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Zcash's Orchard Pool Audit: What It Can Prove, and What It Can't Zcash announced a new method to audit the Orchard Pool supply today, with full technical details dropping shortly. The context: a critical vulnerability sat undetected in Orchard since the pool launched in May 2022, nearly four years, until a security researcher using AI assistance uncovered it. A hard fork patched it on June 1. The market reaction told the story. ZEC dropped roughly 45% post-disclosure, Arthur Hayes publicly exited his entire position, and the core question driving the selloff isn't one any audit can definitively answer: did anyone exploit this silently during four years of exposure? Here's the structural problem. Zcash's privacy architecture makes it cryptographically impossible to prove historical exploitation one way or the other. The shielded design that gives ZEC its fundamental value proposition is also what blocks a clean forensic answer. On-chain data shows no visible inflation, but "no evidence of exploitation" and "proof it didn't happen" are genuinely different things. So what does a supply audit actually give you? A current snapshot. Confidence, if the methodology is sound and the numbers check out. A framework for ongoing verification going forward. That's meaningful, even if it can't close the historical question. The community's read on today's methodology will matter as much as the numbers themselves. If the approach lands as credible, this is the starting point for ZEC rebuilding trust. If it doesn't, the confidence gap stays open. Worth reading: Shielded Labs proposes new Zcash upgrade to prove ZEC supply Share your thoughts in the comments 👇 #ZECOrchardAuditToday $ZEC $BTC