Zcash (CRYPTO: ZEC) crashed as low as 50% over the past 36 hours after Shielded Labs disclosed a critical vulnerability allowing unlimited counterfeit ZEC creation—a bug sitting undetected for four years until Anthropic’s Claude AI found it.
Security Engineer Used Claude Opus 4.8 To Find The Bug On May 29
On May 29, Shielded Labs security engineer Taylor Hornby discovered the Orchard circuit vulnerability using Anthropic’s newly released Opus 4.8 model and immediately shared findings with engineers at the Zcash Open Development Lab.
The flaw made it possible to mint counterfeit ZEC that would be completely undetectable within the shielded pool.
“Taylor, with the help of Opus 4.8, wrote a complete exploit which, when he tested it in a local regtest environment, generated unlimited, undetectable counterfeit ZEC,” Shielded Labs wrote.
