AI-Assisted Audit Using Opus 4.8 Uncovers 4-Year Zcash Orchard Bug; ZEC Drops Over 30%

Unchained / CoinDesk / The Block·high signal

Security engineer Taylor Hornby, using a custom AI auditing framework paired with Anthropic's Opus 4.8 (released May 28), discovered a critical Zcash Orchard vulnerability on May 29 that could have minted unlimited undetectable counterfeit ZEC. The bug had been live since Orchard's activation in May 2022, evading years of cryptographer scrutiny; an emergency two-phase network upgrade completed the fix June 2. ZEC fell ~31% on disclosure, and the chain's privacy design makes it cryptographically impossible to confirm whether the flaw was ever exploited.