Zcash plans to launch the Ironwood upgrade by the end of July, introducing a new privacy pool and enhancing total supply verifiability

BlockBeats News, June 6 — Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL), in collaboration with Tachyon, Valar Group, Zcash Foundation, and Shielded Labs, proposed the launch of a new network upgrade called "Ironwood" and shielded pools, scheduled to activate by the end of July 2026, with the exact timing depending on testing and ecosystem coordination progress.

Ironwood will continue to use the existing Orchard protocol but will add formal verification and independent security audits, and will verify all ZEC supply transferred from Orchard to Ironwood through the "Turnstile" mechanism, allowing anyone to audit Zcash's circulating supply, thereby further enhancing protocol security and transparency.

ZODL stated that the recently discovered Orchard integrity vulnerability was found during ongoing security research and has been fixed through coordinated upgrades. There is currently no evidence that the vulnerability was exploited, nor any signs that user funds were affected or that the total ZEC supply has changed. The issue also did not impact the privacy attributes of any privacy pools, and Orchard remains operational.

According to the plan, after the upgrade, the Orchard pool will close new deposits and internal transactions, and funds can only be migrated to Ironwood via the Turnstile mechanism. Wallets supporting Orchard will offer a one-click migration feature, and new privacy pools will continue to use users' existing Orchard addresses without needing to change the receiving address.

Additionally, ZODL is advancing the deprecation of zcashd, including developing a new command-line wallet called Zallet, assisting node operators in migrating to Zebrad, and updating wallets and SDKs to support the Ironwood upgrade.