Zcash targets July 28 launch for Ironwood network upgrade

Zcash’s Ironwood network upgrade, the solution to an “infinity” bug discovered in May on the privacy-focused blockchain’s main private transaction pool, Orchard, is set to go live on July 28.

Announced in June, Ironwood closes the current Orchard pool, prevents new activity in it and sets up a new private pool. Funds leaving Orchard would have to pass through an accounting checkpoint before entering Ironwood, which could produce evidence about whether any counterfeit Zcash ($ZEC) tokens were produced through the Orchard bug.

“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.

Source: Sean Bowe

Shielded Labs had floated delaying Zcash’s Ironwood upgrade, warning that ecosystem participants such as exchanges, mining pools and wallets would not have enough time to prepare their systems for a late-July mainnet activation. Bowe’s latest comment confirms the upgrade will go ahead one week later than its earlier target date of July 21.

In June, Shielded Labs said Ironwood may provide evidence about whether the Orchard vulnerability was ever 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 plummeted 50% to $299.25 from $602.68 after the disclosure of the Orchard bug on June 3. The price of $ZEC has made a partial recovery in the weeks following and is trading at $492.61 at the time of writing.

Zcash crossed a major monetary milestone this week, with more than 80% of its maximum 21 million $ZEC supply now issued. A post from ruZCASH on Monday shows that there is now 16,806,723 $ZEC in supply.