Zcash Whipsaws On an Orchard Pool Flaw
The sharpest swing belonged to zcash given ZEC had been one of 2026’s standout performers, surging past $600 to an intraday high near $624 on June 4. The rally reversed within hours as a soundness flaw in Zcash’s Orchard shielded pool sent the token tumbling.
Security researcher Taylor Hornby had disclosed the bug, which could, in theory, have allowed undetectable counterfeit ZEC, and developers moved to patch it through an emergency upgrade. No funds were stolen and no exploit occurred in the wild, but the disclosure was enough to trigger a rush for the exits.
ZEC fell roughly 50% in a single day, dipping as low as $264.80 before stabilizing. Its market capitalization slid from about $9 billion to near $5.37 billion, while roughly $82 million in leveraged positions were liquidated. However, ZEC then rebounded about 18% over the following 24 hours, with 24-hour volume topping $2.9 billion, suggesting that buyers viewed the patched flaw as a contained event rather than a fatal one.
NEAR and WLD give back their gains
The other two tokens retraced more quietly. Near Protocol’s NEAR had climbed sharply through the spring, rising more than 200% from a February low as money rotated into AI-themed tokens, and it changed hands near $2.41 at its recent peak. It has since eased back toward $1.91, unwinding much of that late surge.
Worldcoin’s WLD followed a similar arc on a compressed timeline as the token (issued by the iris-scanning identity project co-founded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman) jumped roughly 60% recently, reaching about $0.55, before sliding back toward $0.40. The drop left WLD roughly 35% below its recent peak near $0.62.
Part of the attention surrounding the above tokens came from BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, whose Maelstrom fund had publicly backed all three before exiting. Hayes set a $10 price target on WLD and framed it as a liquid proxy for an AI and SpaceX listing trade, then disclosed selling the position days later, posting that the chart was “going in the wrong direction.”
Bitcoin.com News reported that he also dumped his entire ZEC position after the Orchard flaw surfaced, declaring “The Holy Trinity is dead.” For the tokens themselves, the lesson became one of how quickly narrative-driven rallies can reverse.
What traders are watching now
The most pressing question now is whether each token holds its reset level. For ZEC, the test will be whether its post-patch rebound builds into a durable recovery or fades as traders weigh the reputational hit of a four-year-old bug in a flagship privacy pool. On the other hand, for NEAR and WLD, the focus will fall on whether the broader AI-token bid that lifted them in the first place returns.
Regardless, what the episode makes clear is that all three rallies were tightly tied to sentiment rather than fundamentals that shifted overnight. With the hype unwound, each token now faces the hard task of building a base without a viral narrative to carry it.
