Gemini now supports shielded Zcash withdrawals directly to the Ironwood pool, making it one of the first regulated crypto exchanges to offer the feature. The move comes just two days after Zcash’s NU6.3 network upgrade went live on July 28, activating Ironwood and permanently sealing the previous Orchard shielded pool.
What happened and why Ironwood exists
The Ironwood pool activated at Zcash block height 3,428,143 on July 28. It launched with a zero balance by design, because the entire point was to start fresh after the Orchard pool’s security issue was identified.
Orchard previously held approximately $1.7 billion worth of ZEC. That’s a lot of money sitting in a pool with a known counterfeiting vulnerability, which is why Zcash developers sealed it entirely and built Ironwood as its successor.
Users with funds stuck in the now-sealed Orchard pool need to migrate their assets through a “turnstile” mechanism, moving coins from one shielded environment to the new, clean one.
On Ironwood’s first day alone, 176,000 ZEC, worth roughly $80 to $81 million, successfully transitioned into the new pool.
The Ironwood pool was developed with contributions from multiple organizations, including Tachyon and the Zcash Foundation.
Gemini’s privacy track record
Gemini’s support for Ironwood withdrawals didn’t come out of nowhere. The exchange had already been supporting Orchard shielded withdrawals since November 2025, making it one of the few regulated platforms willing to touch Zcash’s privacy features at all.
The exchange’s announcement on July 30 specified that users can now withdraw shielded ZEC to compatible wallets like Zodl. Shielded transactions on Zcash encrypt the sender, receiver, and amount, making them effectively invisible on the public blockchain.
Transparent ZEC works much like Bitcoin, with visible addresses and amounts on the blockchain. Shielded ZEC uses zero-knowledge proofs to hide that information entirely. Many exchanges only support transparent withdrawals, which defeats much of the purpose of using a privacy-focused cryptocurrency in the first place.
What this means for investors
The $80 to $81 million in first-day Ironwood migrations suggests users aren’t abandoning Zcash over the Orchard vulnerability. They’re following the prescribed migration path and continuing to use the network’s privacy features.
The turnstile mechanism needs to handle the full migration of what was a $1.7 billion pool without issues. Any hiccups during that process could shake confidence in Zcash’s privacy infrastructure more broadly.