Zcash Ironwood is now live in Ledger Wallet Desktop
Hi everyone,
It shipped. Shielded send and receive is live in Ledger Wallet desktop app as of today, on the end-of-September target we gave in the September update. This is the shielded scope of Grant #152, delivered on Ironwood.
The short version of the whole update: private send, private receive, memos and shield/unshield are live on desktop; the device app is Ironwood-only, so Sapling and Orchard funds do not appear; the legacy Zondax “Zcash Shielded” app is being retired at NU7, with a dedicated migration post to follow; and the grant now goes to ZCG for acceptance.
1. What shipped
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Private balance sync. Your Unified Full Viewing Key is exported once, on first sync, and stored locally on your own computer.
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Receive to a private address, verified on the device before you share it.
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Private to private send, with a memo.
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Public to private. Move funds from your transparent balance into your private balance.
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Private to public. Move them back out.
Every flow is clear-signed on the device.
What you need: Ledger Wallet desktop 4.21 or later, and the new Zcash (ZEC) app 3.9.4 or later from My Ledger. Every current signer is supported. Nano S is not, and will not be.
The same device app is already supported by zkool and Vizor, so Ledger Wallet is not the only way to use it.
Step-by-step documentation is here: How to use your private ZEC balance through Ledger Wallet desktop
2. Scope of this release
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Desktop only. There is no private balance on mobile.
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Ironwood only. Ledger Wallet reads and spends the Ironwood pool. Sapling and Orchard funds will not appear, which is the subject of section 4.
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Swaps use your transparent balance. To swap private ZEC, unshield it first.
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Memos work when the recipient is private, capped at 250 characters. Not yet available on public-to-private self transfers.
Sapling and Orchard support is out of scope permanently.
3. Known limitations
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Maturing period. Newly shielded funds need roughly 10 confirmations, about 15 minutes, before they are spendable.
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Size caps. The device app caps a transaction at 32 shielded actions, 32 transparent inputs and 10 transparent outputs.
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Mobile still uses the older signing path. Very old transparent coins, where the funding transaction was v1, v2 or v3, or was a v4 carrying Sapling data, can fail to send on mobile with “Unsupported transaction version.” On desktop this no longer applies, because the device does not read the funding transaction at all. If this affected you before, try again on desktop and tell us here.
4. Action needed: retiring the legacy “Zcash Shielded” app
In August we flagged retiring the legacy Sapling app as scoped but not started. It is now in motion, it affects funds, and it deserves immediate attention.
The “Zcash Shielded” device app (4.3.5), built by Zondax and used through ywallet and zkool, stops working at NU7, currently targeting mainnet on 5 November. Ledger will not be carrying it through the upgrade. After that, Sapling funds held through that app can no longer be moved with a Ledger device. The app derives shielded keys from a non-standard input, so those accounts cannot be reproduced by the new Ledger app, and the new app’s viewing key carries no Sapling component, so they will not appear in Ledger Wallet at all. Recovering them by other means after NU7 is not guaranteed, so the reliable route is to move them now, while the old app still works.
Transparent funds in those accounts are less exposed, since they use standard derivation, but the same guide covers them and it is simplest to move everything at once.
If that describes you, start now. The full step-by-step is here: Transfer Zcash (ZEC) from legacy accounts to Ledger Wallet.
6. Grant #152
Grant #152. The deliverable mapping posted on the grant issue last week stands as written. Every deliverable is delivered as originally defined, with the Orchard-specific components shipped as their Ironwood equivalents, since Ironwood is the network’s shielded pool following NU6.3. This release is what that mapping described. With it live, the milestone is complete from our side and now goes to ZCG for review and acceptance. We will answer anything ZCG raises in the open, on the grant issue rather than by email, so the record stays public.
The separate Ironwood funding agreement with Zcash Labs LLC, disclosed in the September update, remains independent of the grant and changes none of the above.
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Thank you to the team of Zcash Labs, ZCG, FPF and ZODL for the support through the Ironwood pivot, and to everyone in this thread who kept pushing for a date. It was a pleasure working with Zcash community.
– Abhi
Product | Coin & Blockchain Integration | Ledger