hodler

9 Jun 2026, 06:14

Has Zcash’s downtrend ended? ZEC rebounds after Ironwood proposal

Zcash has climbed nearly 50% from last week's low after developers moved to contain a critical vulnerability and proposed a network upgrade designed to let users independently verify the cryptocurrency's circulating supply. According to data from CoinGecko, ZEC rebounded from roughly $303 on June 5 to around $445 by June 9, recovering a significant portion of the losses that followed the disclosure of a flaw in the network's Orchard shielded pool. Although the token remains below the highs recorded earlier this month, improving sentiment has accompanied a series of technical and development-related updates that have prompted traders to reassess whether the recent selloff represented a temporary shock rather than the beginning of a prolonged decline. The current optimism stems from a proposal from Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox, who introduced the planned Ironwood upgrade days after Shielded Labs disclosed a vulnerability that could theoretically have allowed an attacker to create unlimited counterfeit ZEC. Since Orchard supports Zcash's main private transaction feature, the vulnerability quickly became a concern for users and investors. The uncertainty weighed heavily on investor confidence. CoinGecko data showed Zcash's market capitalization falling from about $10.5 billion to nearly $5 billion after the vulnerability became public before recovering toward $7.5 billion as emergency fixes and the Ironwood proposal were introduced. In a recent X post, Wilcox said Ironwood would give users the ability to verify the circulating supply by aggregating balances across active pools after activation. He added that the proposal includes a new location for holding shielded ZEC, transaction restrictions designed to isolate potentially counterfeit coins, and additional security measures such as AI-assisted code audits. Confidence in the network's recovery has also been supported by ongoing development efforts involving the Zcash Foundation, Tachyon Group, Valar Group, and the Zcash Open Development Lab, according to Wilcox. He noted that the timeline for Ironwood remains uncertain and will depend on future development work and community discussions. ZEC price analysis While the vulnerability disclosure triggered one of Zcash's sharpest selloffs this year, recent price action suggests selling pressure has eased considerably. The daily chart shows ZEC falling from the $650 to $700 region before finding support near $303 on June 5. ZEC/USD 1-day price chart. Source: TradingView. A long lower wick formed around the low, indicating strong demand emerged as prices approached that area. Since then, buyers have pushed the token back toward $450, allowing ZEC to recover roughly half of the decline recorded during the panic selloff. Even with that rebound, technical indicators show that the market has not yet fully regained bullish control. The token is currently trading near its session volume-weighted average price around $449, a level that often serves as a short-term gauge of market balance between buyers and sellers. Several resistance levels remain overhead. The 50-day exponential moving average sits near $485, while the 20-day EMA is positioned around $506. Together, those indicators create a resistance zone that ZEC has yet to reclaim. A successful move above that range would strengthen the case that the recent downtrend has ended and could bring the $550 to $600 area back into focus. Support conditions have improved, however. ZEC has recovered above its 100-day EMA near $430 after briefly losing the level during last week's selloff. Holding above that moving average would indicate that buyers continue to defend the recovery. Further below, the 200-day EMA remains near $370 and continues to trend upward. As long as the price remains above that longer-term average, the broader structure established since April remains intact despite the recent volatility. For now, the combination of emergency network fixes, the proposed Ironwood upgrade, and a recovery from the June 5 low has improved sentiment around Zcash. Whether the downtrend has fully reversed may depend on the token's ability to reclaim resistance near $500 while maintaining support above the 100-day EMA in the sessions ahead. The post Has Zcash’s downtrend ended? ZEC rebounds after Ironwood proposal appeared first on Invezz

9 Jun 2026, 05:33

Humanity Protocol Suffers $30M Hack, H Token Crashes

The exploit triggered a sharp market selloff, and caused the H token to plunge by more than 80% within 12 hours. Founder Terence Kwok confirmed the incident and advised users to avoid interacting with the protocol’s bridge and liquidity pools while the team investigates. Humanity Protocol Hit by Major Hack Humanity Protocol, a decentralized identity project that is often referred to as the “Chinese Worldcoin,” suffered a major security breach after private keys linked to a member of the Humanity Foundation were compromised. The incident resulted in the theft of more than $30 million worth of the project’s native H token and triggered a dramatic market selloff that sent the token’s value tumbling. The security incident was confirmed by Humanity Protocol founder and CEO Terence Kwok, who stated that the project detected a compromise involving private keys belonging to a foundation member. After the discovery, Kwok urged users to avoid interacting with the protocol’s bridge and liquidity pools until further notice while the team works alongside security experts to investigate the attack and secure the ecosystem. Humanity Protocol is a decentralized identity platform built on a zkEVM blockchain and focuses on Proof of Humanity verification through privacy-preserving palm biometric technology. The project aims to create a secure digital identity system while protecting user privacy through advanced cryptographic methods. The exploit had an immediate impact on the market. According to data from CoinCodex, the H token lost approximately 85% of its value within a 12-hour period, plunging from around $0.70 to roughly $0.08. H token’s price over the past 24 hours (Source: CoinCodex) Blockchain investigator Specter reported that the attack looks to be ongoing, with wallets connected to or previously interacting with Humanity Protocol reportedly being compromised. The investigator estimated that attackers drained as much as $30 million worth of H tokens from affected wallets. Blockchain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence also tracked the attacker’s activity and reported that the stolen funds were being swapped through decentralized exchanges including Kyber Network and PancakeSwap. The movement and liquidation of the stolen tokens added even more selling pressure on the market, and sped up the token’s decline. The Humanity Protocol incident is the latest in a growing list of private key-related security breaches affecting the cryptocurrency sector in 2026. One of the biggest incidents occurred earlier this year when attackers associated with North Korea’s Lazarus Group allegedly compromised administrative security council keys connected to Drift Protocol, which resulted in losses of approximately $280 million. Other projects affected by private key or wallet compromises this year include Step Finance, Resolv, Volo Vault, Echo Bridge, Bankr, Polymarket, StablR, Stake DAO, Gravity Bridge, and Alephium Bridge. According to blockchain security firm CertiK , wallet and private key compromises ranked as the second most expensive attack vector during May alone, accounting for approximately $13.7 million in losses.

9 Jun 2026, 04:54

Humanity Protocol token crashes more than 80% after a $32 million private-key hack

The decentralized identity project said attackers compromised the keys of a foundation member and are dumping the stolen H tokens for ether.

9 Jun 2026, 04:00

Zcash Crashed 50% On A Four-Year-Old Secret — The Recovery Has Quietly Begun

Zcash has completed a two-phase emergency network upgrade to fix a critical vulnerability in its Orchard shielded pool — a flaw that sat undetected for four years, could theoretically have allowed unlimited undetectable counterfeit ZEC creation, and triggered a 50% price collapse before the network’s swift response began restoring confidence and driving a recovery in ZEC’s price. Related Reading: Analyst Charts Ethereum Long-Term Roadmap To $16,000 – There’s No Need To Panic Josh Swihart, CEO of Electric Coin Company — the primary developer of Zcash — posted on X on June 7 confirming the fix was complete and the network secure, as ZEC began its recovery from the lows reached after the vulnerability’s disclosure. The post arrived at a critical moment for the asset: ZEC had crashed approximately 50% from a June 4 peak of $624 to $309 on June 5, wiping more than $3 billion from its market capitalization, per the BitMEX Blog’s documented timeline of the incident. ZEC's price trends to the upside over the past 48 hours, as seen on the daily chart. Source: ZECUSD on Tradingview How The Zcash Bug Was Found — And What It Was The vulnerability was discovered on May 29, 2026 by security researcher Taylor Hornby during a protocol audit commissioned by Shielded Labs. Hornby identified a “soundness” flaw in Zcash’s Orchard zero-knowledge proof circuit — specifically an under-constrained element in the Orchard Action circuit that could allow invalid state transitions, creating a theoretical double-spending risk within the shielded pool. The discovery was made using Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 AI model alongside a custom analysis suite, per Shielded Labs’ official disclosure. Hornby and the AI developed a working proof-of-concept that successfully generated unlimited, completely undetectable counterfeit ZEC in a local test environment — described by one independent analyst as “about the worst kind of bug a cryptocurrency can have,” per Yahoo Finance’s reporting of the disclosure. Critically, the flaw did not permit inflation of the total ZEC supply on the live network. Zcash’s internal turnstile accounting mechanism — which tracks the total value moving into and out of the shielded pool — confirmed no unauthorized value creation occurred while the flaw was active, per Shielded Labs’ official statement. However, the organization acknowledged directly that due to the privacy properties of Orchard and the nature of the bug, there is no definitive cryptographic way to determine whether exploitation occurred — a limitation inherent to the shielded pool’s design that became its own source of market concern. The vulnerability had been present since Orchard’s activation in May 2022 — four years — without detection. The Emergency Response Zcash’s development ecosystem responded with unusual speed. The first phase was an emergency soft fork deployed through Zebra 4.5.3, activated at block 3,363,426 on June 2, which temporarily disabled all Orchard transactions to remove the attack path while developers prepared the permanent fix. Transparent and Sapling transactions continued operating normally throughout, per the Zcash Foundation’s official announcement on X. The second phase arrived on June 3 through the NU6.2 hard fork — activated at block 3,364,600 via Zebra 5.0.0 — which introduced a corrected circuit and a new verifying key, patching the flaw and re-enabling Orchard transactions, per the Foundation. The market’s initial reaction to the hard fork was positive. ZEC rose from $544 on June 2 to $603 on June 3, continuing to $624 on June 4 — its highest level since the rally began. Then Arthur Hayes publicly disclosed he had exited his entire ZEC position intraday on June 4 — the same day as the peak — citing five macro factors including higher energy prices and upcoming AI IPOs, per his X post covered in prior reporting. The combination of Hayes’ exit and lingering uncertainty about whether exploitation had occurred before the patch sent ZEC to $309 on June 5. The Recovery And What It Means Swihart’s June 7 X post — reassuring the community that total ZEC supply remained intact throughout and that the network had passed through the emergency without confirmed exploitation — appears to have been the catalyst for the recovery now underway. The swift two-phase response, combined with the Foundation’s transparent disclosure and Swihart’s direct communication, provided the confidence signal the market needed. This development marks a pivotal and genuinely uncomfortable moment for Zcash’s long-term positioning in the nascent sector. A four-year-old vulnerability in the Orchard pool — the very component that defines ZEC’s core privacy value proposition — has been fixed cleanly and without confirmed exploitation. Related Reading: Has The Bitcoin Price Crash Ended Or Is This Just The Beginning? Analyst Answers But the structural irony that the privacy properties that make Zcash valuable also make it impossible to confirm the vulnerability was never used will remain a question mark the community will need to address as the recovery continues. As of this writing, ZEC trades at around $430, recovering from its June 5 lows as confidence in the network’s security response gradually rebuilds. Cover image from Grok, ZECUSD Chart from Tradingview

9 Jun 2026, 02:25

Humanity CEO Confirms $20M Hack Stemmed From Leaked Private Key of Foundation Member

BitcoinWorld Humanity CEO Confirms $20M Hack Stemmed From Leaked Private Key of Foundation Member Terence Kwok, the CEO of the decentralized identity protocol Humanity (H), has confirmed that the recent $20 million exploit of the platform originated from a leaked private key belonging to a foundation member. The admission, made in a public statement, marks a significant development in the ongoing investigation into the security breach that has shaken user confidence in the project. Leaked Key Led to Major Exploit According to Kwok, the compromised private key allowed the attacker to gain unauthorized access to the project’s bridge and associated liquidity pools. The breach, which was first detected earlier this week, resulted in the loss of approximately $20 million in various crypto assets. Kwok did not specify which foundation member’s key was leaked or how the leak occurred, but he assured the community that a full forensic audit is underway. Immediate Security Measures Enforced In response to the incident, the Humanity foundation has issued an urgent advisory urging all users to immediately cease using the project’s bridge and any connected liquidity pools. The foundation stated that these measures are precautionary until a comprehensive security review can be completed and the integrity of the affected systems can be verified. Users have been warned that any transactions involving the bridge or pools carry a high risk of loss. Broader Implications for Cross-Chain Security The Humanity hack underscores a persistent vulnerability in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space: the reliance on private keys for critical infrastructure. Security experts have long warned that the compromise of a single key, particularly one held by a project insider, can lead to catastrophic losses. This incident is likely to intensify calls for more robust key management practices, including the use of multi-signature wallets, hardware security modules, and decentralized key sharding. The breach also highlights the risks associated with cross-chain bridges, which have become a prime target for attackers due to the concentration of value they represent. Conclusion The confirmation of a leaked private key as the root cause of the Humanity hack provides clarity on the attack vector but raises serious questions about internal security protocols at the foundation. As the project works to contain the damage and restore trust, the wider crypto community will be watching closely to see what measures are implemented to prevent a recurrence. For now, users are advised to follow the foundation’s guidance and avoid using the bridge and liquidity pools until a full security clearance is given. FAQs Q1: What exactly happened in the Humanity hack? A1: An attacker gained unauthorized access to Humanity’s bridge and liquidity pools by using a leaked private key belonging to a foundation member, resulting in the theft of approximately $20 million in crypto assets. Q2: What should Humanity users do right now? A2: The foundation has advised all users to immediately stop using the bridge and all liquidity pools until a full security review is completed and the systems are deemed safe. Q3: How common are private key leaks in crypto? A3: While not everyday occurrences, private key leaks are a known and serious security risk in the crypto space. They have led to several high-profile hacks, often targeting bridges and custodial wallets, and underscore the need for advanced key management solutions. This post Humanity CEO Confirms $20M Hack Stemmed From Leaked Private Key of Foundation Member first appeared on BitcoinWorld .

9 Jun 2026, 00:55

Humanity Token Plunges 88% After $20M Hack, On-Chain Data Reveals

BitcoinWorld Humanity Token Plunges 88% After $20M Hack, On-Chain Data Reveals A significant security breach has hit the Humanity (H) token ecosystem, with a hacker siphoning over $20 million from token holders, according to on-chain analyst Specter. The incident, which unfolded rapidly, has triggered a dramatic sell-off, with the token’s price crashing 88% in the past 24 hours to trade at $0.08257. Details of the Exploit Blockchain security researcher Specter reported the breach via on-chain data, noting that the attacker has already swapped approximately $9 million of the stolen funds for Ethereum (ETH). The conversion to ETH is a common tactic used by hackers to liquidate assets more efficiently or move funds through mixers to obscure their trail. The remaining stolen tokens are still held in the attacker’s wallet, posing continued selling pressure on the market. The exploit appears to have targeted a vulnerability within the Humanity token’s smart contract or associated platform, though the exact vector of the attack has not yet been confirmed by the project’s team. As of press time, the Humanity project has not released an official statement regarding the incident or any potential remediation steps for affected holders. Market Impact and Investor Reaction The sudden and massive sell-off has wiped out a substantial portion of the token’s market capitalization. The 88% price decline reflects a panic-driven exodus as holders rushed to exit positions, exacerbating the downward spiral. The conversion of $9 million into ETH added further selling pressure on the broader market, though Ethereum’s price has remained relatively stable in the same period. For investors, this incident underscores the persistent risks associated with holding tokens in decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystems, particularly those with unaudited or recently deployed smart contracts. The speed of the attack and the subsequent market reaction highlight the importance of due diligence and security audits before investing in new token projects. What This Means for the Broader Crypto Market This hack adds to a growing list of high-profile exploits in the crypto space, which have collectively resulted in billions of dollars in losses over the past few years. While the $20 million figure is significant, it is not unprecedented. The incident serves as a reminder that the DeFi sector continues to grapple with security challenges, and that regulatory scrutiny may intensify as a result. For Humanity token holders, the immediate outlook is uncertain. Recovery of stolen funds is unlikely, and the token’s reputation has been severely damaged. The price collapse may also deter new investors, potentially leading to a prolonged period of low liquidity and trading volume. Conclusion The $20 million hack of the Humanity token is a stark illustration of the vulnerabilities present in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. With on-chain data confirming the theft and subsequent conversion to ETH, the incident has resulted in an 88% price crash, erasing significant value for holders. As the community awaits further details from the project team, the event reinforces the critical need for robust security measures and investor caution in the DeFi space. FAQs Q1: How was the Humanity token hack discovered? The hack was first reported by on-chain analyst Specter, who identified the suspicious movement of funds from token holders’ wallets. The analyst tracked the stolen assets on the blockchain, revealing the scale of the exploit. Q2: What happened to the stolen funds? Of the $20 million stolen, approximately $9 million has been swapped for Ethereum (ETH), a common method used by hackers to facilitate laundering or liquidation. The remaining funds are still held in the attacker’s wallet. Q3: Is there any way for investors to recover their losses? Recovery of stolen funds in crypto hacks is rare, especially if the attacker successfully moves assets through mixers or exchanges. Investors should monitor official channels from the Humanity project for any announcements regarding compensation or next steps, but expectations should be tempered. This post Humanity Token Plunges 88% After $20M Hack, On-Chain Data Reveals first appeared on BitcoinWorld .