Zcash (ZEC)

zcash:native crashed -50% in a single week

here's what i think happened

the Orchard pool had a bug that allowed fake transactions to be generated inside it. but Zcash's turnstile mechanism provides separate oversight over total supply and that kept working.

so the "mint unlimited ZEC" narrative isn't exactly right.

more accurate framing: "generate invisible fake movements inside Orchard"

was it exploited? unknown. and because of Orchard's privacy design that question can never be answered cryptographically

that's a genuinely uncomfortable level of uncertainty

i talked about Vitalik's "provably bug-free code" goal before. this event shows exactly why that goal matters

ZK circuits contain incredibly complex mathematics. formal verification and AI-assisted auditing are no longer optional. they're a requirement

and here's the thing that really sits with me

the privacy system is so strong that you can't even find out if you were exploited. this shows that Zcash's greatest strength and its biggest weakness are the same thing

"no one can see" protects both the user and the attacker. you can't separate the two

Earlier, security engineer Taylor Hornby, who discovered a major Zcash vulnerability using Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 AI model, said he plans to include Monero (XMR) and other privacy tokens in his upcoming audit schedule. When asked on social platform X whether he would review defects in Monero and other privacy cryptocurrencies, Hornby gave an affirmative answer. Previously, on May 29, Hornby, funded by the nonprofit development organization Shielded Labs, discovered a critical soundness flaw that had been hidden in Zcash's zero‑knowledge proof privacy pool (Orchard) since May 2022. (CoinDesk) https://t.co/TwEAkJrO9U