Zcash’s Ironwood Upgrade May Be Delayed as Infrastructure Lags

Zcash’s next network upgrade, Ironwood, may be pushed back because parts of the ecosystem may not have enough time to prepare their infrastructure.

Cointelegraph reported on July 3 that Shielded Labs, the developer of Zcash, said exchanges, mining pools and wallet providers may struggle to get their systems ready for Ironwood’s planned activation at the end of July.

In a post on the Zcash community forum, Shielded Labs Executive Director Jason McGee wrote that the Ironwood upgrade is moving forward alongside the replacement of zcashd, the legacy node and wallet software, with the new Z3 stack. Some infrastructure providers have said they can be ready by the end of July, while others need more time. He added that no delay has been decided yet.

Ironwood was proposed in response to the so-called infinity bug discovered in Orchard, Zcash’s main privacy transaction pool. In theory, the flaw could have allowed an attacker to create unlimited counterfeit ZEC tokens without detection. Developers said they have found no evidence of actual exploitation. But because of Orchard’s privacy features, it is impossible to prove that no counterfeit coins were created.

Once Ironwood is activated, a new privacy pool will replace Orchard, and new activity in the existing Orchard pool will be blocked. Moving assets out of Orchard will require an accounting verification process designed to ensure that no more ZEC leaves than was originally deposited.

Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox said security reviews have so far uncovered no additional serious bugs. Developers are also validating the new system ahead of Ironwood’s activation.