ZCash (ZEC) had a turbulent week, losing as much as 53% of its price at one point. As of June 7, ZEC had recovered as much as 12%, trading at $435.
Following news of the exploit, ZEC is still down 21% over the past week. ZEC is now being closely monitored to ensure its stability, as the ZCash protocol is still grappling with the recent discovery of an unauthorized minting bug.
The loss of confidence not only caused market panic in the short term, but also caused speculation about whether ZEC would fall to zero and become worthless. Questions have been raised about the possibility of other currencies and tokens obtaining similar unauthorized supplies, although no similar vulnerabilities have been discovered to date.
Who discovered the ZCash vulnerability?
Security researcher Taylor Hornby discovered that Orchard’s protected pool had a critical vulnerability that allowed fake ZEC to be created.
Hornby used artificial intelligence for testing Al Bustan Pond For vulnerabilities, alert ZCash Open Development Lab (ZODL). The team patched the vulnerability on June 2, but the announcement itself had already caused panic in the market.
The main reason for this is that ZEC is a privacy asset, and its true supply and ownership cannot be audited. The vulnerability has reportedly been around for about four years, and there is still no evidence whether the vulnerability has been exploited.
Is Orchard Pool safe?
ZEC remains a mined currency, and exploitation is strictly related to the creation of new coins within the Orchard pool. Currently, the total supply of ZEC is unaffected, with a total of 16,755,823 coins in circulation.
Within the Orchard complex, ZEC can be transported with the highest level of confidentiality. Counterparties and transactions are not transparent, so there is no way to know if any users were affected.
As cryptopolitan I mentionedIn early 2026, a ZEC whale exposed 202,000 ZEC in a single transaction, taking 1% of the Orchard pool. There is still no way to prove whether the ZEC within Orchard is all coming from external deposits, or a bad actor is still able to withdraw some coins into the broader ZEC network.
Over the past year, influencers have also mentioned Orchard Pool as a true crypto privacy hub, encouraging the deposit of nearly 5 million ZEC. Based on potential exploitation, some of these currencies are suspected to be counterfeit.
Orchard was one of the main stories around ZCash during its record high in 2026, with deposits being encouraged. The pool soon became ZEC’s largest protected centre. Last year, Orchard Pool doubled its supply of locked coins.
In the week after the vulnerability was discovered, ZCash was still considered risky. ThorChain decided to postpone its ZEC integration until the protocol ensures there is no large supply of counterfeit ZEC.
The ZCash team offers Ironwood supply verification
Following the Orchard Pool announcement, the ZCash team looked for ways to prove that the circulating supply did not contain counterfeit currencies.
the Ironwood The verification system will allow users to confirm the authenticity of their ZEC supply. Currently, Ironwood is still in the proposal stage, and expects activation after the vote.
All users running a ZCash node will be able to check the current supply and ensure that it matches the expected mining schedule.
The old Orchard pool will be replaced by a new one, which all users will be subject to Revolving door accounting. This way, even if some ZEC is generated in the old Orchard pool, it will not be able to cross over to the new pool.
