Zcash today, June 2nd, blocked sending and receiving from the Orchard pool, the most modern and most used private transaction layer, after identifying flaws in the protocol during a routine audit, according to a statement from the Zcash Open Development team. Reactivation is scheduled for the same day at 18:00 UTC.
Users with funds in Orchard You cannot send or receive ZEC through that pool until the update is complete. According to the announcement, ZEC tokens deposited on the exchange (the network’s native currency) are unaffected and can continue to operate normally. The development team says no funds are at risk.
According to a statement from Zcash Open Development, the flaw could not be fixed with an optional software update. I had to change the basic protocolforcing nodes, developers, and infrastructure operators across the network to adopt changes in a coordinated manner. This change took effect on June 2nd at 02:30 UTC. The team claimed to have notified the maintainers because Orchard was not exclusive to Zcash and was deployed independently by other protocols.
What is not made clear in this statement is the technical nature of this flaw: what parts of the Orchard Protocol are affected, what might be allowed if exploited, and why a protocol-level fix is needed.
What is Orchard? Why is Orchard important in Zcash?
Orchard is a shielded pool that hides senders, recipients, and transaction volumes. This data is encrypted and is not visible on the Zcash public chain.
The Zcash network operates on three layers of shielded transactions (shielded transactionin English): Sprout, original and virtually obsolete. Naegi, his successor. And The Orchard will be released in 2022.
The following distribution graph shows Orchard’s current relevance. Seedlings will be replaced as the main pool from mid-2024 And currently, about 4.5 million of the total armored ZEC of 5.1 million are concentrated.
In total, the privacy pool has a concentration of approximately 5.1 million shielded ZECs out of a total supply of approximately 16.7 million. This corresponds to 31% of the total circulation.
The flaws discovered on June 2 do not affect the rest of the shielded pool or public (or transparent) operations, which remain operational during the update.
Discussion about who can suspend protocols
Orchard Pool’s planned outage has reignited debate about the degree of centralization of networks controlled by private groups. Cryptocurrency analyst Cyber Satoshi said that this act is admin key (a control mechanism that allows a group of administrators to unilaterally suspend or change a protocol) with other recent episodes in the field.
Zama suspended his contract. Sochain has been arrested. Currently, Zcash has frozen the shielded Orchard pool. The entire industry is obsessed with centralized kill switches. They literally called the Nord cartel over the weekend and pumped the brakes.
CyberSatoshi, Cryptocurrency Analyst.
The analyst added: “If developers can freeze the network to patch bugs, they’re just relying on multi-signatures. Censorship resistance means zero pause buttons.”
The tensions exposed by CyberSatoshi are not new to Zcash. As reported by CriptoNoticias, in early January of last year, there was a mass resignation of the Electric Coin Company team (the main developers in the protocol’s history), citing conflicts with the Bootstrap organization’s board of directors. ZEC price has fallen by more than 20% in 24 hours.
That episode already highlighted the weight that a limited number of people carry. Regarding protocol operation and continuity. Coordinated suspension of Orchard pool updates its dependencies from a technical perspective. Suspending parts of the protocol requires a limited group of people to act quickly, but also assumes they have the authority to do so.
(Tag Translation) Blockchain
