Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox said a security audit by Anthropic’s Claude Mythos artificial intelligence model revealed no serious vulnerabilities in the privacy-preserving cryptocurrency’s protocol.
Commissioned by Shielded Labs, a Switzerland-based nonprofit that supports the development of Zcash, the AI security audit found “no more serious bugs” in the Zcash protocol, according to a Saturday X. job by Wilcox.
On June 3, Zcash developers Orchard transactions temporarily suspended after discovering a vulnerability in the protected pool. Functionality was restored later that day through an emergency upgrade.
The problem stemmed from a four-year-old spoofing bug in the Orchard protected pool that was discovered by security researcher Taylor Hornby with the help of Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 model. The Zcash Foundation said there was no evidence that the vulnerability had been exploited, nor any unauthorized value creation detected, while user privacy was not affected.
Source: Zooko Wilcox
AI models raise crypto security concerns
As developers use new AI models to identify vulnerabilities, the technology is simultaneously raising security concerns across the crypto industry.
Tuesday, Anthropic released the first public version of its Claude Mythos model, Fable 5. The company said last month that the Mythos model had discovered more than 10,000 high or critical severity vulnerabilities in “systemically important software,” raising concerns about its public release.
The company said users that Fable 5 has been “made safe for general use” and has safeguards that redirect certain topics, like cybersecurity, to a different model, Claude Opus 4.8.
Friday, Anthropic said it has suspended access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models due to a US government export control directive citing national security concerns.
Related: Hopes for recovery fade as Kelp DAO hacker launders almost all $220 million in stolen funds
The proliferation of these new AI models has changed the cybersecurity playing field in favor of threat actors, causing a “vulnerability apocalypse” that is fueling a resurgence of decentralized finance (DeFi) hacks, Mitchell Amador, CEO of bug bounty platform Immunefi, told Cointelegraph. in a recent interview.
Crypto hacks jumped to $634 million in April, the highest monthly value since the Bybit hack led to around $1.4 billion in losses in February 2025, according to DefiLlama. data.
Review: The legal battle over who can claim the millions stolen by DeFi
