Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox announced that an AI security audit by Anthropic’s Claude Mythos model found no serious vulnerabilities in the Zcash protocol. The audit was requested by Swiss non-profit Shielded Labs. This follows a recent incident where another AI model, Claude Opus 4.8, helped discover a four-year-old forgery bug in Zcash’s Orchard shielded pool, prompting an emergency fix. The broader crypto industry faces security concerns as powerful new AI models, which can uncover thousands of vulnerabilities, become more accessible.
Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox stated that a security audit by Anthropic‘s Claude Mythos artificial intelligence model found no serious bugs in the privacy-preserving cryptocurrency’s protocol. The audit was requested by Shielded Labs, a Swiss-based non-profit supporting Zcash development.
This comes after Zcash developers temporarily suspended Orchard transactions on June 3 following the discovery of a vulnerability. Functionality was restored the same day through an emergency upgrade.
The issue stemmed from a four-year-old forgery bug discovered by security researcher Taylor Hornby with the help of Anthropic‘s Claude Opus 4.8 model. The Zcash Foundation said there was no evidence the vulnerability was exploited and user privacy was unaffected.
While developers use new AI models to identify vulnerabilities, the technology simultaneously raises security concerns. Anthropic recently released the first public version of its Claude Mythos model, called Fable 5.
The company said last month that the Mythos model uncovered over 10,000 high or critical-severity vulnerabilities in systemically important software. On Friday, Anthropic suspended access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models due to a U.S. government export control directive citing national security concerns.
The proliferation of these AI models has shifted the cybersecurity playing field in favor of threat actors. Mitchell Amador, CEO of bug bounty platform Immunefi, warned this is causing a “vulnerability apocalypse” fueling a resurgence in decentralized finance hacks.
Crypto hacks surged to $634 million in April, according to DefiLlama data. That was the highest monthly value since a $1.4 billion hack in February 2025.
