Privacy coins gain 4.5% in a day, but the sector’s monthly losses signal deeper market unease

Crypto Insight Summary: * The upcoming Ironwood upgrade, targeting late July 2026, aims to let users independently verify Zcash’s circulating supply and restore trust. **On Monday (June 8), privacy coins rose by 4.5%, where Monero increased by 7.6% and Zcash saw an increase of about 7%. However, the sector still trades at over 12% below its price from the beginning of the month amid concerns of a recent hack of the Zcash network.** Despite one day of gains, there still seems to be some doubt about the market. ### **Zcash Orchard vulnerability triggers market selloff despite successful patch** The monthly loss was a result of a vulnerability discovered on May 29 in the shielded pool of the Orchard protocol used by Zcash. The Zcash Open Development Lab initiated several steps to address the issue, including a soft fork on June 1 in order to temporarily disable Orchard transactions; and a hard fork on June 3 to fix the circuit and restore full functionality. Zcash’s sentiment rating dropped from 163.9 on June 5 to virtually zero within several days, [according to Santiment](https://app.santiment.net/). Likewise, Monero’s sentiment dropped dramatically from 35 to 1.72 after XMR was reported to be queued for audits along with ZEC. [According to ForkLog](https://forklog.com/en/zcash-developers-approve-ironwood-update/), ZEC plummeted by almost 50%, hitting a low of about $300, but eventually bounced back to around $470 as the software patch took effect. Firstly, Monero’s daily transactions rose from 23,867 on June 7, to 28,558 on June 8, and 29,623 on June 9, while the mining hash rate was stable at 5.9 GH/s after a slight decline, [according to BitInfoCharts statistics](https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/monero-transactions.html#3m). Crypto Insight Analysis: Direction: Neutral Impact: Minor Impact Horizon: Short-term (1-3 days) Reasoning: Privacy coin gains offset by ongoing security concerns, limiting broader market impact.