hodler

5 Jun 2026, 09:25

Did Claude Just Kill Zcash (ZEC)?

The privacy coin Zcash (ZEC) has plummeted 60% following the revelation of a critical vulnerability that could have allowed attackers to mint an infinite supply of counterfeit tokens.

5 Jun 2026, 09:15

Cypherpunk Technologies Praises Zcash Team for Proactive Bug Discovery, Averting Potential Exploit

BitcoinWorld Cypherpunk Technologies Praises Zcash Team for Proactive Bug Discovery, Averting Potential Exploit Nasdaq-listed Cypherpunk Technologies (CYPH), the company behind the acquisition of Zcash (ZEC), has publicly commended the Zcash development team for its swift and effective handling of a recently discovered vulnerability. In a statement shared on its official X account, the firm emphasized that while artificial intelligence tools are increasingly capable of identifying weaknesses in blockchain protocols, the true measure of a project’s security lies in its ability to detect and patch those flaws before malicious actors can exploit them. The Zcash team, it said, has proven its capability in this regard. The Orchard Infinite Inflation Bug: What Happened The vulnerability, widely referred to as the Orchard infinite inflation bug, was disclosed by the Zcash team in recent days. According to official reports, the flaw existed within the Orchard shielded protocol, a core component of Zcash’s privacy-focused architecture. Had it been exploited, the bug could have allowed an attacker to create ZEC tokens out of thin air, effectively undermining the cryptocurrency’s supply cap and eroding user trust. News of the vulnerability triggered a sharp decline in the price of ZEC, as markets reacted to the potential risk. However, the Zcash team acted quickly. Within hours of internal discovery, developers deployed a fix and notified network participants. Crucially, there is no evidence that the bug was ever exploited by an external party. The team’s proactive approach, combined with a transparent disclosure process, has drawn praise from industry observers and stakeholders alike. Cypherpunk Technologies’ Vote of Confidence Cypherpunk Technologies, which acquired the Zcash trademark and intellectual property in a deal earlier this year, used its public platform to reinforce the importance of security-first development. The company’s statement highlighted a broader point: as blockchain networks grow more complex and AI-driven vulnerability scanning becomes more common, the difference between a secure network and a compromised one often comes down to the speed and expertise of the development team. “AI will find vulnerabilities in all blockchains,” the company wrote. “The question is whether the team finds them first. The Zcash team has proven it can.” This endorsement carries weight, given Cypherpunk Technologies’ own focus on privacy and security technologies, and its position as a publicly traded entity with a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. Clarifying the Severity of the Bug Some community members and technical analysts have pushed back against the characterization of the vulnerability as an “infinite inflation” flaw. They argue that the bug’s potential impact was limited by the architecture of the Orchard protocol and that the term may overstate the risk. Others note that the rapid fix and lack of exploitation suggest the Zcash network remains fundamentally robust. Nonetheless, the incident has reignited broader conversations about the security of privacy-focused cryptocurrencies and the challenges of auditing complex zero-knowledge proof systems. Why This Matters for the Broader Crypto Ecosystem The Zcash incident serves as a case study in blockchain security and crisis management. For investors, it underscores the importance of backing projects with active, responsive development teams. For developers, it highlights the need for rigorous internal auditing and rapid incident response protocols. For the industry as a whole, it reinforces that no blockchain is immune to vulnerabilities, but that the presence of a capable team can mean the difference between a minor patch and a catastrophic exploit. The price of ZEC has since partially recovered, as the market digests the news and reassesses the risk. The episode has not derailed Zcash’s development roadmap, and the team continues to work on further protocol upgrades. Conclusion The discovery and swift patching of the Orchard bug by the Zcash team, followed by public recognition from Cypherpunk Technologies, demonstrates that proactive security practices are a critical competitive advantage in the cryptocurrency space. While the vulnerability itself was serious, the response has reinforced confidence in the project’s technical leadership and operational resilience. For users and investors, the key takeaway is that transparency, speed, and expertise in handling security incidents are just as important as the initial code quality. FAQs Q1: Was the Zcash Orchard bug actually exploited? No. There is no evidence that the vulnerability was ever exploited by an attacker. The Zcash team discovered the bug internally and deployed a fix before any malicious activity was detected. Q2: What exactly was the Orchard infinite inflation bug? The bug existed in the Orchard shielded protocol, which handles private transactions on Zcash. In theory, it could have allowed an attacker to generate new ZEC tokens beyond the network’s fixed supply. The term “infinite inflation” is used by some, but technical experts debate whether the bug’s actual potential was that severe. Q3: How did the market react to the news? The price of ZEC dropped sharply following the disclosure of the vulnerability. However, after the fix was confirmed and no exploitation was found, the price partially recovered. The incident did not cause lasting damage to Zcash’s market position. This post Cypherpunk Technologies Praises Zcash Team for Proactive Bug Discovery, Averting Potential Exploit first appeared on BitcoinWorld .

5 Jun 2026, 09:08

Critical Zcash Vulnerability Revealed by Founder: Key Details and ZEC Outlook

Zcash’s native cryptocurrency, ZEC, crashed by roughly 45% today, as the market reacted to a notable disclosure from the protocol’s founder, Zooko Wilcox, and other key ecosystem figures. The post explained that researchers had recently found and patched a critical vulnerability associated with Zcash’s Orchard shielded pool – one that could have allowed an attacker to create unlimited counterfeit ZEC without being detected. This brought to light one of the most serious kinds of bugs a cryptocurrency could face: one that threatens the integrity of the coin’s supply. It’s worth noting that the authors said they believe previous exploitation was unlikely; however, they also acknowledged that because of the protocol’s privacy features, there is no cryptographic way to prove today whether or not the bug itself was exploited before it was patched. What Happened to ZEC on June 5th, 2026? As seen in the chart below, ZEC experienced a massive crash on June 5th, 2026, losing more than 45% of its value and plummeting from above $600 to around $300 in a matter of hours. The sudden move followed a disclosure from the protocol’s founder, bringing to light a massive vulnerability that may have allowed attackers to mint counterfeit tokens. Let’s dive a bit deeper. Source: CoinGecko According to Zooko’s post on Twitter, security researcher Taylor Hornby discovered the vulnerability on May 29th, 2026, while reviewing the protocol’s Orchard circuit. To those unaware, Orchard is one of Zcash’s shielded pools – the part of the protocol that makes private transactions possible. Hornby had been hired by Shielded Labs back in April 2026 to conduct ongoing security research on the protocol. His job was to look for hidden flaws before malicious hackers could find it. The discovery came relatively short after Antrophic released its Opus 4.8 AI model on May 28th. In fact, Hornby used this same model as part of a targeted audit of the Orchard circuit. He combined AI-assisted review with traditional security research, and one day later he found the bug and disclosed it to the Zcash Open Development Lab, or ZODL for short. ZODL then coordinated an emergency response throughout the entire Zcash ecosystem, completing the fix by June 2nd, and thereby closing the window of risk. But that’s not the end of the story, because the bug could have caused damage before it was fixed. Allow me to explain. Why This Bug Was So Serious Put in simple terms, the vulnerability could have allowed for someone to create fake ZEC inside Orchard. Cryptocurrencies usually rely on very strict rules to prevent counterfeiting. A blockchain must absolutely know, at all times, that coins being spent really exist and that no one is secretly creating more than allowed. Zcash has a maximum supply of 21 million ZEC, similar to Bitcoin’s fixed-supply model. If someone is able to create unlimited fake ZEC, that would undermine one of the most basic and fundamental promises of the system itself. https://t.co/v7BiOdzU9E — zooko ⓩ (@zooko) June 4, 2026 The vulnerability was caused by what the authors described as an “under-constrained” element in the Orchard circuit. Now, a circuit is a mathematical system used to verify that a private Zcash transaction follows the rules without revealing sensitive details. These are the details about the sender, the receiver, and the amount. “Under-constrained” here means that the circuit did not fully check something it was supposed to be checking. In this case, the flaw enabled the insertion of false inputs into a core cryptographic operation, elliptic curve multiplication, while still making the proof appear valid. The researcher reportedly built a complete exploit and tested it in a local environment. During that test, the exploit generated virtually unlimited undetectable counterfeit ZEC. The authors admitted that if the same tool had been used on mainnet before the fix, it would have generated counterfeit ZEC directly in the real Zcash wallet. The Tradeoff for Privacy The crucial part of this disclosure is not only that the bug existed, but that Zcash’s privacy design makes it impossible to prove whether it was ever exploited before the fix. And it has been here for a while. To be precise – since Orchard was activated in May 2022. So that’s over 4 full years it could have been exploited. Zcash’s protocol is designed so that shielded transactions do not reveal public details about who sent the funds, who received them, or how much was transferred. That privacy is the whole point of the system. At the same time, though, it makes forensic analysis that much harder. On a traditional public and transparent blockchain, investigators are able to trace abnormal coin creation or suspicious transaction patterns. In Orchard, the relevant information, which could essentially point to any potential damages, is hidden by design. As a result, the authors concluded that there is no definitive cryptographic way of determining whether counterfeited coins were created before the vulnerability was patched. It’s important to note that this doesn’t mean that counterfeiting happened – it just means there’s no way to prove it doesn’t. Authors Think Exploitation Was Unlikely: Here’s Why Despite the serious nature of the vulnerability, the authors argue that prior exploitation was probably unlikely. The first reason they outline is that the vulnerability had gone unnoticed for years, despite Zcash’s protocol being reviewed by experienced security engineers and cryptographers. Orchard was activated back in May 2022, as we mentioned above, which means that the bug was there for four years without it being discoverd (or at least not that we know of such discovery). The second reason is that Hornby was onboarded to specifically search for deep protocol vulnerabilities, and this discovery was not accidental. It was the result of focused security effort using advanced tools and expert judgment. They also argued that the vulnerability was patched within just a few days after discovery. That said, the authors were very careful in asking the users not to simply trust their judgment, proposing a more formal way of restoring trust. What’s Next? First things first, Shielded Labs is working with other Zcash devs on a possible network upgrade that would allow users to reliably verify the integrity of the ZEC supply. This idea involves creating a new shielded pool and using “turnstile accounting” for coins leaving Orchard. Put simply, this would create a migration path that’s more controlled. Coins could move from the old pool to the new one under rules that are designed to make sure that more ZEC cannot come out than it legitimately went in. Naturally, this kind of network upgrade wouldn’t take place automatically – it would need community support through the normal government process. Opus 4.8 and Its Role in Discovering this Zcash Vulnerability One of the most impressive parts of this story is the role of AI-assisted security research. Taylor Hornby used Anthropic’s Opus 4.8 model as part of the review that led to the discovery. This doesn’t mean that AI “found the bug on its own.” The disclosure makes it clear that the process involved a very experienced professional, a targeted review, custom tooling, and expert analysis. However, it also shows that AI systems may increasingly become part of high-stakes security work, especially in complex cryptographic systems, where even the smallest mistakes can have disproportionately large consequences. Shielded Labs said it’s now accelerating this kind of proactive research. The post Critical Zcash Vulnerability Revealed by Founder: Key Details and ZEC Outlook appeared first on CryptoPotato .

5 Jun 2026, 09:05

Arthur Hayes Dumps Entire ZEC Position, Sends Zcash Crashing Over 43%

Arthur Hayes is out of Zcash. The BitMEX co-founder announced he has sold his entire ZEC position following the disclosure of a critical vulnerability in Zcash’s Orchard pool, and the market did not wait for an explanation before reacting. ZEC collapsed 43.4% in 24 hours, touching a low of $255 before recovering slightly to trade around $319. Over $81 million in liquidations followed. This is not a normal dip. Something broke, and the fallout is still unfolding. The Orchard Pool Exploit That Started Everything Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox confirmed on X, that security researcher Taylor Hornby discovered a critical counterfeiting vulnerability in Zcash’s Orchard pool on May 29. The Zcash Open Development Lab coordinated an emergency response that was completed by June 2. The timeline matters, the bug existed for several days before the fix landed, and that window is exactly what is making investors nervous. https://t.co/v7BiOdzU9E — zooko ⓩ (@zooko) June 4, 2026 Shielded Labs, one of the organizations involved in the response, was direct about what the vulnerability meant in practice. The bug was real and exploitable. A local test exploit could generate unlimited, undetectable counterfeit ZEC. Read that again: unlimited, undetectable. In a privacy-focused blockchain where the entire value proposition rests on cryptographic certainty, those two words together are about as damaging as it gets. The deeper problem is what Shielded Labs admitted it cannot do. Due to Orchard’s privacy design, it is cryptographically impossible to prove whether the bug was exploited before the patch was deployed. The organization believes prior exploitation was unlikely, but belief is not proof. That distinction, between improbability and impossibility, is precisely what sent Hayes for the exit. Why Arthur Hayes Sold and What He Said About It Hayes posted his reasoning on X, without softening it. He described reading about the exploit and not immediately appreciating how fundamentally it violated his investment thesis. The 30% price dump that followed made him reconsider, and he took profit on the entire position. The Holy Trinity is dead. Sadly due to the Orchard Pool exploit, I had to dump our entire $ZEC bag. – While I think it's extremely unlikely of any minting, it cannot be formally cryptographically proved impossible – The privacy from AI, govt, big tech narrative demands perfection… — Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) June 5, 2026 His explanation zeroed in on the philosophical problem at the heart of the Orchard situation. While he considers it extremely unlikely that any counterfeit minting occurred, he acknowledged it cannot be formally cryptographically proved impossible. That gap, between unlikely and provably impossible, is where his thesis fell apart. The reason that gap matters so much comes down to the narrative Hayes had built around ZEC in the first place. Privacy from AI surveillance, government overreach, and big tech data collection is one of the strongest emerging themes in the current market cycle. But that narrative, Hayes argued, demands perfection, not improbability. A privacy coin that cannot fully guarantee the integrity of its own supply is not a perfect privacy coin. It is a privacy coin with an asterisk. For a thesis built on absolute trust in cryptographic assurance, an asterisk is a dealbreaker. He was measured about it. He acknowledged eating humble pie, said he has no issue with that, and left the door open explicitly, if his assumptions are proven incorrect, he will rebuy, potentially at higher prices. But the position is gone. He also confirmed that his fund continues to hold Worldcoin’s WLD token, adding a characteristically sardonic note that he remains excited for “Lord Elon to pump our bags.” $81 Million in Liquidations and a Market in Freefall The numbers that followed the exploit disclosure are staggering by any measure. According to CoinGlass data, ZEC liquidations totalled $81.91 million in the past 24 hours alone. Of that, approximately $70.55 million came from long liquidations, traders who had bet on ZEC continuing higher and got wiped out as the price collapsed. Short liquidations accounted for the remaining $11.36 million. CoinMarketCap data confirms ZEC is trading around $319, down 43.4% over the 24-hour period following the news. The intraday low of $255 represents a level the token had not seen in a significant period, and the speed of the move reflects how violently the market repriced the asset once the full scope of the vulnerability became clear. Liquidations of this scale do not happen without leverage. ZEC had attracted a meaningful long positioning base, likely built in part around the same privacy narrative that Hayes himself was running. When the narrative cracked, the leverage unwound. The cascade from there was mechanical, long positions got liquidated, selling pressure intensified, prices fell further, more longs got liquidated. The loop ran until the tape was exhausted. What the Orchard Bug Means for Zcash’s Credibility Shielded Labs is already exploring a network upgrade that would verify the integrity of Zcash’s total supply and attempt to prove the non-existence of counterfeit ZEC in the Orchard pool. That work is technically complex and will take time. In the interim, the inability to confirm what did or did not happen during the vulnerability window hangs over the project. For a blockchain that exists specifically to provide financial privacy, a system people trust precisely because they believe its cryptographic guarantees are ironclad, this is the worst kind of disclosure. It is not that the system was definitely compromised. It is that the system cannot prove it was not. Those are very different statements, but in the context of privacy technology, the second one is almost as damaging as the first. The Zcash community has consistently positioned the Orchard pool as an advancement over earlier shielded pool designs. It introduced new cryptographic proofs and improved privacy guarantees. The discovery that a bug within that system could have allowed undetectable infinite minting, and that the privacy protections themselves are what make verification impossible, represents a profound irony that the project now has to confront publicly. Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services. Follow us on Twitter @nulltxnews to stay updated with the latest Crypto, NFT, AI, Cybersecurity, Distributed Computing, and Metaverse news !

5 Jun 2026, 09:00

Zcash Bug Could Have Minted Unlimited ZEC Undetected

A critical vulnerability in Zcash’s Orchard shielded pool could have allowed an attacker to create an unlimited amount of counterfeit ZEC without detection, according to a new disclosure from Zooko Wilcox, Jason McGee and security researcher Taylor Hornby. The flaw was discovered on May 29, remediated through an emergency ecosystem response completed by June 2, and has now triggered a broader debate over how Zcash can prove supply integrity in a privacy-preserving system. Orchard Flaw Puts Zcash Supply Integrity Under Scrutiny The vulnerability was found by Hornby , an experienced security engineer hired by Shielded Labs in April 2026 to conduct ongoing security research on the Zcash protocol. According to the disclosure, the mandate was straightforward: find protocol-level weaknesses before adversaries did. Hornby began reviewing Zcash with a combination of traditional security research and newer AI-assisted auditing methods. The timing was unusually compressed. Shortly after Anthropic released its Opus 4.8 model on May 28, Hornby used it in a targeted review of the Orchard circuit. One day later, he found a critical counterfeiting flaw and disclosed it to Zcash Open Development Lab, or ZODL , whose engineers coordinated the emergency response with other ecosystem participants. “The vulnerability could have been exploited to undetectably create an unlimited amount of counterfeit ZEC within Orchard,” the Shielded Labs post said . “Because of the privacy properties of Orchard, there is no way to cryptographically prove whether the vulnerability was exploited before it was remediated. However, a network upgrade can be deployed to protect users and prove the integrity of the Zcash supply.” The disclosure states that the bug was “real and exploitable.” Hornby, with the help of Opus 4.8, wrote a complete exploit and tested it in a local regtest environment, where it generated unlimited counterfeit ZEC that could not be detected. The authors said that had the same tool been run on mainnet, it would have generated unlimited, undetectable counterfeit ZEC in Hornby’s mainnet wallet. Technically, the issue involved an under-constrained element of the Orchard circuit. That made it possible to feed arbitrary false inputs into an elliptic curve multiplication while still passing the multiplication check. The vulnerability existed from Orchard’s activation in May 2022 until the emergency fix was deployed on June 1, 2026. That timeline is central to the concern. In a transparent ledger, supply irregularities can generally be audited by inspecting public balances and transaction values. Orchard is different by design: it hides amounts and transaction history. That privacy model means the system depends heavily on the correctness of the circuit rules that define valid shielded transactions. Josh Swihart, founder and CEO of Zcash Open Development Lab, the team behind the creation and launch of Zcash and builder of the Zodl wallet, framed the issue in those terms in a separate post. “A shielded Zcash transaction includes a proof that it followed the protocol’s rules, as defined in the rulebook (the circuit) that defines what constitutes a valid transaction. The Orchard vulnerability was in one of the rules, written loosely enough that it would accept false information and still pass. As a result, the engine could be convinced that a fake transaction was valid.” Swihart added that the flaw was not in Zcash’s underlying cryptography or the proof engine itself, but in the handwritten rules. In his words, “This was a flaw in the handwritten rules, not in the underlying cryptography or the engine that creates proofs.” Shielded Labs said prior exploitation appears unlikely, while emphasizing that users should not be asked to rely on that assessment alone. The authors pointed to several reasons for their view: the flaw had evaded years of scrutiny by leading cryptographers, Hornby was specifically hired to find such vulnerabilities, and the response window after discovery was sharply narrowed by the speed of ZODL and the broader Zcash ecosystem. “The discovery was not accidental—it was the result of a deliberate effort to identify vulnerabilities of this kind before malicious actors could,” the post said. “Taylor is one of the most skilled people in the world at this. He used the most recent AI tools, available only to white-hat security researchers, along with a sophisticated custom-built AI harness and prompts, and worked hard to outrace the attackers. We think he probably succeeded.” Still, the authors acknowledged the unresolved cryptographic uncertainty. Because of Orchard’s privacy properties and the nature of the bug, they said there is no definitive way to prove solely through cryptography whether the vulnerability was exploited before the fix. Shielded Labs Eyes New Pool And Formal Verification To address that, Shielded Labs is exploring a proposed network upgrade with other Zcash developers. The plan would deploy a new shielded pool and enforce turnstile accounting on coins moving from the existing Orchard pool, with the goal of allowing anyone to verify the integrity of the Zcash supply and prove the non-existence of counterfeit ZEC in Orchard. A follow-up post is expected next week with more details, including tradeoffs and implementation mechanics. Any major upgrade would still need community support and the standard governance process before activation. Swihart said a second Orchard pool could, in principle, be targeted for NU7 at the end of July, though he did not take a fixed position on whether that path should be pursued. He argued that the larger issue is preventing this class of failure from recurring, with formal verification as the strongest answer. “Formal verification fixes this,” Swihart wrote. “A mathematical proof can be constructed to reduce the parts humans must review to a concise, readable statement of the rules. A computer then checks the entire rulebook to ensure it matches. AI tools can now do the work of writing these proofs.” Shielded Labs said it is already accelerating proactive security work with Hornby and Anthropic, initiating a project to formally verify the Orchard circuit, and opening searches for a Head of Security and a Cryptographer. The episode leaves Zcash with a difficult but clear path: repair the trust assumptions around Orchard, prove supply integrity where possible, and move future shielded design closer to machine-checked guarantees rather than human-reviewed complexity. Over the past 24 hours, ZEC has fallen nearly 45% amid the uncertainty. At press time, it was trading at $337.

5 Jun 2026, 07:20

Zcash Plunges 45% as Critical Bug Threatens Infinite Coin Duplication

BitcoinWorld Zcash Plunges 45% as Critical Bug Threatens Infinite Coin Duplication Zcash (ZEC) has experienced a dramatic price collapse, losing more than 45% of its value in the last 24 hours. According to data from CoinMarketCap, the privacy-focused token is currently trading at approximately $322.83, down from over $590 just a day earlier. The sharp decline follows the disclosure of a critical vulnerability in Zcash’s Orchard protocol that could have allowed an attacker to create an unlimited number of new coins out of thin air. What Happened: The Orchard Protocol Bug The bug, described as an ‘infinite coin duplication’ vulnerability, was discovered within the Orchard protocol, the newest and most advanced privacy layer of the Zcash network. Orchard uses a zero-knowledge proving system called Halo 2 to enable shielded transactions. The flaw could have permitted a malicious actor to forge valid proofs, effectively minting counterfeit ZEC without detection. The Zcash development team, led by the Electric Coin Company (ECC) and the Zcash Foundation, was alerted to the issue and moved quickly to deploy a fix before the vulnerability could be exploited in the wild. However, the news of the bug’s existence and its potential severity has severely shaken investor confidence. Market Impact and Investor Reaction The market’s response was swift and brutal. The 45% drop represents one of the single largest daily losses for a major cryptocurrency in recent memory. Trading volume for ZEC surged as holders rushed to exit their positions, exacerbating the downward spiral. The sell-off was not limited to spot markets; futures and derivatives markets saw cascading liquidations, further amplifying the price decline. While the technical fix has been implemented, the reputational damage may take longer to repair. The incident raises serious questions about the robustness of even the most advanced cryptographic systems and the risks inherent in holding assets built on complex, novel technology. Why This Matters for Zcash and Privacy Coins Zcash has long been a flagship project for privacy-focused cryptocurrencies, competing with Monero and others. Its core value proposition is the ability to transact with complete anonymity. A bug that threatens the integrity of the coin supply — the most fundamental guarantee of any cryptocurrency — strikes at the heart of that value proposition. For users and investors, the key question is whether the fix is complete and whether any funds were actually stolen. As of now, the Zcash team has stated that the bug was patched before any exploitation occurred, but independent verification and a full post-mortem are still pending. This event could also invite increased regulatory scrutiny, as regulators may argue that such vulnerabilities make privacy coins inherently risky and unsuitable for mainstream adoption. Conclusion The Zcash crash is a stark reminder that even the most technically sophisticated blockchain projects are not immune to critical vulnerabilities. While the development team’s rapid response appears to have prevented a catastrophic exploit, the market has already delivered its verdict. The price recovery will likely depend on the community’s trust in the patch, the release of a transparent and detailed audit, and the project’s ability to demonstrate that its security practices are beyond reproach. For now, Zcash trades in a state of uncertainty, and the broader crypto market is watching closely. FAQs Q1: What was the Zcash bug that caused the price to crash? The bug was a critical vulnerability in the Orchard protocol that could have allowed an attacker to create an unlimited number of counterfeit ZEC coins by forging zero-knowledge proofs. This is known as an ‘infinite coin duplication’ exploit. Q2: Has the bug been fixed, and were any funds stolen? According to the Zcash development team, the bug was identified and patched before any exploitation occurred. No funds are believed to have been stolen. However, independent security audits are ongoing to confirm the fix’s completeness. Q3: What is the Orchard protocol in Zcash? Orchard is the newest privacy protocol on the Zcash network, designed to provide highly efficient and secure shielded transactions using the Halo 2 zero-knowledge proving system. It is a core component of Zcash’s privacy features. This post Zcash Plunges 45% as Critical Bug Threatens Infinite Coin Duplication first appeared on BitcoinWorld .