- The Zcash core developer announced that the Zcash testnet will be updated for the Ironwood upgrade tomorrow.
- Shielded Labs also confirmed that Zcash’s Ironwood upgrade is going according to plan, with security being the most important. “Basic anxiety.”
- Ironwood upgrade will be offered New Shielded Pool Fixes a major forgery bug found within the Orchard Shielded Pool.
In a recent post shared on X (formerly Twitter), Zcash’s core developer revealed that the Zcash testnet will be updated for the Ironwood upgrade tomorrow. According to a post shared on X, the update contains two independently developed consensus implementations, including Valar Group and Zcash Foundation. However, Valar’s version of consensus implementation is currently under scrutiny.
In the post, Dave wrote: “We have a desktop wallet fork with migration code that you can try! If you have a Keystone dev device, you can also update your firmware to try it on the testnet! Sign 11+ txs with one QR code. This is the record for Zcash testnet readiness as far as I know!“
In its latest statement today, Shielded Labs, an independent Swiss non-profit association, also confirmed that Zcash’s Ironwood upgrade is moving forward as planned, with security being its top priority. “Basic anxiety.” The organization is also working closely with other partners on testing and conducting audits to ensure the security of the upgrade before final implementation on the mainnet.
According to the official ETA, Ironwood is scheduled to be upgraded on the mainnet around late July 2026 at a block height of 3,417,100, after zcashd is retired.
What is ironwood?
Ironwood is a major network upgrade developed to introduce a new protected pool, which will give users the ability to independently verify the integrity of their Zcash supply in circulation. This upgrade builds on top of the Orchard Privacy Protocol by introducing new fixes, formal verification of zero-knowledge circuits, independent security audits, and more. The highlight of this Ironwood upgrade is the “revolving door” mechanism for calculating supply.
Zooko, the founder of Zcash, said in Official job “which”The goal of Ironwood is to restore the ability of every Zcash user to verify the integrity of the offer for Zcash. This verifiability is broken due to a forgery vulnerability. Once activated, users will be able to independently verify that the circulating supply of Zcash is intact, just by running the node.
The upgrade is planned for July to coincide with the end of support for the older zcashd client. Once the Ironwood upgrade is up and running, the existing Orchard complex will be approaching new deposits and some internal transactions.
Apart from this, users’ funds will be relayed through the revolving door to the Ironwood complex. The revolving door is a cryptographic validation process. This will allow anyone running a node to simply collect active pool balances to confirm the total supply, which will provide strong assurance against counterfeits that go undetected.
4-year-old Zcash counterfeiting bug shakes users’ trust
Ironwood’s upgrade comes after a major counterfeiting bug was found in May within Zcash’s Orchard’s protected pool. The bug has been present in the protected pool for about 4 years. This bug was critical because it could have allowed an attacker to mint an unlimited number of fake ZEC tokens without any kind of detection. If this bug is exploited, it could compromise the integrity of the network supply, which is a key feature of Zcash’s privacy features.
After this bug appeared, the developers implemented an emergency soft fork to stop all vulnerable activity. Next, they implemented a hard fork to stabilize operations. No exploitation has been reported by any user. However, Zuko confirmed that it was a mistake It was “real and exploitable”.
From the zoo He said“There are several reasons why we should not be overly concerned about counterfeiting before addressing this vulnerability.”
However, the community reacted quickly after the bug appeared and took all measures to protect all users on the network.
“While no one wants to discover a vulnerability like this, we are confident that Zcash is well-positioned to recover. We stand ready to continue to assist other Zcash development groups and the Zcash community as a whole on how to move forward,” Zooko said.
This error sparked panic among ZEC token holders. Within just 48 hours after the error appeared, the ZEC token fell by more than 50%, falling from over $600 to $255. However, as of now, ZEC is showing signs of recovery amid the excitement surrounding the Ironwood upgrade. At the time of writing this article, ZEC is currently trading at around $434 with a market capitalization of around $7.26 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.
