ZEC Briefly Breaks Above $500 After Founder Says Formal Proof Almost Ready

Following Orchard’s hidden bug, Zcash said formal verification of Ironwood is close to proving it has no undetectable forgery errors.

Zcash (ZEC) briefly rose above $500 after founder Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn said the project’s Tachyon Formal Verification initiative is close to delivering mathematical proof that Zcash’s latest secured pools do not contain undetectable forgery bugs.

Wilcox said the project is “on the verge of producing a mathematical proof” that would eliminate the long-standing trade-off between privacy and the ability to verify the money supply of a cryptocurrency.

Hidden Bug Scare

The Tachyon project has shared New details on its verification work for Zcash’s upcoming Ironwood protected pool, following the recent discovery of a vulnerability in Orchard.

In May, Shielded Labs security researcher Taylor Hornby identified a spoofing flaw in Orchard, Zcash’s flagship shielded pool. While the issue was fixed by a network update and the team believes it was never exploited, its undetectable nature led the community to develop Ironwood as a new protected group with the vulnerability removed.

Ironwood is based on Orchard but starts with the patched design. The protocol also includes a turnstile mechanism that allows users to transfer funds from Orchard to Ironwood and helps prove that no forgery occurred. As part of the transition, payments within the former Orchard pool will be disabled, providing an upper limit to the circulating supply of ZEC.

According to the project, fixing the bug alone was not enough to ensure future security. Instead, the community launched a “multiple” verification effort that combines extensive security audits, analysis using cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools, and formal verification to confirm the accuracy of Ironwood.

Bullish setup?

ZEC gained steadily over the past week. The privacy coin rose from around $410 to briefly cross the $500 mark before giving up some of its gains to settle near $480. Even after pulling back, ZEC is up almost 20% during this period.

You may also be interested in:

Merchant ‘Ardi’ saying ZEC faces key resistance around $480, where a descending trend line and horizontal resistance level meet. This has created a “compound resistance.” The trader believes that the recent rejection at that level actually strengthened the setup by causing the price to retest the trend line.

According to Ardi, if the token breaks above $480 and holds that level as support, it could regain momentum and rise back above $500.