Ironwood is active on testnet.zec.rocks

General
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If you’re trying to use Zec.rocks’ testnet endpoint you might notice some errors. That’s because Ironwood is activated on testnet! Exciting times.

Many people are reaching out to me saying essentially that “Zec.rocks testnet is broken” - so I am posting this as a guide to experimenting with Ironwood on Testnet.

Testnet errors mean that the software you’re using to conduct testnet transactions probably hasn’t been updated for Ironwood (“NU6.3”) yet. But that’s changing fast!

Teams across our ecosystem are racing to update their code to support Ironwood as soon as possible. It’s really impressive to witness this level of team alignment in Zcash. I’d wager that most essential Zcash apps support Ironwood on testnet by the end of this week.

I will keep this thread updated as each project adds support for Ironwood.

For now - here’s a list of Ironwood-compatible Zcash software as of today.

(also - for the first time, zcashd is completely deprecated on testnet. [!!!] That’s a huge step forward for our ecosystem, congrats to all of the contributors who have invested countless hours towards this goal! Mainnet: get ready for a serious pure-Rust leap forward.)

Confirmed Ironwood-compatible Wallets

Note: Ironwood uses Orchard receivers. Your Zcash address will not change if you used Orchard.

zallet

2026-07-12: zallet v0.1.0-beta.1 now supports Ironwood.

librustzcash (for technical users)

The release candidate crates of librustzcash now support Ironwood on testnet.

zecd

Ironwood is now supported in v0.5.0-rc1. A quickstart guide is in this post:

zkv

z:kv now is updated to support Ironwood on testnet! Create a database and use the built-in faucet to play around with Ironwood, there is a built-in wallet.

Works in progress (Wallets)

Vizor Wallet

Branch: Add Ironwood migration flow by czarcas7ic · Pull Request #73 · valargroup/vizor-wallet · GitHub

This is a very active work-in-progress.

git clone https://github.com/valargroup/vizor-wallet.git
cd vizor-wallet && git checkout adam/migration-tab
fvm install && fvm flutter pub get   # fvm pins Flutter 3.41.6
fvm flutter build macos --release \
  --dart-define=ZCASH_DEFAULT_NETWORK=test \
  --dart-define=ZCASH_ENABLE_LOCAL_IRONWOOD_TESTNET=true \
  --dart-define=ZCASH_DEFAULT_RPC_ENDPOINT_PRESET=local-ironwood-testnet
# Run: build/macos/Build/Products/Release/Vizor.app

There’s also a ZCASH_ENABLE_LOCAL_IRONWOOD_TESTNET=true local-stack define in their README if you’re running your own Ironwood lightwalletd.

zingolib (for technical users)

Branch (WIP): https://github.com/zingolabs/zingolib/tree/feat/ironwood-migration

git clone https://github.com/zingolabs/zingolib.git
cd zingolib && git checkout feat/ironwood-migration
cargo run --release --bin zingo-cli -- --chain testnet --server https://testnet.zec.rocks:443 --data-dir ./zingo-testnet

At the interactive prompt:

  • new_address o # generate an address
  • balance
  • send (address) (amount in zatoshis) “(optional memo)”
  • migrate - upgrade all Orchard funds into the Ironwood pool.

zcash-devtool (official)

(I am in communication with their team and will update this soon.)

Zingo

(I am in communication with their team and will update this soon.)

Zcash teams are firing “on all cylinders”

Recent velocity in our ecosystem has been really impressive to witness.

This is a “living document” that I will keep updated as I hear about more apps supporting Ironwood.

It’s extremely important for the community to test Ironwood as it rolls out, my intention in making this list is to make it straightforward for anyone technical to pick up bleeding-edge software and start trying out the latest Zcash update, to help the ecosystem catch any glitches before a mainnet release.

Adding Ironwood support to your Zcash wallet? DM me and i’ll add your repo+branch to this list.

Ironward.

11 Likes
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Thanks for the updates! Can you give us some informations about your lightwalletd fork supporting ironwood? I’m in touch with zaino devs and there is an open PR, but I’d like to test lwd waiting for next zaino release…

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On testnet, Zec.rocks is running Docker Hub image emersonian/zcash-lwd-ironwood:360a37d-zr8-nu63 which is built from our “ironwood-valar” branch. The primary difference between our branch and Valar’s is a hotfix to allow lightwalletd to work with the real NU6.3 consensus branch ID, and an optimization that helps our new cluster members rollout faster by indexing Zebra concurrently.

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Should we expect a new lightwalletd release with full NU6_3 support in next days or it will be deprecated in favor of zaino with the same timing of zcashd?

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I can’t speak for other teams working hard to support Ironwood, but thankfully in an open source community anyone can pick up code and build on their own schedule.

I’d guesstimate that we’re at least a week out from official/upstream builds that work with Ironwood, possibly longer. But all teams are working like crazy right now, so we might get there a lot faster.

Zec.rocks will release zecd and zkv versions compatible with Ironwood definitely by Friday, but possibly within 24 hours.

Edit: sorry I completely neglected to answer your actual question. Lightwalletd will continue to be maintained alongside Zaino.

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We are reviewing code from contributors and we will release a new lightwalletd version as soon as we have merged all the changes upstream.

Thank’s for asking!

Thanks @emersonian for your help and support!

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Just curious if this means that right now if a wallet is leveraging lightwalletd, then transactions won’t go through given the ironwood upgrade on testnet

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:musical_note: Judgement of Ironwood by the Zeppilots :musical_notes:

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The migrate step that moves Orchard funds into the Ironwood pool is the part I most want to get right for everyday users. Is that upgrade visible on chain as a distinct pool crossing, the way the old Sprout turnstile was, or does it stay fully shielded like a normal Orchard spend?

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z:kv now is updated to support Ironwood on testnet! Create a database and use the built-in faucet to play around with Ironwood, there is a built-in wallet.

Transactions will go through on testnet if they are submitted with an Ironwallet-compatible wallet. We are running an Ironwood-compatible version of lightwalletd on our testnet endpoints.

The amounts sent between pools are revealed publicly forever, just like sending funds between any other shielded pools. Zcash wallet teams are working very hard to get the “Upgrade to Ironwood” fund migration path to be as straightforward and private as possible. This will probably be by using common, denominated send amounts when migrating funds into Ironwood (like 0.01, 0.1, 1, 10 ZEC, etc per send), but the approach is still being defined.

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Small data point from a synced Zebra node.

I scanned post-NU6.3 testnet from activation height 4,134,000 through about 4,153,571 on Zebra v6.0.0-rc.0. I found 25 txs with the Orchard → Ironwood cross-pool value-flow pattern:

  • orchard.valueBalanceZat > 0
  • ironwood.valueBalanceZat < 0

For those txs, the amount entering Ironwood is visible directly as -ironwood.valueBalanceZat. That matches what you said above: the pool-crossing amount is public, while the note/address endpoints remain shielded. I am not treating this as proof of which wallet made each tx, just the public chain shape.

The interesting part is the actual testnet traffic. I saw clean common-denomination cases at 0.01, 1.0, and 10.0 TAZ. I also saw distinctive non-denominated amounts, including 0.37663757, 0.68932503, 10.54926928, and 70.04214768 TAZ.

So the migration footprint, from the public chain side, looks like:

  • amount is public;
  • block height/time is public;
  • pool action counts and transparent/Sapling structure are public;
  • specific Orchard notes and Ironwood receivers are not publicly linked by the tx itself;
  • clustered denomination splits can still create timing/count/shape correlation.

That makes common denominations look necessary, but not complete on their own. Wallet defaults probably matter a lot here: common chunks, no distinctive one-shot totals, avoid mixing in transparent/Sapling structure during upgrade when possible, and be explicit in UX that the cross-pool amount is public even though the endpoints stay shielded.

Live-chain observations on the table while the migration UX is still being shaped.

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Just pulled your docker image on https://tl.ombie.cash , it seems to work very well, thanks!

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Ironwood activates on Mainnet in two weeks! Please help Zcash contributors catch bugs by trying out the latest Ironwood-supporting releases across our ecosystem.

Ironwood software updates

librustzcash
Release candidate crates are now published that are compatible with Ironwood. Wallet developers: it’s now possible to build Ironwood support into your applications without relying on librustzcash forks.

zallet
zallet v0.1.0-beta.1 now supports Ironwood.

zebra
zebra v6.0.0 is released. Ironwood is now scheduled to activate on mainnet at block height 3,428,143 (~2026-07-28).

zecd
zecd v0.5.0-rc3 is released, now based on upstream librustzcash instead of Zec.rocks forks. We remediated all issues found by a third-party security audit, zero were critical.

zecd, a Zcash wallet daemon built by Zec.rocks, is now published on crates.io.

cargo install zecd@0.5.0-rc3

I will continue to update here as more wallets and developer tools support Ironwood.

Ironward!

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One practical note: don’t treat “synced and healthy” as Ironwood readiness. Verify the running zebrad binary/image is actually v6.0.0 (and pin the intended image digest), rehearse the upgrade and restart path, and alert well before height 3,428,143. Nodes still pinned to 5.1.0 may look healthy today but are not ready for NU6.3 activation.

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While not official, latest lwd is working for me in testnet (Ironwood support) . I git pulled the latest main.

Can also confirm latest Zkool (use 6.24.0) is able to send orchard → ironwood txids.

Mileage may vary, and I suspect more updates soonish from multiple wallets.

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