About $80 million ZEC crosses into Zcash's new 'Ironwood' pool in the first day
Zcash has launched its new 'Ironwood' privacy pool, prompting a migration of approximately $80 million in ZEC from the older Orchard pool within the first 24 hours. Because the network requires manual migration between privacy generations, the Orchard pool is now closed to new deposits and will gradually phase out as users move their funds.
Why it matters
This migration highlights the technical challenges of maintaining privacy-focused blockchain networks, where users must actively manage their assets across evolving cryptographic standards to ensure continued security and functionality.
That is roughly 5% of the 3.66 million ZEC held in Orchard at activation. Orchard's balance has since fallen to about 3.51 million, with around 46,000 ZEC crossing over in the past 24 hours, according to the Ironwood migration tracker .
Zcash holds funds in separate compartments called pools, each one a generation of the network's privacy technology. The transparent pool works like bitcoin, with every balance and transaction visible on the chain, and holds about 12.5 million ZEC.
The shielded pools hide amounts and participants. Sapling, introduced in 2018, holds about 582,000 ZEC, and Orchard, which arrived in 2022 and was the newest until this week, held about 3.5 million. Each time the network upgrades its privacy cryptography, it opens a new pool rather than rebuilding the old one, leaving holders to move their coins across themselves.
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