ZEC Briefly Tops $500 After Founder Says Formal Proof Is Nearly Ready

Zcash (ZEC) briefly climbed above $500 after founder Zooko Wilcox-O’Hearn said the project’s Tachyon Formal Verification initiative is close to delivering a mathematical proof that the latest Zcash shielded pools contain no undetectable counterfeiting bugs.

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

Hidden Bug Scare

Project Tachyon has shared new details about its verification work for Zcash’s upcoming Ironwood shielded pool, following the recent discovery of a vulnerability in Orchard.

In May, Shielded Labs security researcher Taylor Hornby identified a counterfeiting flaw in Orchard, Zcash’s flagship shielded pool. While the issue was patched through a network upgrade and the team believes it was never exploited, its undetectable nature led the community to develop Ironwood as a new shielded pool 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 move funds from Orchard to Ironwood, and helps demonstrate that no counterfeiting occurred. As part of the transition, payments within the older Orchard pool will be disabled, providing an upper limit on the circulating ZEC supply.

According to the project, fixing the bug alone was not enough to ensure future security. Instead, the community launched a “multi-pronged” verification effort that combines extensive security audits, analysis using frontier AI tools, and formal verification to confirm the correctness 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 back some of its gains to settle near $480. Even after pulling back, ZEC is up by almost 20% during this period.

Trader ‘Ardi’ said ZEC is facing a key resistance around $480, where a descending trendline and a horizontal resistance level meet. This has created a “compound resistance.” The trader believes the recent rejection at that level actually strengthened the setup by bringing the price back to retest the trendline.

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

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