Update on
@Zcash
1. They hired one of the top cryptography researchers to find out vulnerabilities and whether ZEC could be minted unlimitedly.
2. As a reminder, ZEC shares the same monetary policy and properties with Bitcoin (as a fork): 21m max supply.
3. The researcher found the possibility to mint privately an unlimited amount of ZEC without anyone noticing.
4. The vulnerability bug was reportedly possible to be exploited since 2022. The Zcash dev team is working on an upgrade of the privacy pool as we speak. The level of transparency in the post-mortem report that
@zooko published is commendable.
5. FYI, Bitcoin had the exact same bug in its code, found in 2018. The famous “inflation bug”. The bug wasn't exploited but this led to a drawdown overnight.
6. Unlike Zcash, Bitcoin is transparent, so the minted coins unlimitedly could be have been witnessed.
7. I’ll keep a close eye on how the situation is evolving in that regard. The silver lining is that the bug was discovered and resolved by the team and they are working on a software upgrade to prove traceability.