---
title: What's Driving Token Prices? January 14, 2026
description: This week on What’s Driving Token Prices, Katie Talati examines Zcash governance issues, Polygon’s payments shift, and planned changes at Pump.fun.
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---

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# What's Driving Token Prices? January 14, 2026

[![Katie Talati](https://www.ar.ca/hubfs/Katie%20Talati.png)](https://www.ar.ca/blog/author/katie-talati)

 Written by [Katie Talati](https://www.ar.ca/blog/author/katie-talati)

 Jan 15, 2026

**Join Katie Talati, Arca’s Head of Research, weekly on Wednesday at 4PM EST / 1PM PST as she shares notable token activity over the past week and her insights on what market events drove these token price movements.**

- **ZEC (-7.3%)** - Last week, the entire team of the Electric Coin Company (ECC), the for-profit business supporting the development of privacy token Zcash, quit after a dispute with its non-profit board. While exact details are sparse, it appears that ECC wanted to monetize Zashi, the Zcash wallet developed by ECC. Its board, on the other hand, resisted this change, leading to a mass exodus from the company. The ex-ECC team has started a new project, cashz, with a new wallet, which they claim is built from the codebase of Zashi. The dispute illustrates the continued misalignment between lab and non-profit entities supporting decentralized protocols. ZEC, which was up 780% in H2 2025, traded down -7.3% on this news.
- **POL (+24%) **- Yesterday, Layer-2 protocol Polygon announced some big changes along with an acquisition announcement. The protocol is broadly planning to become a US-regulated payments platform, offering fiat on/off-ramps, 1-click transactions across chains, easy onboarding, and more. The new payments focus will be achieved with the acquisition of Coinme and Sequence. Coinme offers money transmitter licenses and regulated wallet infrastructure across 48 states and 50,000+ retail locations. Sequence, meanwhile, offers highly secure 1-click cross-chain transactions. This pivot from Polygon, which has evolved from a general-purpose Layer-2 to a DeFi chain over the years, is in line with a broader trend toward payment infrastructure. Polygon joins other chains such as Stripe’s Tempo, Circle’s Arc, Plasma, and many others in a race to create the predominant stablecoin payments system.
- **PUMP (+25%)** - The founder of Pump.fun, the leading memecoin launchpad, broke a two-month silence last week to announce big changes coming to the project. While specific changes were not disclosed, Pump.fun’s founder, Alon, admitted that Creator Fees needed to be reworked in order to reward higher-quality projects. In their current form, Creator Fees are a percentage of Pump.fun’s trading fees assigned to creators of launched memecoins that are “successful.” However, in many cases, after generating fees and launching a token, a Creator would abandon the project, hurting the holders of that token. The team has hinted at changes that would add additional token utility to launched tokens and reward fewer, higher-quality projects. After peaking in January 2025 with approximately 57,000 token launches per day, Pump.fun has seen its new launches decline to around 27,000 per day. Despite this, the project is still generating $390M per year (using the last 30 days of data). 

*DISCLAIMER: This commentary is not intended to be investment advice, investment research, or a recommendation. Please consult your investment professional for your own circumstances.*

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Disclaimer: This commentary is provided as general information only and is in no way intended as investment advice, investment research, legal advice, tax advice, a research report, or a recommendation. Any decision to invest or take any other action with respect to any investments discussed in this commentary may involve risks not discussed, and therefore, such decisions should not be based solely on the information contained in this document. Please consult your own financial/legal/tax professional.

Statements in this communication may include forward-looking information and/or may be based on various assumptions. The forward-looking statements and other views or opinions expressed are those of the author, and are made as of the date of this publication. Actual future results or occurrences may differ significantly from those anticipated and there is no guarantee that any particular outcome will come to pass. The statements made herein are subject to change at any time. Arca disclaims any obligation to update or revise any statements or views expressed herein. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results and there can be no assurance that any future results will be realized. Some or all of the information provided herein may be or be based on statements of opinion. In addition, certain information provided herein may be based on third-party sources, which is believed to be accurate, but has not been independently verified. Arca and/or certain of its affiliates and/or clients may now, or in the future, hold a financial interest in investments that are the same as or substantially similar to the investments discussed in this commentary. No claims are made as to the profitability of such financial interests, now, in the past or in the future and Arca and/or its clients may sell such financial interests at any time. The information provided herein is not intended to be, nor should it be construed as an offer to sell or a solicitation of any offer to buy any securities, or a solicitation to provide investment advisory services.

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