Critical Zcash Vulnerability Revealed by Founder: Key Details and ZEC Outlook

Zcash’s native token ZEC plunged about 45% after founder Zooko Wilcox and other ecosystem figures disclosed that researchers found and patched a critical vulnerability in the Orchard shielded pool that could have allowed an attacker to mint unlimited counterfeit ZEC. The disclosure and patch reduce immediate exploit risk but severely damaged market confidence and token performance, creating short-term downside risk for the Zcash protocol and raising security and adoption concerns in the crypto and DeFi community.