Zcash Ironwood Goes Live: What the New Shielded Pool Means and How to Move Your Funds

The Zcash network activated Ironwood today at block 3,428,143. It is the network’s new default shielded pool, replacing Orchard, and the upgrade is the most consequential change to Zcash since Orchard itself shipped.

It matters because shielded adoption is no longer theoretical. As of activation roughly 4.35 million ZEC sat inside shielded pools, or about 25 percent of all coins in circulation. Orchard alone held 3.6 million ZEC. Shielded transaction adoption hit an all time high of 59.3 percent in February 2026, meaning a majority of network activity was already using privacy features. Quarterly shielded transactions jumped 224 percent in the same period while public transaction counts stayed flat at around 8,500 per day. The shielded pool is not an experiment anymore. It is where most of the action is.

You can watch the migration in real time. The Zodl team is running a live broadcast tracking the whole process, and the Ironwood Migration Dashboard at ironwood.zodl.com shows every ZEC accounted for, pool by pool, updated every minute. As of this writing the dashboard reports 69,129 ZEC already in Ironwood with 3.6 million ZEC still waiting to cross from Orchard.

Why the network had to move

Earlier this year a Zcash security researcher found a soundness flaw in Orchard. In theory the bug could have let someone create counterfeit ZEC inside the shielded pool without detection. It was responsibly disclosed and patched through a coordinated emergency upgrade, and there is no evidence anyone ever exploited it. No user funds were affected, and the total ZEC supply did not change.

The problem is that shielded pools hide transaction amounts by design. Nobody can look inside Orchard and prove nothing counterfeit sits there. That question can only be answered at the edge of the pool, where funds leave it.

Ironwood answers it. When the upgrade activated, the old Orchard pool was restricted. It can no longer receive payments, and the only path out is forward, into Ironwood. Everything leaving Orchard passes through what Zcash calls a turnstile, a network rule that a pool can never release more ZEC than legitimately entered it. Genuine funds cross into Ironwood. Anything counterfeit that might hypothetically exist is stranded, permanently unspendable. Anyone running a Zcash node can verify that from the network’s own rules, with no trust required and without waiting for anyone to migrate.

The new pool itself is built on the same Orchard protocol but strengthened with formal verification and independent security audits. Formal verification expresses the design mathematically and proves its properties the way a theorem is proved, rather than tested. It rules out design level errors capable of allowing undetectable counterfeiting under the protocol’s stated cryptographic assumptions. Audits cover the parts a proof cannot reach, like the code that implements the design.

Together they deliver substantially stronger assurance against the class of bug found in Orchard.

What stays the same

Your addresses have not changed. Ironwood uses the same receiver structure as Orchard, so any address you have already shared keeps working. New shielded payments arrive in Ironwood automatically. Your funds are safe, they remain yours, and there is no deadline to move them.

One thing worth knowing before you migrate anything: the amount that crosses between pools is recorded publicly on the blockchain. This is true of every wallet, not a quirk of one app. Who sent it and who received it stay private, but the figure does not.

How to move your funds

Cake Wallet

Cake Wallet handles the migration for you. There is no setting to turn on, no button to press, and nothing to sign up for. You need three things.

First, make sure you are on Cake Wallet 6.4.0 or later. Second, open your Zcash wallet and let it finish syncing. Third, leave the app open until migration finishes.

You will see transactions labelled “Migration” in your history. Your Orchard balance gets split into standard round number amounts (10 ZEC, 1 ZEC, 0.1 ZEC, and so on) and each one moves in its own transaction. The pacing is roughly one transaction per Zcash block, about 75 seconds apart, so the whole thing takes a while. While it runs, part of your balance shows as confirming rather than available. That is normal. It means those funds are still in Orchard, which the network no longer lets anyone spend from, and they become available again as each chunk lands in Ironwood.

This approach is privacy preserving by design. Standard denominations help your transfers blend in with everyone else’s, and the spacing keeps them from clustering together on chain. Closing the app just pauses the process. Nothing is lost and nothing needs to be restarted. Open it again, let it sync, and migration continues where it left off.

Your total balance dips slightly from network fees, on the order of 0.0002 ZEC per migrated amount. Your address and QR code do not change. You do not need to give anyone a new address.

Zodl

Zodl users need to update to version 3.8.0, available now in the App Store and Google Play. Without it your wallet will not sync and you cannot send funds.

Zodl gives you three paths. You can move everything in one transfer, which is the quickest way but publishes your full Orchard balance as a single public figure. You can move it in stages, sending progressively larger amounts to yourself over days, which keeps your total balance private but takes more attention. Or you can wait for Zodl’s upcoming automated migration feature, which will split your balance into standardized amounts and space the transfers out for you.

If you do it yourself, turn on Tor protection in Zodl’s settings and leave it on. Without Tor your wallet reveals your IP address to the server it connects to, and that server sees every transfer you make. Spread the transfers across days rather than minutes, vary the time of day, and pick round amounts that do not describe you. Plenty of people will send 10 ZEC. Very few will send exactly 10.3467 ZEC.

The step by step is straightforward: copy your own shielded address from the Receive screen, add it to your address book under a name you will recognize, and send yourself a small test amount first. Once that confirms, you can send larger amounts following the guidelines above.

To check whether your funds are in Orchard or Ironwood, tap your balance at the top of the main screen. Zodl shows the breakdown by pool. When Orchard reads zero, you are through.

The bottom line

Your funds are safe regardless of when you update or whether you migrate right away. The turnstile guarantee took effect the moment Ironwood activated. Migration is about making your funds spendable again and settling the supply question for good, not about rescuing anything at risk.