Zcash Developer Sean Bowe Says Ironwood Upgrade to Deploy to Testnet Starting Tomorrow

Zcash core developer Sean Bowe said the Ironwood upgrade will be deployed to the testnet starting tomorrow and is expected to activate on the mainnet around July 21. According to Foresight News, Bowe said all consensus rule changes have been implemented and have undergone an audit period, while the specification and ZIP have been published and are nearing final status. In an earlier update, Bowe said Ironwood will introduce a new shielded pool using the Orchard protocol. He added that the Orchard circuit will include a flag controlled by consensus rules that can disable payments to other users within the pool while retaining the change function as a privacy mechanism. After the upgrade, the old Orchard pool will enable this restriction and prevent funds from being transferred into the old pool by constraining valueBalance. Bowe said new payments will need to use the new pool, and users will be encouraged to migrate funds from the old pool to the new pool. He also said users can gradually demonstrate that no false minting occurred previously by migrating funds.