Zcash rises 12% on verification progress
- Zcash rose more than 12% after developers said they are close to proving its new shielded pool cannot contain an undetectable counterfeiting bug.
- The work follows the discovery of a critical flaw in the Orchard shielded pool that was disclosed last month and later patched.
- Developers said AI-assisted formal verification has reduced a process that previously took years to just weeks.
Zcash (CRYPTO:ZEC) rose more than 12% after Project Tachyon said it is close to producing a mathematical proof that the cryptocurrency's upcoming Ironwood shielded pool does not contain an undetectable counterfeiting bug.
The verification effort follows the disclosure and patching of a critical flaw in Zcash's Orchard shielded pool last month, which developers said could have allowed counterfeit ZEC to be created without detection, although they said they found no evidence the vulnerability had been exploited.
“Project Tachyon is on the verge of producing a mathematical proof that there are no undetectable counterfeiting bugs in the latest Zcash shielded pools,” said Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox.
Project Tachyon said advances in AI-assisted formal verification have reduced work that previously required years to complete to a matter of weeks, supporting development of the Ironwood shielded pool.
Following the announcement, Zcash climbed above US$500, recovering after losing more than 40% over two days following disclosure of the Orchard vulnerability in June.
Developers said Zcash's privacy model, which relies on zero-knowledge proofs to conceal transaction details, makes it difficult to detect counterfeit coins if vulnerabilities exist within the underlying cryptographic proofs.
Former NEAR Protocol contributor Vadim Zacodil compared the issue with Bitcoin's 2010 inflation bug, noting that Bitcoin's public blockchain allowed counterfeit coins to be detected immediately, whereas privacy-focused systems present different verification challenges.
At the time of reporting, Zcash price was $476.86.
