Zcash Sets Ironwood Network Upgrade for July 28 Deployment
The privacy-focused blockchain's upcoming upgrade will shut down the previously vulnerable Orchard pool and could reveal whether fraudulent tokens were minted through a security flaw.
The Ironwood network upgrade for Zcash, designed to address an "infinity" vulnerability that emerged in May within the privacy-oriented blockchain's primary private transaction pool known as Orchard, has a scheduled activation date of July 28.
First revealed in June, the Ironwood upgrade will shut down the existing Orchard pool, block any further transactions within it, and establish a fresh private pool. Any funds exiting Orchard must go through an accounting verification point before they can enter Ironwood, potentially revealing evidence of whether any illegitimate Zcash (ZEC) tokens were generated via 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.
Shielded Labs had previously suggested postponing the Ironwood upgrade for Zcash, expressing concerns that key ecosystem participants including exchanges, mining pools and wallet providers would face insufficient time to adapt their infrastructure for a late-July mainnet launch. Bowe's most recent statement confirms the upgrade will proceed one week beyond its initial planned date of July 21.
Back in June, Shielded Labs indicated that Ironwood could potentially offer clues regarding whether the Orchard security flaw was actually 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."
The value of ZEC dropped 50% to $299.25 from $602.68 following the announcement of the Orchard bug on June 3. ZEC's price has experienced a partial rebound in the subsequent weeks and is currently trading at $492.61 at the time of writing.
The Zcash network achieved a significant monetary landmark this week, with over 80% of its maximum 21 million ZEC supply now in circulation. A post from ruZCASH on Monday shows that there is now 16,806,723 ZEC in supply.