The cryptocurrency Zcash (ZEC) rose again in the cryptocurrency market this Tuesday after an important network security update. The cryptocurrency reached an increase close to 13% during the day, driven by advances in the development of the new protected pool Ironwood. However, part of the move was given back in the following hours and, at the time of publication, the ZEC was trading at US$ 477,42, accumulating an increase of approximately 5% in the last 24 hours.
The momentum happened after the developers of the Tachyon Project released new details about the Ironwood verification process, the next protected pool of Zcash. The initiative aims to provide a mathematical proof that the system contains no hidden flaws capable of allowing the creation of fake coins without being detected.
Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox said the project is "close to producing a mathematical proof that there are no undetectable forgery flaws in the latest protected pools of Zcash".
The news boosted optimism among investors and led ZEC to temporarily surpass the US$ 500 mark, reaching its highest level since the beginning of June. Despite partial profit-taking, the cryptocurrency preserved significant gains after the technical update was released.
Interest in the topic comes a little more than a month after the disclosure of a critical vulnerability in the protected pool Orchard. At the time, the discovery caused a sharp drop in the price of ZEC, which lost more than 40% in just two days.
According to the developers, the vulnerability could allow an attacker to create fake units of ZEC within the protected pool without leaving public evidence. Although the issue was fixed quickly and the team says it found no signs that the flaw was exploited, the privacy model adopted by the network makes it impossible to mathematically prove that it was never used.
It is precisely this limitation that the Tachyon Project aims to eliminate with Ironwood. The team works to formally demonstrate that the new protected pool does not have the same type of vulnerability, offering a higher level of confidence for users, developers, and network participants.
The people responsible for the project explained that recent advances in systems for generating proofs assisted by artificial intelligence have drastically reduced the time required for this process. A task that previously could take years can now be completed in a few weeks.
The former NEAR Protocol collaborator, Vadim Zacodil, compared the situation to the historical Bitcoin inflation bug discovered in 2010, when about 184 billion bitcoins were created improperly before the blockchain was reverted. In the case of Bitcoin, however, public transactions allowed the problem to be identified immediately.
Zcash, on the other hand, uses zero-knowledge proofs to hide the transaction values, preserving user privacy. This model makes it difficult to publicly identify any irregular coin issuances, making Ironwood’s mathematical validation an important step toward expanding protocol security and strengthening confidence in the network.