Zcash Price Climbs 13% in a Week as Network Preps Ironwood Upgrade

Zcash developers are closing in on a July 21 mainnet launch for Ironwood, a network upgrade designed to allow any node operator to verify the coin’s circulating supply from day one.

The upgrade addresses a soundness flaw discovered on May 29 by security researcher Taylor Hornby in the Orchard shielded pool’s elliptic curve code. The bug, present since Orchard went live in May 2022 as part of the NU5 upgrade, could have allowed a prover to create counterfeit notes indistinguishable from real ones. However, core engineers confirmed the issue within hours, and a soft fork disabled new Orchard actions on June 1, followed by hard fork NU6.2 on June 3 with a corrected verifying key. No evidence of exploitation has been found, and network accounting showed no unauthorized minting.

Ironwood, shipping as NU6.3, opens a new shielded pool built on the patched Orchard circuit and seals the old Orchard pool. The old pool will stop accepting new deposits, internal transfers will be disabled, and funds can only exit via the turnstile to Ironwood or a transparent address. This sealing ensures any theoretical counterfeit notes are boxed in, allowing full nodes to verify total supply without developer assurances.

Ironwood also includes ZIP 2005, which introduces note format changes to support future quantum computing recovery scenarios. Testnet activation occurred around July 3-4, with mainnet targeted for July 21, tied to a zcashd end-of-support block. Node operators must migrate to Zebra or updated clients before this date.

ZEC is trading at $462.33 as of July 4, up 13.3% over the past week and over 1,000% over the past year. The token fell more than 50% from around $630 to the $250-$300 range after the vulnerability became public, then rebounded sharply after the patch and Ironwood plan were announced. Investor Chamath Palihapitiya has publicly endorsed the upgrade’s supply verification model.

Wallet and exchange providers still need to update support before the mainnet launch. Formal verification results are expected before activation.

Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/zcash-price-climbs-13-in-a-week-as-network-preps-ironwood-upgrade/