ZEC Hit by 17% Decline After 4-Year-Old Unlimited Forgery Vulnerability Discovered

According to Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox, a critical vulnerability enabling unlimited coin forgery in the Orchard Pool privacy feature was discovered on June 4, 2026. Security researcher Taylor Hornby identified the flaw on May 29 using Anthropic's Opus 4.8 AI model, revealing that insufficient constraints in elliptic curve validation allowed attackers to generate counterfeit ZEC without limit.

The vulnerability existed since May 2022 when Orchard Pool launched. Wilcox confirmed the fix has been deployed across the ecosystem; Shielded Labs noted that while prior exploitation cannot be ruled out cryptographically, the discovery by AI after years of review by top cryptographers suggests low risk of historical abuse. ZEC dropped 17.04% to $447 on June 5, according to CoinGecko.