About $80 million ZEC crosses into Zcash's new Ironwood pool in the first day
Reported by CoinDesk · AI-assisted summary by ChikoCorp AI News Desk
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About 176,000 ZEC, valued at roughly $81 million, moved into Zcash’s new Ironwood shielded pool within the first day following the network upgrade. This amount represents about 5% of the 3.66 million ZEC that were held in the previous Orchard shielded pool at the time the upgrade took effect. Since activation, the Orchard pool, which can no longer accept new deposits, has been steadily shrinking as coins exit through a controlled mechanism known as the turnstile, which limits total withdrawals to the verifiable amount deposited.
The migration to Ironwood is voluntary, meaning that most of Zcash’s shielded supply remains temporarily locked in the now-closed Orchard pool as holders, wallets, and exchanges transfer their funds at varying speeds. At the time of reporting, the balance in Orchard had decreased to approximately 3.51 million ZEC, with about 46,000 ZEC migrating to Ironwood in the past 24 hours. This voluntary migration process highlights the decentralized nature of fund movement within Zcash’s privacy infrastructure.
Zcash organizes its funds in separate "pools," each corresponding to successive generations of its privacy technology. There is a transparent pool, similar to Bitcoin’s model, which currently holds about 12.5 million ZEC. The shielded pools, which obscure amounts and participants, include Sapling (introduced in 2018 with around 582,000 ZEC) and Orchard (introduced in 2022, previously the newest pool). Each new upgrade creates a new pool rather than modifying the existing one, requiring users to manually move coins between these compartments.
The Orchard pool contains a critical turnstile accounting rule that caps withdrawals at amounts verifiably deposited, ensuring that the pool’s balance can only decrease over time. The source underscores that this upgrade was necessary due to a previously undetected counterfeiting flaw that had persisted for four years, now addressed by transitioning users to the Ironwood pool. However, the gradual voluntary migration means that the majority of Zcash’s private coins remain in the older pool for now.