According to BlockBeats, on June 6, the Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL), together with Tachyon, Valar Group, Zcash Foundation, and Shielded Labs, proposed a new network upgrade and shielding pool called "Ironwood," which is scheduled to be activated by the end of July 2026. The exact timing will depend on the progress of testing and ecosystem coordination.
Ironwood will use the existing Orchard protocol, but will add formal verification and independent security audits. It will also verify the total supply of ZEC transferred from Orchard to Ironwood through a "Turnstile" mechanism, enabling anyone to audit the circulating supply of Zcash, thereby further enhancing the protocol's security and transparency.
ZODL stated that the recently discovered Orchard integrity vulnerability was found during ongoing security research and has been patched through a coordinated upgrade. There is currently no evidence that the vulnerability was exploited, nor is there any indication that user funds were damaged or the total ZEC supply changed. The issue has not affected the privacy attributes of any privacy pools, and Orchard continues to operate normally.
According to the plan, after the upgrade, the Orchard pool will disable new deposits and internal transactions; funds can only be migrated to Ironwood via the Turnstile mechanism. Wallets that support Orchard will offer a one-click migration function, and the new privacy pool will continue to use the user's existing Orchard address, without requiring a change of receiving address.
In addition, ZODL is working to phase out zcashd, including developing a new command-line wallet, Zallet, assisting node operators in migrating to Zebrad, and updating the wallet and SDK to support Ironwood upgrades.
