more on zec, the way the team handled it forced my hand.
quick recap: a white hat, using AI, found a flaw in the orchard pool that could in theory mint fake zec. real bug. caught in a paid audit and patched. by their own assessment, probably never exploited.
but here’s how it actually got disclosed: a serious problem, no confirmation the supply was clean, and no timeline on when they’d know. that came later, in scattered replies, one person saying weeks, another saying months, nobody actually aligned. so the real answer was: we don’t know, sit and wait.
i’m not going to sit on an open ended “trust us” while bitcoin’s already weak and the whole market’s soft. so i sold. part of the thesis on zec was supply integrity, and that’s the exact thing that got called into question. i couldn’t hold through that on faith.
the bug itself was bad luck. i can’t fault them for a four year old flaw a white hat caught in a day. that’s just how it goes sometimes.
but the disclosure timing was a choice. fix it, confirm the supply, then go public with the whole package. instead it went out as an open ended problem, and that’s what made holding impossible, for me and for others.
the bug was bad luck. the communication was a choice. and the choice is what did most of the damage.