Overview
- Core developer Sean Bowe confirmed on Thursday that Ironwood will activate at block height 3,428,143, expected near 8 a.m. EST on July 28.
- The change follows a late‑May ‘infinity’ soundness bug in the Orchard shielded pool and emergency fixes in early June that disabled Orchard transactions and activated the NU6.2 hard fork.
- Ironwood will retire Orchard and require users to move funds through a turnstile accounting checkpoint before entering the new shielded pool to allow verification of total circulating supply.
- The new pool is being built with formal verification, independent audits and quantum‑recoverable note formats to strengthen supply integrity and privacy guarantees.
- Market confidence has improved with ZEC trading around $500 and futures open interest jumping into the high hundreds of millions, but migration readiness, unfinished audits and Orchard’s prior privacy limits leave lingering risk.