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ZEC Zcash ($ZEC) will activate its Ironwood network upgrade on July 28, 2026
This agreement change will be triggered at a block height of 3,428,143, which is expected to be around noon Universal Coordinated Time (UTC). For a project with financial privacy at its core, this upgrade will have a substantial impact on both users and node operators.
What changes have been brought about by the Ironwood upgrade
This upgrade introduces the Ironwood shielded pool, replacing the original Orchard pool and becoming the main destination for private transactions. At the same time, the upgrade limits the Orchard pool that previously had integrity issues (which have been fixed) and strengthens verification of circulating supply through a revolving door mechanism.
The revolving door is one of the most critical elements of this upgrade. It forces all blocked coins to migrate through a checkpoint to verify legal supplies and destroy any counterfeit ZECs. The result is a cryptographic audit of the true supply of circulation on the network-a feature previously not provided by the agreement in a direct manner.
In terms of quantum security, this upgrade implements ZIP 2005. The proposal changes the way bills in Ironwood's pool are constructed and aims to improve Zcash's long-term ability to withstand quantum computers, but the upgrade does not by itself make the protocol fully resistant to quantum attacks. Instead, it is designed as the basis for smoother transitions in the future. Existing Zcash masking protocols rely on the difficulty of solving discrete logarithm problems. If these protocols need to be disabled in the future to prevent quantum attacks, restoring the protocol will allow funds held in Ironwood's pool to be retrieved. Starting from the activation level, each Ironwood pool output ticket will use the quantum recoverable ticket plaintext format defined in ZIP 2005.
What node operators and wallet users need to know
Node operators, wallets and exchanges need to be prepared before activation, and temporary service interruptions may occur to infrastructure that is not ready. The upgrade also coincides with a broader software transition from zcashd to the Z3 stack, which means node operators must switch to Zebra.
Migrating funds out of the Orchard pool before upgrading means users can gain both quantum recoverability and enjoy the increased confidence in supply integrity provided by NU6.3.
