Claude Opus Found a Four-Year-Old Hole in Zcash’s Privacy Layer. Nobody Knows If Someone Already Used It.

A researcher used Claude Opus 4.8 to uncover a four-year-old critical vulnerability in the Zcash Orchard privacy pool that could have allowed for the creation of undetectable counterfeit coins. Because of the system’s privacy properties, it is impossible to determine if the flaw was exploited before an emergency fix was deployed.