Zcash mainnet has activated the Ironwood upgrade, introducing a new privacy pool to enhance supply security.

According to official announcements, the Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL) has activated the Ironwood (NU6.3) network upgrade at mainnet block height 3,428,143. The upgrade introduces a new privacy pool designed to enhance Zcash network security and enable independent verification of the integrity of its circulating supply. With Ironwood’s launch, the existing Orchard privacy pool will be restricted: funds transferred out of Orchard must go through a "gate mechanism" before entering Ironwood. Zcash states that Ironwood is an ecosystem-wide collaborative upgrade driven by the Orchard privacy pool security vulnerability discovered at the end of May this year. The vulnerability was patched via an emergency network upgrade; there is currently no evidence it was exploited, nor any indication that user funds or the total ZEC supply were compromised. Built on the revised Orchard protocol, Ironwood incorporates formal verification and independent security audits to further strengthen the protocol’s resilience against future supply integrity vulnerabilities. For users, existing funds in Orchard need to be migrated to the new Ironwood privacy pool. Wallets supporting Ironwood will provide migration paths, and ZODL users can complete the migration directly via the latest version of the app, with no need to create a new wallet or change addresses. Zcash notes that Ironwood’s launch will retain privacy features while delivering stronger verifiability and a long-term security foundation for the network.