Zcash finally patched the Orchard infinite minting vulnerability in this Ironwood upgrade, and after activation in July, nodes can audit the total supply themselves—making the fixed supply cap for privacy coins genuinely reliable.

Zcash has officially finalized the Ironwood network upgrade plan, targeting activation in July. This upgrade is intended to address the “infinite minting” vulnerability crisis previously faced by the Orchard privacy pool. Ironwood will roll out a repaired new privacy pool and gradually shut down the old one. After the upgrade is completed, users and nodes running Zcash software will be able to aggregate the balances of both the new and old pools and independently verify whether the total circulating supply of ZEC exceeds the hard cap of 21 million ZEC, thereby restoring market confidence in Zcash’s fixed-supply mechanism while maintaining decentralization. (The Block)