The Zcash development team said that the Ironwood upgrade was nearing the test network activation. The focus of the upgrade was to allow external verification of ZEC ' s supply in circulation, while preserving the privacy of the transaction, in response to the market ' s concerns about the authenticity of the supply following last month ' s leak.
Upgrade targeting supply validation
Ironwood released in June and plans to introduce a new shielding and accounting system. Previously, the Orchard shield of Zcash was found to contain a loophole that had lasted about four years and could theoretically be used to falsify an unlimited number of ZECs and could not be detected.
Although the developer had already fixed the loophole on 1 June, due to Zcash ' s privacy design, the team was unable to confirm by password whether the loophole had been exploited in the past. The goal of Ironwood is to eliminate this part of the uncertainty.
Test network synchronized with validation
According to Shield Labs, the current development priorities include two parallel tasks: to advance the Ironwood, or NU 6.3 network upgrade; and to promote the Zcash ecology from the old Zcashd software to the new Z3 software warehouse.
Z3 Stacks include Zebra full node, Zaino index service and Zallet wallets. According to the development team, the new consensus rule is expected to be activated on-line soon, with the immediate aim of completing both by late July.
At the same time, the team is advancing the formalization of the new circuit, hoping to complete the reliability certificate before Ironwood activates. The developer Sean Bowe states that there is sufficient computing to send a technical readiness signal and that the main network upgrade is being advanced.
Ecological migration remains the greatest challenge.
The greatest current deployment pressure is not in the protocol code itself, but in the ecological context. Shield Labs stated that the exchange, mine pond and wallet service providers needed to complete the deployment and testing of new software in a relatively short period of time, while key components such as Zallet and Zaino were still under development.
Feedback received by the team indicated that some participants felt that preparations could be completed on time, while others indicated that more time was still needed. To reduce deployment risks, the development team is assessing a variety of options, including postponing Ironwood, introducing an independent third-party security audit before going online, or temporarily continuing to support Ironwood through Zcashd until the partners complete their relocation.