Zcash Targets July 28 Launch for Ironwood Upgrade

The Zcash network is set to activate its Ironwood upgrade on July 28, introducing a solution to the critical "infinity" vulnerability discovered in May within Orchard, the blockchain’s primary shielded transaction pool.

Originally announced in June, the upgrade will retire the existing Orchard pool, prevent any new transactions within it and introduce a new private pool for shielded transfers. Funds moving out of Orchard will be required to pass through an accounting checkpoint before entering Ironwood. This process could help determine whether any counterfeit Zcash (ZEC) tokens were created through exploitation of the Orchard vulnerability.

“Zcash's Ironwood mainnet activation height has been set and tagged! All of the major organizations are committed to activation of NU6.3 at height 3428143, which is approximately July 28th at 8AM EST,” Zcash core developer Sean Bowe said on Thursday.

Upgrade proceeds despite earlier concerns

Security research group Shielded Labs had previously suggested delaying the Ironwood upgrade, arguing that exchanges, mining pools, wallet providers and other ecosystem participants might not have enough time to prepare for deployment. Bowe’s announcement confirms the network upgrade will proceed on July 28, one week later than the original target date of July 21.

Earlier in June, Shielded Labs said the migration process could also provide valuable insight into whether the Orchard bug had ever been exploited. “As users migrate funds from the existing Orchard pool to the new pool, any hypothetical counterfeiter faces a choice: attempt to move counterfeit funds and risk exposing their existence, or leave them behind and risk being unable to move them in the future.”

ZEC recovers while supply reaches major milestone

The disclosure of the Orchard vulnerability had a significant impact on the market. Following the announcement on June 3, ZEC fell by roughly 50%, dropping from $602.68 to $299.25. Since then, the cryptocurrency has partially recovered and was trading at $492.61 at the time of writing.

Meanwhile, Zcash also reached an important monetary milestone this week. According to a post from ruZCASH on Monday, more than 80% of the network’s maximum supply of 21 million ZEC has now been issued, bringing the circulating supply to 16,806,723 ZEC.

Sources:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/zcash-targets-july-28-launch-for-ironwood-network-upgrade

https://x.com/ruZCASH/status/2074140785340014763

https://x.com/ebfull/status/2075368875835941140

https://x.com/zooko/status/2063262293442678830