Zcash (ZEC) surged above $500 after its founder announced that the Tachyon Formal Verification initiative is nearing a mathematical proof that the upcoming Ironwood shielded pool has no undetectable counterfeiting bugs. The announcement follows the recent discovery of a hidden bug in the Orchard pool, which was patched but prompted the development of Ironwood. A turnstile mechanism will allow users to move funds from Orchard to Ironwood, disabling old payments and providing an upper limit on the circulating supply. The multi-pronged verification effort includes security audits, AI analysis, and formal verification to ensure correctness.
Zcash (ZEC) briefly climbed above $500 after founder Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn stated the project’s Tachyon Formal Verification initiative is close to delivering a mathematical proof that the latest Zcash shielded pools contain no undetectable counterfeiting bugs. Wilcox said the project is “on the verge of producing a mathematical proof” that would eliminate the tradeoff between privacy and verifying a cryptocurrency’s money supply.
Project Tachyon has shared new details about its verification work for the upcoming Ironwood shielded pool. In May, Shielded Labs security researcher Taylor Hornby identified a counterfeiting flaw in Orchard, Zcash’s flagship shielded pool.
The issue was patched through a network upgrade, and the team believes it was never exploited. However, its undetectable nature led the community to develop Ironwood as a new shielded pool with the vulnerability removed.
Ironwood is based on Orchard but starts with the patched design. A turnstile mechanism allows users to move funds from Orchard to Ironwood and helps demonstrate that no counterfeiting occurred.
According to the project, fixing the bug alone was not enough to ensure future security. Instead, the community launched a “multi-pronged” verification effort combining extensive security audits, frontier AI tools, and formal verification.
ZEC gained steadily over the past week, rising from around $410 to briefly cross the $500 mark before settling near $480. Even after pulling back, ZEC is up by almost 20% during this period.
Trader ‘Ardi’ said ZEC is facing key resistance around $480, where a descending trendline and a horizontal resistance level meet. The trader believes the recent rejection at that level strengthened the setup by bringing the price back to retest the trendline.
