Zcash temporarily disables Orchard transactions

I don't think we should hate on ZCash just to hate on ZCash. If we want to talk about it let's stay curious and add quality discussion–leave the namecalling to twitter. We've all heard the talking points a thousand times.

I was reading this thread on their forum and was pleasently surprised by the attitude. Lots of people were advocating for removing the transaparent addresses, mind you this was before the price pump. I haven't gotten past may 2025 and there are a few cheap jabs at Monero, but mostly positivity.

https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/monero-everywhere/50689

I hope that more people shield their ZCash and everyone gets more privacy for their life.

Maybe we should have a ZCash thread.

@Stylus1063

regarding that project, i literally got surprised that "f_uk" was a moderator over there
(someone that has been doing actual attacks on the monero network)

this is war

sure, could look at the tech, there's been other projects like ARRR that didnt have the transparent addresses

post #6 over there also mentioned JunoCash:
https://monero.forum/thread/another-privacy-first-coins

like, sure yea, could look at the tech, but is like, can we also look at monero tech a bit on moneroforum?
there's so many altcoins talks already...

@Stylus1063 the Zcash ecosystem is minimizing this vulnerability. This is the most extreme vulnerability possible. It's critically important to recognize the severity of this issue. Monero has never had this severe of a vulnerability. It's paramount that the Monero community maintain a critical lens so that the Monero community does not turn complacent toward this class of vulnerability the way the Zcash ecosystem has done.

@xmr_is_goated I am talking about obscenities, namecalling, and bad faith arguments. I 100% agree.

@xmr_is_goated That is inaccurate. Monero had a doublespend bug before with key images that was thankfully patched. And we are still vulnerable to a double spend bug like basically every other crypto.

@Stylus1063 Yeah Zcash definitely has people who are cool. They listen to my show lol I hear from them. I honestly think they handled this situation decently well. I don't like the centralization of the project, but this is something that is a part of Zcash and they used it to their advantage. I can't blame them. I don't like turning of shielded transactions but they did it and it worked.

Could people that had shielded funds unshield them and then use them? If I understood correctly someone said that all shielded funds were frozen so it wouldn't really force people to use transparent, it would just be like downtime.

@xenu no, it is accurate. Monero's bug was a detectable inflation bug. You can be mathematically certain it was never exploited. Zcash's TWO hidden inflation bugs were NOT detectable. You cannot be certain they were never exploited. That is the most severe class of vulnerability and Monero has NEVER had that issue.

Monero is not vulnerable to a double spend bug. That is what key images are for.

@Stylus1063 That was the case earlier before the hard fork but now with the network update things are back to working properly. Some wallets have not updated yet, however. Cake wallet was not notified about the switch and updated later, for example.
Zcash devs handled the situation in a clumsy way that was basically spearheaded by Zodl (the main company doing research and dev work for zcash), who manages the zodl wallet. So basically the zodl wallet was the only wallet that was updated and the other wallets were left trying to figure out what to do. I actually had Vik dm about about it lol.

@xmr_is_goated Monero key images was vulnerable to a double spend bug prior to the patch.
And do you have a source for the "never exploited" claim? There are ways to tell if an exploit happened. I honestly don't know this but I also haven't seen anything suggest that it is undetectable...the blog post from zodl said as much.

From this source: https://www.getmonero.org/2017/05/17/disclosure-of-a-major-bug-in-cryptonote-based-currencies.html

unless they know about the fatal flaw and can search for it
confirmed that the Monero blockchain had NEVER been exploited using this

The only reason these are there is because you can DETECT the issue.

It's funny... Zcash's blog post leaves the impression that the issue was detectable thanks to turnstiles (misleads to make it seem better). Monero's blog post leaves the impression it was undetectable (misleads to make it seem worse).

Again, an important distinction to highlight. One blog post is much more intellectually honest toward users.