News linked to both this project and an event.
Odaily Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox posted on X stating that a security audit conducted by Anthropic's Claude Mythos AI model did not find any "more severe vulnerabilities" in the Zcash protocol. The audit was commissioned by Shielded Labs, a Swiss non-profit organization supporting Zcash development. On June 3, Zcash developers temporarily paused Orchard transactions after discovering a vulnerability in the shielded pool, restoring functionality through an emergency upgrade the same day. The issue stemmed from a four-year-old forging vulnerability in the Orchard shielded pool, identified by security researcher Taylor Hornby with the assistance of Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 model. The Zcash Foundation stated there is no evidence that the vulnerability was exploited, nor was any unauthorized value creation detected, and user privacy remained unaffected.Anthropic released the first public version of the Claude Mythos model, Fable 5, on Tuesday, and stated on Friday that it has suspended access to the Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models due to export control directives issued by the U.S. government citing national security concerns. (Cointelegraph)
Zcash core developer Sean Bowe posted an update on the progress of the Ironwood upgrade, stating that over the past 48 hours, protocol developers from various organizations have held two meetings and reached consensus on multiple specifications and implementation details for Ironwood. These include disabling Orchard pool bundles in Coinbase transactions, using anchors as authentication data for hardware wallet migrations, and the processing order of ZIPs and specifications.Currently, the Ironwood circuit and the ZIP 2005 integration draft are under review. Valar Group has completed testnet deployment and implemented some wallet-side changes. Meanwhile, formal verification work is progressing, and the development team plans to meet tomorrow to finalize the verification strategy. Additionally, at least three major audit firms are conducting security audits on Orchard, and multiple AI audit tools have been put into use simultaneously. Sean Bowe stated that the overall development progress is running smoothly.
Odaily Seer monitoring shows that Polymarket has launched a new prediction event titled "Was Zcash's Orchard privacy pool confirmed to have been exploited?"On June 4, Zcash's core development team revealed that they had deployed an emergency network upgrade to fix a critical cryptographic vulnerability in the Orchard privacy pool. This flaw could have potentially allowed a malicious attacker to arbitrarily forge unlimited amounts of ZEC. Due to the vulnerability's characteristic that "it is impossible to cryptographically prove whether it was exploited in the past," independent support organization Shielded Labs subsequently proposed on June 5 to deploy a new privacy pool during the NU7 upgrade at the end of July. They also suggested implementing strict "Turnstile-accounting" audits for tokens exiting Orchard to investigate whether any forged tokens exist. According to the settlement rules for this prediction event, if before December 31, 2026, official sources or mainstream credible media confirm that the vulnerability was effectively exploited on the mainnet before being patched, the event will settle as YES.Odaily Seer continues to monitor prediction markets, seeing changes before pricing.
Zcash ecosystem core contributor ZODL announced a new network upgrade proposal and privacy pool, Ironwood, in collaboration with Tachyon, Valar Group, the Zcash Foundation, and Shielded Labs. Ironwood will be built upon the existing Orchard protocol and further enhance security through formal verification and additional independent audits.
Odaily Seer Prophet Channel monitoring shows that the probability of "Zcash will hit $100 in 2026" on Polymarket has risen to 53%, a 24-hour increase of 36%.Market rules: If between 17:35 on November 24, 2025, and 23:59 on December 31, 2026 (Eastern Time), the lowest price (Low) of any 1-minute candlestick of the Binance ZEC/USDT trading pair reaches or falls below the price stated in the title, this market will immediately settle as "Yes"; otherwise, it will settle as "No." Settlement is based solely on the 1-minute candlestick data of the Binance ZEC/USDT trading pair; prices from other exchanges or trading pairs will not be considered.In previous news, the privacy coin Zcash disclosed and fixed a critical security vulnerability that could have been exploited by malicious miners to transfer over 25,000 ZEC (approximately $6.5 million) from the deprecated Sprout privacy pool. Officials stated that the vulnerability had existed since July 2020 but was not actually exploited, and user funds remained safe at all times. The development team has released version v6.12.0 to complete the fix, and major mining pools have already upgraded their deployments.Odaily Seer Prophet Channel continues to monitor prediction markets, seeing changes before pricing.
Haseeb, Managing Partner at Dragonfly, has addressed the recently patched Zcash vulnerability, stating that there are many misconceptions in the market regarding the incident. He pointed out that even if the vulnerability had been exploited before the fix, an attacker could only profit by forging ZEC within the shielded pool. For these tokens to enter mainstream trading platforms, they would first need to be converted from shielded addresses to transparent addresses. Since the supply of ZEC in transparent addresses is publicly verifiable, any abnormal transfers exceeding the maximum supply would be detected and blocked. Therefore, the vast majority of investors and exchange users holding transparent ZEC would not be affected.Haseeb stated that the Zcash team plans to introduce a new “Turnstile” mechanism and a new shielded pool in future upgrades to verify that the current shielded pool does not suffer from inflation issues. He also noted that formally verified cryptographic systems can reduce implementation errors at the design level. Finally, Haseeb disclosed that Dragonfly still holds ZEC, and he is personally an investor in ZODL.
According to the THORChain blog, ZEC is in the queue for launch on THORChain. However, due to a recent vulnerability disclosed in Zcash—whose existing patch impacts integrators’ normal operations—THORChain must first complete a minor code modification to its Bifrost module before proceeding. The development team stated that the change is minimal but must be completed prior to ZEC’s launch. Monero (XMR) is currently expected to launch by the end of this month, with ZEC scheduled to follow.
Odaily, Cypherpunk, the company managing the ZEC treasury, stated that all software has vulnerabilities. Historically, Bitcoin once "over-minted" 184 billion BTC due to a bug. However, this does not mean abandoning blockchain technology; rather, security should be enhanced through formal verification and provable correctness.Cypherpunk emphasized that with the development of AI technology, vulnerability detection will become faster and broader, but the key lies in who can discover issues before malicious actors. Zcash will demonstrate this capability through an upcoming update.
on May 29, 2026, Taylor Hornby discovered a critical counterfeiting vulnerability in Zcash's Orchard pool. Taylor Hornby reported the vulnerability to the Zcash Open Development Lab, and after coordinated efforts, a fix was completed on June 2. The vulnerability could have been exploited to secretly create an unlimited number of counterfeit ZEC within Zcash Orchard. Due to the privacy features of Orchard, it is cryptographically impossible to determine whether the vulnerability was exploited before the fix was deployed.The vulnerability had existed since Orchard's activation in May 2022 until an emergency fix was deployed on June 1, 2026. Taylor Hornby, with the assistance of AI tools, wrote a complete exploit program and generated an infinite, undetectable amount of counterfeit ZEC in a local test environment. Shielded Labs is currently collaborating with other Zcash developers to explore network upgrade proposals that would allow anyone to verify the integrity of Zcash's supply.
The Zcash Foundation released Zebra versions 4.5.3 and 5.0.0 to address a critical soundness vulnerability in the Orchard zero-knowledge proof circuit. Version 4.5.3 temporarily disables Orchard operations via an emergency soft fork, while version 5.0.0 activates NU 6.2, re-enables Orchard using the patched circuit, and permanently closes the vulnerability.
Bitget has simultaneously launched the Phase 2 Contract SuperPairs event, with participation ending on June 9th at 19:00 (UTC+8). Details are as follows:**Gold & Oil Rally Challenge:** Total prize pool of 30,000 USDT. Users trading XAU, XAG, CL, BZ, and other assets, and completing designated futures contract trading tasks can receive blind box rewards, with a maximum prize of 0.3 XAUT. Users with a cumulative trading volume of 10,000 USDT or more, ranked in the top 1,000, can share 20,000 USDT, with a maximum individual prize of 2,000 USDT.**Popular Futures Coin Pair Challenge:** Total prize pool of 30,000 USDT. Users trading XRP, HYPE, ZEC, XLM, and other assets, and completing corresponding futures contract trading tasks can receive blind box rewards, with a maximum prize of 10 HYPE. Users with a cumulative trading volume of 10,000 USDT or more, ranked in the top 1,000, can share 20,000 USDT, with a maximum individual prize of 2,000 USDT.
Odaily news: The Zcash Foundation has announced the release of Zebra 4.5.1 version update to fix a consensus-critical security vulnerability and strongly recommends that all node operators upgrade immediately. The vulnerability, identified as GHSA-2prc-cj5x-4443, involves a sigops (signature operation count) counting error in P2SH transactions, which could lead to potential consensus fork risks. This fix corrects an incomplete patch in the previously released 4.5.0 version, which was just released yesterday.The Zcash development team stated that the issue stems from discrepancies in sigop counting logic between different implementations, which could cause nodes to produce different results when verifying transactions, thereby affecting consensus consistency on the chain. The fix resolves this by reverting and adjusting the Rust implementation logic to ensure alignment with the expected protocol behavior.The Zcash Foundation emphasized that there is currently no workaround for this issue, and upgrading to 4.5.1 is the only method to ensure nodes remain on the correct chain and avoid potential fork risks.
: The Zcash Foundation has released version 4.5.0 of its node client, Zebra. This update includes multiple security fixes, addressing a critical consensus vulnerability and several high-severity Denial of Service (DoS) issues. All node operators are strongly urged to upgrade immediately.Key fixes in this release include a sigop counting error in P2SH script parsing (which could cause a consensus fork with zcashd), a logic flaw in NU5 block validation caching, a crash risk related to transparent address balance overflow, along with multiple crash and resource exhaustion vulnerabilities in RPC interfaces and mempool processing. The Foundation stated that some vulnerabilities could be exploited by malicious nodes, leading to node stalls, restart loops, or even permanent stoppage.Additionally, this version adds support for ZIP-213 (enabling shielded coinbase outputs to Sapling) and optimizes network performance and security boundaries. This includes limiting resource allocation during the pre-handshake phase, fixing risks related to multi-threaded queue abuse, and enhancing the misbehavior scoring mechanism.The Zcash Foundation stated that this update addresses over 80 security reports from the ZCG Vulnerability Disclosure Program (spanning April to May 2026), covering multiple layers including consensus security, memory management, RPC processing, and the P2P network attack surface. Officials emphasized that there is no alternative to this upgrade; upgrading is the only way to ensure nodes do not experience a chain split and remain secure.
The Zcash Foundation released its Q1 2026 report, disclosing total liquid assets of approximately $36.7 million, including roughly $12.11 million in cash, 506,556 USDC, 85,412 ZEC (valued at ~$21.2 million), 41.8 BTC (valued at ~$2.85 million), and 12.02 ETH (valued at ~$25,000). The Zcash Foundation added that, although the first quarter of this year saw personnel changes within the Electric Coin Company’s development team and governance-related disputes, network operations remained unaffected, with transactions and block production continuing normally. On the regulatory front, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has concluded its investigation without taking any enforcement action, thereby resolving long-standing regulatory uncertainty.
According to the official announcement, HTX has officially launched its “7th Leveraged Trading Competition,” with a total prize pool of 30,000 USDT to celebrate Bitcoin Pizza Day. From May 12 at 18:00 to May 24 at 18:00 (UTC+8), new users who complete their first leveraged trade will receive a 50 USDT leveraged trading interest coupon—limited to the first 2,000 recipients on a first-come, first-served basis. During the event period, users whose leveraged trading volume reaches or exceeds 1,000 USDT will receive a 5%–20% rebate on trading fees. Additionally, leveraged trades in BTC, ETH, DOGE, TRX, TON, ZEC, FIL, and JST will count three times toward the user’s total trading volume. Users can participate by clicking “Register Now” on the campaign page.
: According to an official announcement, Binance will update the collateral ratio and tiered collateral ratio for assets such as UNI, ENA, RAY, APE, and ZEC under the Portfolio Margin at 06:00 UTC on May 15, 2026. Additionally, at 06:30 UTC on May 15, 2026, Binance Futures will adjust the leverage and margin tiers for several USDⓈ-M perpetual contracts, including NAORISUSDT, ARCUSDT, and MUSDT. Existing positions will be affected, and users need to make adjustments in advance.
Josh Swihart, Founder and CEO of the Zcash Open Development Lab, announced at Consensus 2026 in Miami that Zcash plans to launch a quantum-resilient wallet within one month and achieve full post-quantum readiness within the next 12 to 18 months, while also advancing scalability efforts to reach Visa- and Mastercard-level throughput. Driven by Multicoin Capital’s disclosure of a large investment and growing momentum around privacy narratives, ZEC has surged over 110% in the past 30 days. Additionally, following integration with Near Intents, users can now cross-chain swap BTC, SOL, USDC, and other assets for shielded ZEC; since launch, these channels have processed approximately $600 million to $700 million in volume, and the shielded pool currently accounts for roughly 30% of the circulating ZEC supply.
The Zcash Foundation officially announced the release of Zebra 4.4.0, which addresses multiple critical consensus-level security vulnerabilities. All node operators are strongly advised to upgrade immediately. The vulnerabilities include a denial-of-service (DoS) flaw that could permanently halt the discovery of new blocks; a signature operation (sigop) counting error in block validation that may cause consensus divergence; abnormal handling of transparent transaction signature hashes; and a memory allocation amplification attack risk. The Zcash Foundation stated that some of these vulnerabilities could cause Zebra nodes to accept blocks rejected by zcashd, potentially triggering a chain fork. Without timely upgrades, nodes risk interruption of block discovery, consensus forks, and amplified resource consumption. No alternative mitigations are currently available.
that, according to its official page, Robinhood has listed ZEC.
According to Fortune, Foundry, a leading Bitcoin mining pool, officially launched a new mining pool for the privacy coin Zcash on April 13. Mike Colyer, CEO of Foundry, stated that this move aims to address growing institutional demand for privacy coins. The pool has already attracted several institutional miners, and its output now accounts for nearly one-third of all newly minted Zcash globally. Zcash implements transaction privacy via zero-knowledge proof technology while supporting selective disclosure to meet regulatory compliance requirements—making it more appealing to institutions than its competitor Monero. Fueled by this news, Zcash’s price has surged over 75% in the past 30 days, with its current market capitalization standing at approximately $6.3 billion. Foundry currently controls about 31% of the global Bitcoin hash rate, making it the world’s largest Bitcoin mining pool operator.