Zcash’s Ironwood upgrade faces possible delay over infrastructure readiness
Shielded Labs has raised the possibility of delaying Zcash’s Ironwood upgrade because exchanges, mining pools, wallets, and other infrastructure providers may not be ready by the planned late-July activation. The timing is complicated by a second major transition: Zcash is also retiring zcashd and asking participants to migrate to the new Z3 stack, including Zebra for nodes, Zaino for blockchain data, and Zallet for wallets. Ironwood was designed after an “infinity” bug was found in Orchard, Zcash’s main private transaction pool, which could have allowed counterfeit ZEC creation without detection. The upgrade would shut off new activity in Orchard and route exits through an accounting checkpoint to preserve supply limits. The main tension is between restoring confidence in shielded supply quickly and giving ecosystem operators enough time to deploy, test, and audit the new infrastructure safely. No delay has been decided yet.
