Zcash’s new Ironwood pool receives $80M in first day as network seals old shielded pool

Zcash activated its Ironwood network upgrade on July 28, sealing the existing Orchard shielded pool and forcing users into a brand-new pool with a zero balance. Roughly $80 million in ZEC crossed into that fresh pool within 24 hours, a strong opening signal for what amounts to a full reset of the network’s privacy infrastructure. The upgrade wasn’t just a routine feature release. It was a direct response to a critical bug in Orchard’s proof circuit that had gone undetected for four years, one that theoretically could have allowed someone to mint counterfeit ZEC without anyone noticing. What Ironwood actually fixes The Orchard shielded pool launched in 2022 and had accumulated between 3.66 million and 3.76 million ZEC by the time it was sealed. At recent prices, that’s somewhere between $1.7 billion and $1.89 billion worth of tokens sitting in a pool with a compromised proof circuit. The Ironwood upgrade, formally designated NU6.3, activated at block height 3,428,143. It introduced a completely new shielded pool governed by ZIP 2005, which brings two key improvements: formally verified proof circuits and quantum-resilient record-keeping. The migration mechanism is called a “turnstil...