AI-assisted Zcash flaw exposes the supply integrity gap an emergency fork could not fully close

- Zcash’s Orchard pool nearly got cooked by an AI-assisted exploit, proving that even zero-knowledge proofs aren’t immune to LLMs. Taylor Hornby used Anthropic’s Opus 4.8 to find a soundness bug that could have printed infinite ZEC. Zcash panicked, executed an emergency soft fork, then a hard fork (NU6.2) in under five days to patch the circuit. The supply cap holds, but privacy coins face a unique problem: you can’t audit hidden transactions for counterfeits. The turnstile mechanism says we’re clean, but Shielded Labs wants more upgrades to prove it cryptographically. Meanwhile, ZEC dumped from $611 to $421 because the market prefers certainty over "trust us, bro." AI is now hunting base-layer crypto flaws faster than regulators can file paperwork. Stay sharp, or get forked.