A security researcher discovered a critical vulnerability in Zcash's Orchard transaction pool that could be exploited to create an "unlimited" amount of counterfeit tokens within the pool.
Shielded Labs, an independent Zcash support organization, published the findings on the social media platform X on Thursday. It said it hired security engineer Taylor Hornby to conduct a review of the protocol in April.
The announcement coincided with a steep decline in the price of Zcash (ZEC). It fell 31% over the past 24 hours to $409.64 as of 11:00 p.m. ET on Thursday, according to The Block's ZEC price page. Much of the decline occurred in the five hours following the post's publication.
Hornby, a long-time contributor to the Zcash ecosystem, evaluated the protocol using both AI-assisted and traditional security research techniques to identify vulnerabilities before they could be exploited by malicious actors, according to the post.
On May 29, Hornby discovered the Orchard circuit vulnerability using Anthropic's newly released Opus 4.8 model and immediately shared the findings with engineers at the Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL).
