Zcash developers temporarily suspended Orchard transactions after discovering a critical vulnerability in the blockchain’s latest privacy-focused protected pool, then restored functionality via an emergency network update.
On Wednesday, the Zcash Foundation he said the vulnerability affected Orchard’s zero-knowledge resistant circuit and could have allowed incorrect state transitions in the pool. However, the foundation said there was no evidence that the bug had been exploited, no unauthorized value creation had been detected and no user privacy had been violated.
The fix was performed via a two-step emergency update. According to the Foundation, Zebra 4.5.3 temporarily disabled Orchard operations, while Zebra 5.0.0 activated the NU6.2 update to re-enable Orchard with improved circuitry.
The emergency response shows how a bug in the underlying privacy infrastructure can require coordinated action by miners, exchanges and node operators, even if it has no impact on user funds and total supply.
The update appears to have caused confusion in various parts of the Zcash ecosystem. One Zcash block explorer showed block 3,364,601 was the most recent block mined at 5:27 UTC, while the site stated it was mined approximately four hours earlier, prompting reports to be filed on Platform X that the Zcash network was down.
Tatyana, specialist associated with Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL). he said the network experienced a “brief period of instability” as miners modernized and converged on novel consensus rules. The post did not directly mention issues with the block explorer or wallet, but it did state that network stability was fully restored around 3 a.m. ET on June 2.
Cointelegraph reached out to the Zcash Foundation for comment but did not receive a response in the form of a publication.
Zcash block explorer showing the last block mined four hours ago. Source: Zcash Block Explorer
According to the Zcash Foundation, the vulnerability was discovered on May 29 by independent security researcher Taylor Hornby during an ongoing protocol audit for Shielded Labs. The issue was disclosed to ZODL’s lead engineers, who confirmed it and began preparing repair options.
The Zcash incident is causing confusion among community members
Mert Mumtaz, CEO of infrastructure company Solana Helius, questioned reports stated that the network was “not down” and that some mining applications were connected to the affected node.
A pseudonymous member of the Zerodarts community echoed this sentiment: saying that “blocks are mined” and that most block miners need to update their nodes.
Related: Zcash is ‘leading its own bull run’ as ZEC price shows an 88% upside.
However, a member of the Railgoon community he said Zcash miners and developers have frozen the Orchard protected pool to plug the vulnerability before the strenuous fork. He said the network was therefore “partially intentionally unavailable” at the time, but has since been restored.
ZEC token Zcash briefly dropped below $600 to $599 after hitting an intraday high of $637, According to to CoinGecko data. However, as of this writing, the price has increased to $614.
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