PANews reported on June 6 that, according to CoinDesk, security engineer Taylor Hornby, after discovering a critical vulnerability in the Zcash Orchard privacy pool using Anthropic's Opus 4.8 AI model, stated that he plans to include privacy coins such as Monero in the next round of audits.
The vulnerability discovered by Hornby on May 29th could allow attackers to mint an unlimited number of undetectable counterfeit ZEC tokens; the vulnerability had existed for nearly a year. Following its exposure, the price of Zcash plummeted 38% within 24 hours. Hornby emphasized that he chose to report the vulnerability rather than exploit it because the development team was "like family," and he couldn't bear to betray them. He has now been hired by Shielded Labs to conduct protocol vulnerability research and plans to apply for the Zcash Holders Fund to support subsequent auditing work.