The development team behind the Zcash blockchain has warned of a potential delay in the activation of the Ironwood upgrade, as some crypto exchanges, pools, and wallets may not implement the changes by the end of July.
Update on Ironwood, from @aquietinvestor: https://t.co/KxHnXMr1SH pic.twitter.com/XYCyRndzkh
— zooko🛡🦓🦓🦓 ⓩ (@zooko) July 2, 2026
Ironwood aims to launch a new shielded pool and limit the supply of ZEC following the discovery of a vulnerability in Orchard.
Jason McGee, head of Shielded Labs, warned on the community forum that infrastructure participants need more time to safely prepare for the upgrade.
The ecosystem is currently preparing for two major changes: the Ironwood upgrade itself and the transition from the old zcashd validator and node software to the Z3 stack. The solution consists of three main components:
- Zebra — for running a node;
- Zaino — for transmitting blockchain data to applications;
- Zallet — for wallet functions.
According to McGee, the latter two components are still under development and not yet ready for full deployment.
A final decision on delaying the upgrade has not yet been made. So far, security audits have not revealed any new significant bugs, and developers continue to verify the system before Ironwood’s activation.
In June, analysts at Allium identified five large profitable short positions on ZEC on Hyperliquid totaling over $72 million, opened just days before the vulnerability was found.
