ZEC jumps 12% as Zcash nears mathematical proof against hidden counterfeit bugs

Zcash's native (ZEC) token climbed more than 12% on Tuesday after the developers behind the protocol's shielded pool said they are nearing a mathematical proof that the network's privacy system does not contain an undetectable counterfeiting bug that was disclosed last month.

Project Tachyon outlined new details of its verification effort for Zcash's upcoming Ironwood shielded pool. Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox said the project is "on the verge of producing a mathematical proof that there are no undetectable counterfeiting bugs in the latest Zcash shielded pools."

The announcement helped lift ZEC back above $500, its highest level since early June, when the disclosure of a critical flaw in Zcash's Orchard shielded pool sent the privacy-centric cryptocurrency tumbling more than 40% in just two days.

The vulnerability could have allowed an attacker to create counterfeit ZEC within the Orchard shielded pool without detection. While developers quickly patched the flaw and said they believe it was never exploited, Zcash's privacy design made it impossible to cryptographically prove.

Now, Project Tachyon is aiming to prove that Ironwood, Zcash's replacement shielded pool, can't contain the same kind of undetectable counterfeit bug. Project Tachyon said the approach has become more practical thanks to advances in AI-assisted proof generation, reducing work that once took years to a matter of weeks.

Former NEAR Protocol contributor Vadim Zacodil compared it with Bitcoin's 2010 inflation bug, when 184 billion counterfeit bitcoins were created before the blockchain was rolled back. But because Bitcoin transactions are public, the exploit was immediately caught.

Zcash's shielded pools, however, rely on zero-knowledge proofs that conceal transaction amounts, meaning flaws in those proofs could allow counterfeit coins to be created without leaving publicly detectable evidence.