Zcash Price Rallied Over 10% as Orchard Bug Fix Restored Network
Zcash price rallied over 10% after the Zcash Foundation released emergency Zebra upgrades to fix a critical Orchard bug and restore full network functions. The move came after developers confirmed a soundness vulnerability in the Orchard zero-knowledge proof circuit, prompting a fast security response across the ecosystem. 0 to address the issue.
2 and re-enabled Orchard with the corrected circuit. Orchard Bug Fix Drives Zcash Price Rally ZEC gained strong market attention after the Foundation confirmed that the Orchard bug fix had gone live. The token rose more than 10%, even as the broader crypto market remained under pressure.
The rally reflected renewed market confidence after developers restored the Orchard pool. 0 as soon as possible. 3 to remain on the correct chain during the upgrade window.
Additionally, rising interest in digital privacy is beginning to align with Zcash’s recent market performance. A chart shared by Will McEvoy compares Google Trends data for the term “privacy” with ZEC price action on a logarithmic scale and shows both moving sharply higher into 2026. Zcash Chart | Source: X The data suggests that public attention around privacy has climbed to its highest level in the chart period, while ZEC has also advanced toward the upper end of its recent range.
That parallel move adds another layer to Zcash’s rally, with market participants increasingly linking the token’s strength to broader demand for privacy-focused tools and assets Critical Bug Found in Orchard Circuit The vulnerability was found on Friday, May 29, by independent security researcher Taylor Hornby during a protocol audit supported by Shielded Labs.
Hornby disclosed the issue to ZODL core engineers, who confirmed the flaw within hours and began preparing a fix. The bug affected the implementation of the Orchard zero-knowledge proof circuit in the halo2_gadgets crate. In simple terms, a soundness bug can allow a system to accept an invalid transaction or state change.
In this case, exploitation could have allowed double-spending within Orchard, although Zcash’s turnstile mechanism protected the total ZEC supply. Emergency Soft Fork Protected the Network Private coordination with miners and exchanges began on Sunday, May 31. After an early activation attempt faced deployment issues, engineers released another patch targeting block height 3,363,426.
That soft fork activated at about 02:00 UTC on June 2. 3 temporarily rejected blocks and transactions containing Orchard actions. This step gave developers time to complete the full circuit fix while limiting public details about the vulnerability.
Notably, Sapling and transparent transactions continued to operate during the incident. 2 activated on Wednesday, June 3, at 00:05 EDT. The hard-fork upgrade re-enabled Orchard actions using the corrected circuit and updated the required verifying key.
A hard fork was needed as the proof circuit change could not be handled through a normal software patch alone. 2 at Mainnet block height 3,364,600 and Testnet block height 4,052,000. The upgrade also adds consensus rules that reject Orchard bundles with non-canonical proof sizes from the activation height, closing the vulnerability addressed by the earlier soft fork.
No Evidence of Unauthorized ZEC Creation The Zcash Foundation said the vulnerability was fixed before any known exploitation occurred. It also stated that there was no evidence of unauthorized value creation, while Zcash’s turnstile mechanism confirmed that the total supply remained intact throughout the incident. User privacy was not affected during the response.
The Foundation also credited Taylor Hornby, Shielded Labs, ZODL engineers, Zebra contributors, miners, node operators, exchanges, wallet providers, and infrastructure teams for supporting the coordinated upgrade that restored Orchard operations.
