Blockchain
By Bruce Buterin
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Why the Orchard Pool Needed Fixing. The Orchard pool is a critical piece of Zcash's infrastructure.
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What the Turnstile Actually Does. Think of the turnstile as a one-way gate with a counter.
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Community Watch as July 28 Approaches. The Zcash community is watching closely. Node operators need to upgrade before the activation…
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Zcash is moving fast. The network will activate its Ironwood hard fork on July 28, a direct response to a serious vulnerability sitting inside the Orchard pool — one that could…
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The core of the fix is a turnstile mechanism. It's basically a checkpoint built into the protocol that catches any fraudulent coins before they can move through the system.
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The Orchard pool is a critical piece of Zcash's infrastructure. It handles the shielded side of ZEC transactions — the privacy-preserving layer that makes Zcash distinct from…
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Zcash's decision to address this through a hard fork rather than a softer protocol update says something about how seriously the team took the risk. Hard forks aren't casual moves.
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The turnstile concept itself isn't new to Zcash — the network used a similar mechanism during earlier pool migrations.
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Think of the turnstile as a one-way gate with a counter. Coins that can be verified as legitimate pass through. Coins that can't be accounted for don't.
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It's a smart containment play. And it's probably the most important security action Zcash has taken in a while.
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Related: Tokenized Asset Market Crosses $2.3 Billion as Utility Beats Speculation
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The broader crypto market has watched supply integrity issues damage other networks badly. When a blockchain's native token supply becomes questionable — whether through a bug,…
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Shielded transaction networks face a particular version of this problem. The same cryptographic tools that protect user privacy can, if flawed, mask inflation in the coin supply.
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The Zcash community is watching closely. Node operators need to upgrade before the activation block hits, and wallet providers and exchanges that support ZEC will need to be…
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No additional comment on future updates beyond the July 28 activation has come from the team, at least not in what's been shared publicly.
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