Zcash Completes NU 6.2 Hard Fork, Fixing Orchard Pool Bug

BlockBeats News, June 3rd. In an official announcement from the Zcash (ZEC) Foundation, independent security researcher Taylor Hornby discovered a critical reliability vulnerability in Zcash's Orchard zk-SNARK circuit on May 29th, which could have allowed for double-spending within the Orchard pool. ZODL core engineers swiftly confirmed the issue within hours and initiated a fix. To buy time, they temporarily disabled Orchard operations through an emergency soft fork in Zebra 4.5.3 in the early hours of June 2nd. Finally, today, through Zebra 5.0.0, they activated the NU6.2 hard fork. At 12:05 PM Beijing time, the mainnet smoothly completed the upgrade at block height 3,364,600. Orchard was re-enabled with the patched circuit, and the vulnerability was permanently closed. This marks the second protocol upgrade for Zcash due to a security issue since its launch in 2016. No known exploits occurred throughout the process, and the network's shielded pool mechanism ensured the total coin supply remained intact, safeguarding user privacy, Sapling, and transparent transactions.