The price of Zcash (CRYPTO: $ZEC) is down 38% after developer Shielded Labs disclosed a critical vulnerability in the blockchain network.
Specifically, Shielded Labs said that it has discovered a major bug that previously went undetected for the last four years. That bug threatened the integrity of Zcash's supply.
Zcash is a decentralized cryptocurrency created in 2016 that is designed to offer enhanced user privacy and anonymity.
Shielded Labs, a nonprofit developer of the ZEC blockchain, has published a detailed disclosure that reveals a vulnerability that, if exploited, could have resulted in an unlimited number of counterfeit ZEC tokens.
The vulnerability was discovered on May 29 of this year but previously went unnoticed for four years. That news has sent the ZEC token crashing on June 5.
The bug was found by artificial intelligence (A.I.) startup Anthropic's recently released Opus 4.8 model, said Shielded Labs in a social media post.
Shielded Labs added that it is accelerating security efforts, including a formal verification project aimed at writing a mathematical proof that there are no remaining bugs on its blockchain.
ZEC is currently trading at $321.46 U.S., down 38% in the last 24 hours.
COMTEX_483093687/2797/2026-06-05T12:30:28