Zcash price declines after discovery of critical bug in Orchard

A critical security vulnerability in Zcash’s Orchard pool has caused a sharp price decline for the cryptocurrency. Security researcher Taylor Hornby discovered a bug on 29 May that could theoretically generate unlimited and undetectable fake ZEC coins. Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox stated that the Zcash Open Development Lab took immediate action and fixed the vulnerability on 2 June.

Zcash is available at OKX and Bybit.

Orchard pool hit by counterfeit bug

Shielded Labs, which is involved in the research, states that the bug was indeed real and exploitable. In local test conditions, the flaw could be used to create arbitrarily many fake ZEC without detection. Due to Orchard’s privacy design, it is cryptographically impossible to prove retrospectively whether the bug was exploited before it was patched.

However, Shielded Labs considers it unlikely that anyone used the security hole before it was fixed. The team is working on a network upgrade to verify the integrity of Zcash’s total coin supply and definitively demonstrate that no counterfeit ZEC is circulating in the Orchard pool.

Sharp price decline after security incident

The discovery of this bug has consequences for confidence in Zcash. The ZEC price has fallen sharply and currently stands at $313. a decline of 42.6% over the past 24 hours. Such security issues can put pressure on the value of a cryptocurrency, especially as they directly affect the fundamental properties of the coin.

The swift response from the Zcash team does show that security matters are taken seriously. The emergency update that Zcash implemented appears to have been effective in closing the vulnerability.