The AI bug crisis in Zcash appears to be behind it, and its co-founder Bryce Wilcox-O’Hearn, known as Zooko, shared an update with an unexpectedly positive development.
Zcash distributed more than $8 million in retroactive grants, including $1.5 million for Taylor Hornby, the security engineer hired by Shielded Labs in April 2026 to identify protocol vulnerabilities.
Zcash just gave away more than $8m in retroactive grants, including millions of dollars of retroactive grants to a lot of people who selflessly worked to protect all users during the AI bug crisis this year.
But that’s not even the best thing about what just happened… ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/yRtVUvkt5y
— zooko🛡🦓🦓🦓 ⓩ (@zooko) October 1, 2026
Working with Anthropic‘s artificial intelligence model, Hornby detected a flaw in the Orchard circuit that, had it been exploited, would have allowed the unlimited minting of counterfeit ZEC tokens.
The finding was retroactively funded through a permissionless coinholder vote, administered by a nonprofit organization within the network.
The Ironwood upgrade, activated on July 28, 2026, sealed the affected pool in Zcash and resolved the counterfeiting bug that had gone undetected for four years.
More than 4 million ZEC, equivalent to approximately $5.8 billion, were secured under Ironwood. Zooko emphasized that the process demonstrated Zcash is “a sustainable system, resistant to capture and an evolving self-funding and self-governing” one.
Despite the favorable outcome, ZEC is currently trading at $1,324, down 6.5% on the day and nearly 15% over the week.
Source: https://x.com/zooko/status/2105514201917825099
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