Zcash's Ironwood Pool Attracts $81M ZEC in First Day
In brief
- Ironwood pool received 176,000 ZEC ($81 million) in the first day after upgrade activation
- Migration represents only 5% of Orchard pool's 3.66 million ZEC balance
- Orchard now closed to new deposits; outflows limited by withdrawal cap mechanism
Migration Begins, Slowly
Approximately 176,000 ZEC migrated into Ironwood within the first 24 hours of the upgrade. That sum represents roughly 5% of the 3.66 million ZEC held in Orchard at activation.
Orchard's balance has since fallen to about 3.51 million ZEC, with around 46,000 ZEC crossing over in the past 24 hours. It's a trickle compared to what's at stake. The bulk of Zcash's private supply sits in a pool that can no longer take deposits.
Why the Pools Matter
Zcash holds funds in separate compartments called pools, each one a generation of the network's privacy technology. The oldest, the transparent pool, works like Bitcoin—every balance and transaction visible on the chain. It holds about 12.5 million ZEC.
Sapling, introduced in 2018, holds about 582,000 ZEC. Orchard arrived in 2022 and was the newest until this week, holding about 3.5 million ZEC before the upgrade.
A Closed Gate and a Slow Drain
The upgrade introduced Ironwood to fix a critical flaw. A counterfeiting vulnerability had gone undetected in Orchard for four years. The fix came with a hard constraint: Orchard can no longer take deposits.
Every coin still inside has to leave through the turnstile, the accounting rule that caps total withdrawals at the amount verifiably deposited. It's a safeguard. Migration is voluntary, so the timeline depends on how quickly holders, wallets, and exchanges move funds.
The first day's flow suggests the move will be gradual. 3.51 million ZEC remains in Orchard—a pool that can only shrink from here.
