Zcash activates Ironwood upgrade as more than 182,000 ZEC moves into new shielded pool

Zcash's NU6.3 "Ironwood" upgrade went live on July 28, introducing a new formally verified shielded pool as the network's primary destination for private transactions while sealing the older Orchard pool. By July 29, more than 182,000 ZEC had migrated into Ironwood, while roughly 3.5 million ZEC remained in Orchard, indicating that most shielded balances have yet to move. The transition follows the discovery earlier this year of a flaw in Orchard's proof circuit that theoretically could have enabled counterfeit ZEC to be created inside the pool. Sean Bowe and engineers from Shielded Labs and the Zcash Open Development Lab previously said they found no evidence of exploitation on the live network. NU6.2 first mitigated the issue, and NU6.3 introduced Ironwood as Orchard's long-term replacement. Gemini has added support for shielded ZEC withdrawals directly to Ironwood, becoming one of the first regulated crypto exchanges to offer the feature. The exchange said on July 30 that users can withdraw shielded ZEC to compatible wallets such as Zodl, extending privacy-preserving functionality it had already offered for Orchard withdrawals since November 2025. Orchard no longer accepts new shielded transactions and is being drained through a protocol-level turnstile designed to preserve supply integrity by ensuring no more value exits than was legitimately held there. Wallets and exchanges must support the v6 transaction format, and Zebra has become the network's primary supported node software following the retirement of zcashd. Market pressure has persisted through the upgrade. ZEC traded near $474 at publication, below the $500 area that held for much of July, and was down 12.4% over seven days after having led one of the year's strongest altcoin bursts two months earlier. The latest report said roughly $926 million in leverage is now testing whether the rebound can hold.