Live
Migration progress
On July 28, 2026, at block 3,428,143, Zcash activated NU6.3 "Ironwood": a fifth shielded pool. The Orchard pool — home to most shielded ZEC since 2022 — was sealed to new shielded transactions, and its entire balance is now draining through a public turnstile into Ironwood. This page tracks that migration live.
24.7% of the combined Orchard + Ironwood value now sits in Ironwood.
NU6.3
Why Orchard sealed
Cryptography ages — Zcash retires it by sealing the pool.
Why / details
Zcash's privacy comes from zero-knowledge circuits, and each generation — Sprout (2016), Sapling (2018), Orchard (2022), Ironwood (2026) — fixed limitations of the last. You cannot silently swap the cryptography under a shielded pool, so upgrades work by opening a new pool and sealing the old one. Orchard's balance can now only exit, into Ironwood.
The turnstile keeps a private money supply auditable.
Why / details
Funds exit a sealed pool through a turnstile: each crossing publicly reveals its amount, which means the total drained out can never exceed the total that went in. If a counterfeiting bug had ever been exploited inside the old pool, the turnstile is where the books would fail to balance — sender identity stays shielded the whole way.
Orchard funds migrate; new activity is born in Ironwood.
Why / details
Current wallets migrate Orchard balances automatically or with one tap on the next spend; transparent, Sapling, and exchange-held ZEC are unaffected. All new shielded activity lands directly in Ironwood — so its balance (935K ZEC) grows from both migration and brand-new shielding.
Ironwood's activation also marks a clean generational break: zcashd, the original node software, hit end-of-support at block 3,417,100 on July 18, 2026 — ten days before Ironwood — leaving the network running entirely on Zebra (current release /Zebra:6.2.3/).
Signals
What to watch
Drain rate
Orchard lost about 97,786 ZEC in the last 24h. A steady drain means wallets are migrating on schedule; a stall would mean dormant funds.
The long tail
Sprout still holds 22,637 ZEC eight years after closing — expect Orchard's last coins to take years too. The interesting part is the first 80%, not the last 1%.
Shielded share
If the migration churn shakes loose deshielding, the shielded percentage (25.8% today) will show it.
Ironwood-native adoption
Ironwood's balance (935K ZEC) grows from both migration and brand-new shielding — new shielding is the real demand signal, visible in the daily flow chart.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
What is Ironwood?
Ironwood is Zcash's fifth shielded pool, activated by network upgrade NU6.3 at block 3,428,143 on July 28, 2026. All new shielded activity now lands in Ironwood, and the previous flagship pool — Orchard — is sealed and migrating into it.
Why was Orchard sealed?
Sealing older pools is how Zcash retires aging cryptography while keeping the money supply auditable. Orchard's balance can only exit through the migration into Ironwood, and each migration amount is publicly visible at the pool boundary — so any hidden inflation inside the old pool would be exposed as the pool drains.
How far along is the migration?
About 24.7% of the sealed-era shielded value (Orchard + Ironwood combined) now sits in Ironwood, with roughly 97,786 ZEC draining from Orchard in the last 24 hours. 2.85M ZEC remains in Orchard.
Do I need to move my ZEC?
If your ZEC is in Orchard, current wallets handle the migration — most migrate funds automatically or with one tap when you next spend. Transparent, Sapling, and exchange-held ZEC are unaffected. There is no deadline announced, but sealed pools are exit-only.
Is the migration private?
Individual migrations move through the turnstile, so per-transaction amounts crossing the Orchard → Ironwood boundary are publicly visible (that's the auditability trade-off), but sender identity stays shielded. Once inside Ironwood, activity is fully shielded again.
What is NU6.3?
NU6.3 ('Ironwood') is the July 2026 Zcash network upgrade that introduced the Ironwood pool and sealed Orchard. It followed NU6's dev-fund changes (80% miners / 8% Zcash Community Grants / 12% lockbox) and arrived days after zcashd's end-of-support made the network Zebra-only.