PANews reported on April 1st that, according to Decrypt, security researcher Alex “Scalar” Sol discovered a critical vulnerability in Zcash node software that could allow malicious miners to steal over 25,000 ZEC (approximately $6.5 million) from the deprecated Sprout privacy pool. This vulnerability caused zcashd nodes to skip proof verification for transactions involving the Sprout pool, affecting multiple versions since July 2020. Zcash developers released a patch for v6.12.0 on March 31st, and major mining pools deployed the fix within three days. The vulnerability was not exploited, and user funds are safe. Zcash's “turnstile” mechanism prevents the token supply from being maliciously increased. Sol received a bounty of 200 ZEC for disclosing the vulnerability.