ZEC Rallies Above $470 as Zcash Announces Ironwood Upgrade for Late July Ending

The upcoming upgrade will mark the transition of ZEC from the Orchard to the Ironwood pool, allowing users running nodes to audit the total supply.

After losing almost 60% of its value, ZEC, the native asset of the privacy network Zcash, is finally recovering. Within the past few days, the coin has rallied above $400, retracing its steps from the $300 range.

The price recovery comes as the Zcash team unveils an upgrade that will patch an integrity flaw in the network. The Ironwood Upgrade, scheduled for late July, aims to enable users to independently verify the circulating ZEC supply, preventing the minting of counterfeit coins.

Zcash’s Ironwood Upgrade Scheduled for July

The need to deploy the Ironwood upgrade arose after a series of events that began after Zcash researcher Taylor Hornby discovered a vulnerability affecting the network’s latest shielded pool named Orchard. Hornby discovered a counterfeiting vulnerability in Orchard, and the network’s team had to deploy a two-stage upgrade to fix the issue by June 2.

Amid an uproar from the crypto community, developers admitted that there was no way to confirm whether attackers had exploited the vulnerability before the fix. They said it was possible that bad actors had minted counterfeit ZEC coins through the bug, increasing the circulating supply. However, there was no way to audit the circulating ZEC supply and confirm that no such thing had happened. Hence, the Ironwood upgrade.

Upon its activation in late July, the upgrade will implement a turnstile mechanism to protect Zcash users from hypothetical counterfeit coins. It will mark the transition of ZEC from the Orchard to the Ironwood pool, allowing people running nodes to audit total supply without trusting developers.

Notably, the Ironwood pool uses the same Orchard protocol, but starts fresh. Wallets will no longer send or receive payments on the old Orchard pool; the funds will be redirected to the new Ironwood pool. These changes will not surface to the users.

ZEC Recovers, Rallies Above $470

One key significance of the Ironwood upgrade is the reassurance it will give to the Zcash community that no counterfeiting occurred before the Orchard bug was fixed. This will hopefully prevent more selloffs that could lead to a significant decline in the asset’s price as witnessed last weekend.

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Shortly after news of the Zcash bug began to make the rounds, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes sold off his entire ZEC holdings. Hayes’ exit from his ZEC position significantly increased selling pressure on the asset as fear, uncertainty, and doubt spread, dragging the coin close to $255 from $578.

As developers are working to address the issue, ZEC has risen more than 56% this week. At the time of writing, the asset was changing hands above $470, per data from CoinMarketCap.