launch to a roughly $40 million peak to shutdown in about a month.

The next thing to watch is execution of the exit plan itself. How long the window lasts, how the team sells its 2.2% stake, and whether it shares any further detail on the codebase compromise will shape how holders judge Zipcoin’s final act.