Edition #19Sunday, July 26, 2026

Zcash Weekly — July 26, 2026

Ironwood activates Tuesday. Zebra ships four releases in 10 days. ZCG approves five grants, declines nine. Zakura hits 1.0.4 in one week.

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Ironwood Activates Tuesday — Block 3,428,143

Two days. Zcash's most critical security upgrade arrives on Tuesday ~12:00 UTC. Ironwood (NU6.3) creates a new shielded pool with formally-verified circuits, permanently sealing the old Orchard pool. The turnstile bounds any theoretical counterfeit ZEC — if it exists, it can never leave. Users on supported wallets (Zodl, Vizor) don't need to take action — wallets will prompt migration. Node operators must be on Zebra 6.2.2 or Zakura 1.0.4+. Ironwood also introduces quantum recoverability — ebfull: "It wasn't created in two months; it was in progress for more than a year and is riding Ironwood into the Zcash protocol." CipherScan Ironwood tracker · ZODL countdown · ebfull on quantum recoverability

CipherScan Ironwood tracker

Zebra Ships Four Releases in Ten Days

The Zcash Foundation pushed Zebra 6.1.0, 6.2.0, 6.2.1, and 6.2.2 between July 17 and July 24 — a pre-activation hardening sprint. 6.1.0 patched four security vulnerabilities. 6.2.1 (July 22) added Ironwood-specific mempool defenses, rejecting invalid shielded proofs before expensive verification and disconnecting misbehaving peers. 6.2.2 (July 24) is the recommended build for activation. Meanwhile, Zakura shipped 1.0.2, 1.0.3, and 1.0.4 in the same window — each "20% faster" according to the team. Two independent node teams hardening in parallel. Zebra releases · Zakura 1.0.4

Zebra releases

ZCG July 17 Meeting: Five Approved, Nine Declined

The new committee (Brigner, GGuy, Artkor, Zerodartz, Hanh) made their first major batch of decisions. Approved: Zcash in the Privacy Stack (#339), Offensive Security (#340, $88K), ZECsy Team Amsterdam (#344, $30K), Zcash Türkiye RLAY HUB (#346), Web3Lagos Onboarding (#349). Declined in one session: KeepKey Orchard (#341), Indexer Observatory (#343), Zcash Explained (#345), Zcash Arabia (#347), Light Client Privacy Transport (#348), FROST Multi-Sig SDK (#351), Go Tx Parser (#352), Chadwick Bailey (#353), Turnstile Migration Kit (#357). Nine declines signals a committee willing to hold the bar.

Ecosystem

Ztrash: disposable email, paid with shielded ZEC.

Cypherpunk community member built ztrash.com — anonymous self-destructing email inboxes activated exclusively by shielded Zcash payments. No accounts, no signup, no ads. $1 for 24 hours, $4 for a week. First consumer product gating access entirely through private ZEC transactions. Forum #56720

Forum #56720

LiveZEC: shielded tipping for streamers.

Michael (Zcash Brazil) launched zec.live — streamers register a UFVK, viewers scan a QR from any Zcash wallet, tips arrive with encrypted memos and real-time OBS overlays. No custody, no KYC, no intermediary. Spending keys never leave creator wallets. Forum #56747

zec.live

zkDragon joins Cypherpunk ($CYPH) as advisor.

@will__mcevoy: "Dev is a generational talent. Few people alive understand the cryptography behind private money as deeply as he does." The Osmosis cofounder and Valar Group lead — already building Zakura — now advises the Nasdaq-listed privacy company. Tweet

lightwalletd-rs: Rust reimplementation of lightwalletd.

Developer Joaco published a full gRPC-compatible drop-in replacement for the Go lightwalletd. MIT license, TLS by default, Prometheus metrics. Existing light wallets connect unchanged. Third light-client server option alongside Go lightwalletd and Zaino. Forum #56779

Forum #56779

Boston Ironwood Launch Meetup — July 28.

Zooko presents. Discussion with Zcash founding scientists, ZODL, Cypherpunk, and Shielded Labs. RSVP required. Forum #56748

Forum #56748

Governance & Grants

New submissions since last week:

Zcash UK & Ireland Community Initiative (#374)
VibeQuest: Learn, Build, Prove (#373) — shielded payments learning platform
ZIP-229 Conformance Suite (#372) — Ironwood v6 tx format testing
Zcash DeFi Settlement Rail (#371) — native-ZEC collateral toolkit
Zk-CosmWasm VM + Hackathon (#369)
Zebra Mempool Adversarial Resilience Suite (#362)
Still under review: Apple Silicon ZK Proving (#359), FROST Custody (#358), Legitimacy Beyond Transparency (#360), Constant-Time Hardening (#342)

Protocol & Development

Ironwood Crate Stack Complete

zcash_primitives 0.30.0 (July 24) — Ironwood transaction format support
orchard 0.15.4 (July 23) — fourth patch in the 0.15.x Ironwood series
zcash_client_backend 0.24.0-rc.2 (July 25) — wallet SDK layer, stable expected imminently

Every wallet and service targeting Ironwood needs these crates before Tuesday.

lightwalletd-rs

Joaco's Rust reimplementation fills the same role as Go lightwalletd but on the Rust stack (librustzcash parsing, optionally Zebra's ReadStateService). Scoped to light-client gRPC only — lighter than Zaino, which serves full-node wallets and block explorers too.

Node Readiness

313 active nodes across 35 countries. Client distribution: ~228 Zebra, ~43 Zakura, ~8 legacy zcashd (will fork off Tuesday). Node count dropped 8.5% WoW as operators on deprecated versions auto-halted — the remaining 313 are the Ironwood-ready core.

Tweets of the Week

"This is a simple, accurate description of quantum recoverability, which is coming in Ironwood in just four days. It wasn't created in two months though; it was in progress for more than a year."
— @ebfull · link

"Crazy that with Ironwood, the Zcash shielded pool might legitimately become the safest place in crypto to store your funds."
— @will__mcevoy · link

"Reminder that it's still Zcash or communism. Without unstoppable private money, we're going towards a world of 24/7 monitoring and surveillance."
— @cypherpunk · link

Forum Highlights

"Which blockchain does AI choose?"

(#56809) — @the_zero argues AI agents will choose blockchains by function, not community loyalty. Zcash's programmable privacy becomes a technical advantage in an agent-driven economy.

#56809

"How will ZingoPC handle Ironwood migration?"

(#56801) — Real user confusion surfacing before activation. Wallet teams should be answering these questions publicly before Tuesday.

#56801

Paul Brigner's X Monitor

(#56760) — The newly-elected ZCG member built an automated X monitoring tool for Zcash — classifying posts every 15 minutes using X API + AI. A decision-maker actively watching the social layer.

#56760

Privacy Corner

The Turnstile Is the Audit

Tuesday, the Orchard pool seals. Funds can only exit through the turnstile into Ironwood. Here's why that matters beyond the security fix.

The classic critique of shielded pools: "If you can't see inside, how do you know no one printed money?" The answer was always "trust the math." After Orchard, the answer is better: "Watch the exit."

The turnstile is a one-way valve with a hard cap. It knows exactly how much ZEC entered Orchard over its lifetime. It will not allow more than that amount to leave. If counterfeit ZEC exists inside the sealed pool, it's trapped — diluting only the last migrators if the pool is ever fully drained, never the broader supply.

This is supply verification by construction. You don't need to see inside the pool. You watch the boundary. If inflows = 4.2M ZEC over Orchard's lifetime, then outflows through the turnstile are capped at 4.2M ZEC. Period. Any node can verify this. CipherScan tracks it live.

Ironwood's pool goes further — formal verification means the circuits themselves are mathematically proven correct. No amount of clever exploitation can produce more output notes than input notes. The turnstile catches the past. Formal verification prevents the future.

Two layers of supply integrity. Neither requires seeing inside.

Network Snapshot

ZEC Price

$491.74 · -6.7%

Market Cap

$8.25B · —

24h Volume

$154.5M · —

Block Height

~3,426,050 · ~+8,100

Network Upgrade

NU6.2 → Ironwood Tuesday (block 3,428,143) · —

Chain Size

~257 GB · —

Zcash Privacy Index

Privacy Score

24 · 29

Shielded Pool

4,380,564 ZEC · 4,387,059 ZEC

Shielded % of Supply

26.0% · 26.1%

Orchard Pool

3,765,787 ZEC · —

Sapling Pool

592,015 ZEC · —

Privacy Metrics

Privacy Score

24 · 29

Shielded Pool

4,380,564 ZEC · 4,387,059 ZEC

Shielded % of Supply

26.0% · 26.1%

Orchard Pool

3,765,787 ZEC · —

Sapling Pool

592,015 ZEC · —

Cross-Chain Activity (24h)

Inflows

Solana ($386K), Tron ($147K), NEAR ($127K)

Outflows

Ethereum ($201K), NEAR ($158K), Arbitrum ($158K)

24h Volume

$1.99M across 322 swaps

Network Health

Active Nodes

313 (-8.5% WoW)

Countries

Tor Nodes

Privacy score dropped from 29 to 24 — this reflects CipherScan's v2 scoring algorithm update, which weights depth and shielded-pool interaction more heavily. Not a change in network behavior. The 8.5% node decline reflects the final pruning of zcashd holdouts and deprecated Zebra versions — the 313 remaining are the Ironwood-ready core. Cross-chain volume cooled to $2M/day from last week's $6.16M as the Forbes-driven rally settled. Price consolidated at $491 after weeks above $520. All eyes on Tuesday.

Live data →

Tool Updates

CipherScan

Shipped Privacy Score v2 (redesigned algorithm with deeper shielded-pool weighting), redesigned privacy dashboard, new pools overview with interactive supply map and timeline scrubber, Ironwood migration visualizer with 3D turnstile animation and shareable cards (ZEC/USD toggle, WebGL capture), Ironwood inflow flow visualization showing source pools, live KPI strip with countdown, fully shielded transaction tracking ("Private" label), and flow badges. Ironwood mainnet tracking goes live Tuesday at activation.

CipherPay

Shipped named donation campaigns (no goal required), x402 v2 protocol upgrade (RFC 9457 errors, idempotency keys, auto-session bridge), and improved viewing key validation diagnostics.

What's Ahead

July 28Ironwood mainnet activation (block 3,428,143, ~12:00 UTC).
July 28Boston Zcash Meetup: Ironwood launch event ft. Zooko.
July 31Q3 CDRGP retroactive grants window opens.
Aug 31–Sep 6Cypherpunk Week Amsterdam.
October 27–29Zcon7, Cancún. Zcash turns 10.