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Dash, the decade-old payments coin, announced today that it activated a new privacy system called Orchard. The system uses Zcash’s zero-knowledge proof technology to hide transaction details.
The launch comes at a difficult time for Zcash, which created the Orchard technology. The project is in the middle of fixing a serious bug that could have let attackers create fake Zcash tokens.
What is different about Dash’s new privacy system?
Dash has launched a new privacy system called Orchard that lets users send Dash without revealing the sender, receiver, or amount to the public. The old privacy method, PrivateSend, mixed coins between users to hide transaction trails.
The team announced the mainnet activation on X, saying the pools went live “RIGHT NOW.” The team also said that the new system can confirm transactions in about one second and sync a wallet in roughly 20 seconds.
Dash has offered privacy features since it launched in 2014, using CoinJoin for its PrivateSend feature. That method involved mixing many users’ transactions together to make them harder to trace.
Orchard uses zero-knowledge proofs. This is a type of cryptography that allows a transaction to be checked as valid without revealing who sent it, who received it, or how much was sent.
Samuel Westrich, chief technology officer of Dash Core Group, said the Orchard code was open source and mature, which made it easier to add than expected. The technology was added to Dash’s newer chain called Evolution, which was launched in 2024 to support faster transactions and token-based applications.
The first version covers normal Dash transfers. The team has said it will add privacy features for stablecoins and other digital assets in the future.
Why did Zcash’s Orchard tech cause a crisis?
The launch of the Orchard system coincides with Zcash’s worst security problem ever. On May 29, 2026, security researcher Taylor Hornby found a flaw in the Orchard circuit. Cryptopolitan reported that the bug had been there since Orchard was activated in May 2022.
The flaw could have allowed someone to create fake Zcash tokens without anyone knowing. Because Orchard’s privacy features keep everything hidden, there was no way to prove if the bug had been used by attackers. When the news came out on June 4, the price of Zcash (ZEC) crashed from around $602 to near $299, a drop of more than 50%.
Zcash developers fixed the bug within days with an emergency upgrade, and stated that they found no evidence the flaw was ever exploited.
Despite that assurance, a bigger fix called Ironwood is set to activate on July 28 at block height 3,428,143. Ironwood will add a “turnstile” accounting system that caps the total supply and makes it possible to detect counterfeit coins if any exist.
None of this affects Dash directly because its Orchard system is separate from Zcash’s, but Dash’s integration of the same technology comes just weeks after that bug was found.
The market did not show much reaction to the Dash launch. DASH was up only 0.2% on the day, with a market cap of roughly $431 million, ranking it 84th among all cryptocurrencies.
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