I don’t believe I’ve misrepresented the facts, and I don’t think it’s helpful to speculate about Shielded Labs’ motives or assume bad faith instead of focusing on the substance of the discussion. Let’s focus on the facts and how we can make Ironwood a success for Zcash.
I wrote the post to answer a request for a status update that I was tagged in. I responded from Shielded Labs’ perspective and started by saying I couldn’t speak for the other teams. My goal was to explain how we’re currently thinking about the rollout, the migration away from zcashd, and what we’ve been hearing from the infrastructure partners we’ve spoken with.
We recognize the progress that’s been made on Ironwood and the work that’s gone into it. In my original post, I wrote that the teams had “made significant progress over the past several weeks,” that development was “moving forward on schedule,” and that formal verification was continuing before activation.
With regard to audits, my point wasn’t about whether audit work is already underway. It was that, once development is complete, we’d prefer to see the final production implementations of Ironwood and the Z3 components complete their independent third-party security audits before recommending them for production deployment.
The migration away from zcashd is also making progress. However, key components of the Z3 stack are still being completed. I wasn’t suggesting that no migration path exists. Rather, my point was that regardless of which migration path partners choose, there is additional work required before the migration is complete. Zallet is in alpha, Zaino is still under development, and mining pools, exchanges, and wallet teams must integrate, test, and deploy a solution, whether that’s the Z3 stack or an alternative like Dev’s wrapper.
I also acknowledged that ZODL and the Zcash Foundation have been leading outreach to mining pools and exchanges. I didn’t say there wasn’t working code or that exchanges hadn’t been contacted.
So I don’t think we’re disagreeing about the facts. We’re disagreeing about how to balance the risks associated with the current rollout. My concern isn’t just whether Ironwood can activate on schedule. It’s also whether coupling that activation with the migration away from zcashd creates unnecessary operational risk for users and infrastructure partners. I think it’s reasonable for us to discuss whether that coupling is the best path, or whether there’s a better way to minimize overall risk while still activating Ironwood as quickly as possible. You may disagree with that conclusion, but that’s a disagreement about judgment, not a misrepresentation of the facts.
Happy 250th Independence Day, everyone! 