MarsBit published an analysis by Daii on Sept. 10 arguing that ZEC’s latest rally looks far more like a forceful narrative repricing than a full market revaluation of Zcash’s fundamentals.
The piece draws a clean line between two ideas. A value revaluation would mean the market has discovered underappreciated cash flow, user demand, security or durable competitive advantages in the protocol. A narrative repricing, by contrast, happens when capital is suddenly willing to pay more for a scarce label. According to the article, ZEC still carries one of the clearest labels in crypto: an older proof-of-work asset with a fixed supply cap, zero-knowledge proofs and a privacy-coin identity. But a more expensive label does not mean the product beneath it has improved to the same degree.
Using the OKX market figures cited in the article, ZEC rose from $251.39 to a high of $1,256.92, putting the move at roughly 5x, or about 400%. Daii writes that a move of that scale should not be waved away as mere hype. A sustained repricing suggests the market is competing for something genuinely scarce. The harder question, though, is what buyers are actually paying for: realized network value, or an older story repackaged through macro anxiety, privacy demand and short-squeeze dynamics. The article says the current evidence supports the latter view.
Cryptographic strength is not the same as proven product completion
The article says Zcash’s technical contribution should not be erased. It brought zero-knowledge proofs into public blockchain payments, and shielded transactions can hide the sender, the receiver and the amount. Upgrades including Sapling and Orchard improved proof efficiency and the design of the shielded pool. In the author’s view, these are concrete cryptographic achievements rather than marketing slogans.
The investment mistake, the piece argues, is jumping straight from 「advanced technology」 to 「the network is worth this price」. It says at least three bridges are still missing: whether users actually adopt privacy features, whether the anonymity set is large enough, and whether the protocol’s complexity is being managed in a reliable way.
The analysis notes that Zcash has long allowed transparent and shielded addresses to coexist. Optional privacy helps with exchange compatibility and existing infrastructure, but it can also split user behavior across anonymity sets and create metadata in cross-pool activity. It cites empirical research by Kappos and others on early Zcash on-chain activity, which found transparent transactions dominated and some deposit-withdrawal patterns could be clustered. It also references research by Quesnelle showing that amount and timing correlations could emerge when funds moved in and out of the transparent pool.
The author adds an important limit: those papers examined early on-chain data, so they cannot be treated as real-time usage data for 2026, nor do they prove that every shielded transaction today can be tracked. What they do show, the article says, is a mechanism problem that still matters: privacy does not exist automatically just because a protocol supports it. It depends on defaults, anonymity-set depth and user behavior.
That leads to the article’s distinction. 「Zcash has strong privacy technology」 is a factual statement. 「Owning ZEC means buying a widely used privacy network」 remains an investment claim that still needs proof. Without current data on shielded pool size, real payment demand, active users and recurring fee generation, the piece says price cannot serve as proof by itself.
Open funding rules do not automatically validate capital allocation
The second part of the article turns to distribution and funding. Daii writes that Wang Chun’s criticism of founder rewards carries weight not because team compensation is automatically illegitimate, but because Zcash asked the market from the beginning to accept a specific framework for value distribution.
As summarized in the piece, the Zcash protocol specification recorded an early block-subsidy distribution model in which part of block rewards flowed to founder reward recipients. By design, founder rewards represented about 20% of mining issuance during the first four years, equal to roughly 10% of the full 21 million supply cap. After the first halving, ZIP 1014 established a new development fund, allocating 20% of block subsidies over the following four years to Major Grants, Electric Coin Company and the Zcash Foundation.
The author says those two systems should not be flattened into a simple line that 「the team takes a cut forever」, because the recipients, governance process and uses were not the same. Even so, the economic point remains: miners and token holders have continuously borne the dilution cost of protocol development financing, and it is fair to ask whether that financing produced matching results in adoption, security and ecosystem growth.
The article says the more serious questions are these: whether funding rules are predictable, whether recipients disclose enough, whether performance can be measured, and whether grants can be replaced if governance fails. If any of those answers remain vague, the development fund can drift from a long-term building tool into a standing rent stream for stakeholders.
For that reason, the piece rejects the lazy label of a 「premine scam」. It says Zcash’s distribution rules were written into the protocol in public, which is different from covert extraction. But public does not mean reasonable, and rule compliance does not prove adequate returns. In the author’s framing, even a much higher ZEC price today would not retroactively prove that the last decade’s capital allocation was effective.
Reported Orchard risk is not the same as proven on-chain exploitation
The article’s third section addresses the Orchard shielded pool issue mentioned in the prompt. If such a flaw remained latent for about four years, the theoretical consequence could include unauthorized inflation, while privacy features make it harder for outsiders to determine whether it was ever exploited. The key, according to the author, is to separate three questions: whether the flaw existed, what it theoretically allowed and whether exploitation actually occurred on-chain. Each one requires a different level of evidence.
Based on media retellings alone, the article says it is fair to discuss the fact that the market may be trading this risk. It is not fair to present 「unlimited inflation already happened」 as established fact. The reverse is also true: a lack of public proof does not allow anyone to declare the supply unquestionably clean. In privacy protocols, the inability to fully audit some hidden state is itself part of the risk. Transparent chains can use public balance conservation to help detect anomalies. Shielded systems depend more heavily on the correctness of proof systems, implementation code, parameter generation and audit procedures.
Daii argues that this is not a Zcash-specific original sin but an engineering cost carried by strong privacy systems. More features mean a broader attack surface and harder verification. A longer history does not guarantee that new circuits, wallets and upgrades automatically inherit the safety of old code.
If the market wants to call a post-flaw rebound a true value revaluation, the author says it should at minimum have public root-cause analysis, affected-version disclosures, a repair timeline, independent audit conclusions and clearly stated boundaries on supply-integrity verification. Without those materials, the strictest formulation is narrower: a major protocol risk has been reported, but public evidence is still insufficient to say it was exploited in practice, and also insufficient to rule that out completely.
The article says uncertainty of that kind belongs in a valuation discount rather than being erased by a rising chart. Whether the protocol is fixed and whether longs are making money on a given day are separate questions.
A squeezed short does not settle the long-term thesis
In the fourth section, the piece discusses another claim cited in the broader reporting: that Garrett Jin built an approximately $45.11 million ZEC short with 3x leverage, had already accumulated large paper losses by the time of reporting and continued to add to the position. Even if accurate, Daii writes, that only shows how dangerous the market structure may be. It does not prove that the bullish side is correct.
The mechanics are straightforward. A heavily leveraged short can become fuel for a rally because rising prices create margin pressure, and deleveraging or liquidation generates forced buying, especially in a thinner market. At the same time, a losing short that keeps adding may attract traders betting on a squeeze. In that setup, the rally reinforces the 「privacy-coin revival」 story while also creating more chase buying and short covering, producing a self-reinforcing loop.
But that only answers why the move is so fast, not what the asset is worth over time. Shorts can be right on fundamentals and still die by position sizing. Longs can make money off market structure and still be wrong about the underlying reasons. The article compares treating a large short’s blowup as project validation to declaring that a burned house must have excellent quality because an insurer lost money on the claim.
What evidence would support a true value revaluation
The article closes by outlining what would actually justify the phrase 「value revaluation」. Not another green candle, it says, but several conditions arriving together:
- sustained growth in shielded transactions and shielded balances, rather than short-term fund shuffling;
- wallets and payment entry points turning privacy and safety into the default user experience;
- a reviewable disclosure, fix and audit loop around protocol flaws;
- transparent reporting on where development funds go, what they achieve and how they can be replaced;
- security budget, development activity and real demand that remain durable as subsidies fall.
If those conditions are met, the author says, the market would deserve credit for seeing the story early. Until then, the more accurate formulation is that ZEC’s narrative asset is being repriced, while Zcash’s network value has not yet finished making its case.
The piece does not say ZEC cannot keep climbing. Daii writes that token prices do not wait for an academic defense to conclude, and scarce float, macro conditions, privacy anxiety, exchange liquidity and short positioning can all push the asset higher. But 「it can still rise」 is a trading judgment, 「is it worth it」 is an asset judgment, and 「is the protocol dependable」 is a technical and governance judgment. Blending the three into one answer is exactly the kind of cognitive tax that story-driven assets tend to collect.
The final section says Wang Chun’s criticism may not be perfectly fair in every phrase, and the future events and position figures cited in reporting should still be checked against primary materials. Even so, the criticism hits a point that cannot be avoided: Zcash has a real technical legacy, and it also carries real burdens around adoption, distribution, governance and security. Showing only the first is evangelism. Showing only the second is bearish campaigning. Valuation, the author argues, should demand observable results from the former and verifiable remedies for the latter.
The piece ends with a blunt line: price may help ZEC win an argument, but it cannot produce missing evidence for Zcash.