Bug in old Zcash software raises concerns about fork in Zcash blockchain

The Zcash network was in trouble with a bug yesterday, sparking concerns in the community about a fork in the Zcash blockchain.

Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox explained the incident earlier today on the Zcash forum, and the reason seems to be related to the old version of Zcash software. Prior to this, F2pool founder Wang Chun took the lead in reporting the problem on Github.

Although initially suspected to be a chain fork — where the network nodes split into multiple transaction histories — Zcash team members later confirmed that the issue was with an older version of the software, with an update rolled out last November being the culprit. Wilcox explained,

Nodes that have not updated their versions stopped and refused to follow any chain after seeing the trigger block.

Wilcox then recommended that users update to the latest software version to avoid any potential issues.

Sean Bowe, a member of the Zcash team, said they are planning to publish more analysis results about the bug.

“I will be doing more detailed analysis of this bug soon, such as whether there is a persistent fork. However, I do not think there is a fork at this time. Based on the nature of this bug, the node in question is probably just lagging and unable to process new blocks. This was indeed the issue that initially led us to this bug.”

It is worth noting that this bug seems to have affected the price of this anonymous cryptocurrency. According to data from Poloniex, the price of Zcash has fallen to $33, an overall decline of about 2.5% in the past 24 hours.