Zcash bounces 45% as developers propose new Ironwood upgrade
The plan would let anyone verify that no counterfeit coins are circulating, addressing the patched bug that triggered last week’s crash. ZEC is still down about 22% on the week.
What to know:
- Zcash has rebounded about 45% from last week’s low after developers proposed a fix for a critical counterfeiting bug in its privacy-focused Orchard pool.
- The Ironwood proposal would move users to a new, repaired privacy pool and let anyone running Zcash software verify that no more than the correct amount of ZEC exists.
- As coins migrate out of the old pool, any counterfeit ZEC would either be exposed or stranded and destroyed, potentially revealing whether the flaw was ever exploited, though developers say abuse is unlikely.
The flaw, undetected since 2022, could have let an attacker create unlimited fake ZEC without anyone noticing and withdraw tokens from the protocol’s shielded pool – which offers opt-in priv
Developers, including Shielded Labs, the Zcash Foundation, and the Zcash Open Development Lab, patched the bug within days through emergency network upgrades, coordinated with the mining pools ViaBTC and Foundry. On June 6, the same groups proposed Ironwood, a plan to restore users’ ability to confirm the coin’s supply is sound.
Ironwood would create a new privacy pool using the repaired code and block the creation of new coins in the old Orchard pool. Once it activates, anyone running the Zcash software could add up the balances across pools and confirm that no more than the correct amount of ZEC exists.
