The Zcash network successfully neutralized a critical vulnerability in its Orchard shielded pool through an emergency two-step upgrade. The soft fork temporarily disabled transactions, followed by a hard fork that restored functionality. No exploit was detected. Following the resolution, ZEC’s price rebounded 13.5% in 24 hours, recovering 41.5% from its low on June 5.
The team behind Zcash has detailed its response to a severe flaw discovered in the network’s Orchard shielded pool. Josh Swihart, founder of Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL), explained that developers moved quickly to protect the blockchain from potential abuse.
The response involved a two-step emergency upgrade. A soft fork temporarily disabled Orchard transactions to reduce the possibility of exploitation.
The second phase was the NU6.2 hard fork, which activated on June 3. This upgrade addressed the underlying issue and re-enabled Orchard transactions.
Shielded Labs had disclosed that the flaw could have enabled unlimited minting of counterfeit ZEC. Available evidence suggested an actual exploit was unlikely to have occurred.
The disclosure caused significant market turmoil last Thursday. The ZEC price plummeted by more than 50%, dropping from $630 to $303.
Market confidence appears to be returning following the network fix. The ZEC price increased by 11.67% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap data, and is currently near $434.08.
