Zcash Retroactively Awards $8M Following AI Bug Resolution
Zcash (ZEC)
Editor:
Eugene Serbin
u.today reports that Zcash cofounder Zooko Wilcox announced the distribution of over $8 million in retroactive grants to community members who helped secure the network during this year's AI bug crisis. The grants specifically recognize efforts made to protect users while the Orchard circuit vulnerability was being addressed. Security engineer Taylor Hornby, working with Anthropic's AI model, identified the bug in April 2026, which could have allowed attackers to create unlimited counterfeit ZEC tokens.
The Zcash Ironwood Upgrade (NU6.3) was activated on July 28, 2026, to seal the vulnerable Orchard shielded pool and resolve the four-year-old issue. As part of the retroactive funding, $1.5 million was allocated to the researcher who disclosed the Orchard bug via a permissionless coinholder vote. Zcash coinholders also approved a $1,950,000 grant for ZODL to cover core protocol work from Q1–Q2, which included remediating ten major vulnerabilities and merging 162 pull requests.
Zooko stated that the process demonstrated Zcash's ability to function as a sustainable, capture-resistant system of self-funding and self-governance. The announcement highlighted that more than 4 million ZEC, valued at nearly $5.8 billion, is now secured by the Ironwood upgrade.
How the market reacted
Whalio's own Binance spot order flow for ZEC, measured when this story was written up on 1 October 2026. Not the outlet's figures.
Zcash is trading at $1,438.41 on Binance with a 1-hour buy ratio of 59.2%, indicating strong immediate buying pressure that contrasts with the 4-hour ratio of 50.6% and the 24-hour ratio of 49.4%. The 1-hour volume delta is positive at $2,559,299, showing that recent trades are heavily weighted toward buyers, whereas the 24-hour volume delta is negative at -$2,572,304. This divergence suggests that while buying interest has spiked in the short term, the broader daily trend remains slightly bearish. The cumulative volume delta for the day closed at -$20,672,881, confirming that sellers dominated the majority of the session. Net buying occurred for only 7 out of the 24 hours, with spot volume reaching $249,985,581 across 536,657 trades.
The latest daily buy ratio of 52.9% sits at the 82nd percentile of the last 322 days, against a median of 50.2% - stronger buying than most days.
Was that an ordinary day?
The same Binance spot measurements for ZEC, averaged over the days leading up to the story.
Over the preceding week, Zcash experienced a 4.0% price decline with a 7-day average buy ratio of 50.1%. Today's 24-hour buy ratio of 49.4% is 0.8 points lower than the weekly average, indicating slightly weaker relative buying pressure. Trading volume today was 0.72 times the weekly average, reflecting reduced activity compared to the previous seven days. The total volume delta for the week was -$10,914,913, with net buying occurring on only 3 of the 7 days. This data places today's trading activity within a context of moderate volume and a prevailing downtrend for the asset.