The Chopping Block: Zcash Infinite Mint Bug + AI Hackers vs Formal Verification + NEAR's Agent Vision

About this episode

The episode discusses a critical bug in Zcash, the impact of AI on crypto security, and NEAR's vision for agent commerce.

Mert and Illia autopsy a brutal weekend in crypto: Saylor's $3M test sale that taught him there's no sell button, the Zcash bug Claude found that could've minted unlimited counterfeit ZEC, formal verification as the bulwark against AI attackers, and whether NEAR's agentic commerce vision is real. Welcome to The Chopping Block — where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week we've got two heavy hitters: NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin and Helius founder Mert Mumtaz. We kick things off with the weekend market meltdown -- Saylor sold 32 BTC for the first time in four years, STRC is trading below par, and Mert argues the real damage is that Saylor sucks all the air out of the room for actual crypto innovation. Then we get into the biggest story of the week: a critical bug discovered in Zcash's Orchard ZK circuit using Claude Opus 4.8 that could have allowed infinite counterfeit minting inside the shielded pool. Mert walks us through the emergency soft fork, the Ironwood migration, and why formal verification is about to become table stakes. Illia makes the case that AI-powered attackers…

People in this episode

Host: Laura Shin

Guests: Mert Mumtaz, Illia Polosukhin

Topics covered

• Zcash bug
• AI attackers
• formal verification
• NEAR Protocol
• crypto market
• emergency soft fork
• agent commerce

Keywords

• Zcash
• infinite mint bug
• AI hackers
• formal verification
• NEAR Protocol
• crypto market
• emergency soft fork
• agent commerce

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: NEAR Protocol, Zcash, Claude Opus, Helius, Ironwood, STRC

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