it's centralized both in development and mining (https://miningpoolstats.stream/zcash), zcash launched with a 20% dev tax, every time it pumps it enriches those that skimmed coins to themselves, then they dump it all on the market

the "scam" may have funded the "promising tech", but unless you like getting poor buying zcash is not the best approach

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zcash

in counterpart monero is not a scam because everyone that gets monero only issues it fairly via mining, competing with everyone else in the same game, and it does not have a corporate structure and anyone can mine or develop for monero at any time, it may not evolve as fast or produce cutting edge tech, but it manages to deploy what already works best for a private blockchain without any leadership direction