Crypto
Zcash (ZEC) Price Surges 3% As Ironwood Progress Strengthens
The positive progress toward the Ironwood shielded pool lifted the Zcash (ZEC) price and helped it defy the broader market trend.
1d ago 4,280
BLOCKINSIDERLoadingThe positive progress toward the Ironwood shielded pool lifted the Zcash (ZEC) price and helped it defy the broader market trend.
Zcash (ZEC) appears to be defying the broader crypto market. Today, July 7, 2026, as major assets, including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), struggled to gain momentum, ZEC jumped 3.15% to $462.
Posting a notable move, ZEC’s move is worth a closer look, but there’s more to the move apart from the price chart.
Recently, the Zcash core development team, Tachyon Zcash, revealed the network's Ironwood shielded pool was near a formal mathematical proof, which would ensure there are no undetectable counterfeiting bugs.
For context, in early June 2026, Taylor Hornby, a researcher at Shielded Labs, discovered a critical flaw in Zcash's Orchard Shielded Pool that allowed attackers to create unlimited counterfeit ZEC tokens within the pool. As a result of this major disclosure, ZEC crashed 40% over the following two days. Ironwood is the new shielded pool that will replace Orchard.
In fact, it is built on the same protocol, but rather than building on top of the existing code, developers fixed the vulnerability from scratch by addressing the root cause.
Meanwhile, Zcash founder Zooko Wilcox also shared this development on X, noting:
"Tachyon's Formal Verification project is on the verge of producing a mathematical proof that there are no undetectable counterfeiting bugs in the latest Zcash shielded pools."
The development team further added that an AI-assisted tool helped them fix this issue in weeks rather than the work that takes years to complete. The team is also aiming to finish both the security verification and the Ironwood upgrade by late July 2026.
Now, the question is what's next for the ZEC price: will it continue its upward momentum, or is a potential price dip possible in the coming days?
According to the TradingView daily chart, ZEC has a short-term bullish bias. This is not due to the recent protocol development, but because the asset recently broke out of a prolonged descending trendline, which it has been facing since late May 2026.
Meanwhile, the price above the 200-Exponential Moving Average (EMA) suggests that ZEC's broader market structure is bullish, and bulls remain in control.
Based on the current price action, if ZEC remains above the $421 level, its bullish outlook remains intact. If that happens, the asset could see a price uptick of ~18% and reach the resistance level of $547. In fact, it could even rise by ~36% if it clears the $547 level and may reach the $627 level in the coming days.
However, a bearish thesis could also be possible, which could occur if ZEC falls below the $421 level. If it occurs, the asset could see a price dip of 25% and may reach the $315 level. In fact, this support breakdown could shift the broader sentiment bearish.
At publication time, the technical indicator Average Directional Index (ADX), which measures trend strength, stands at 15.34, below the key threshold of 25, indicating that ZEC has weak strength.
From a derivative perspective, ZEC appears bullish. According to CoinGlass, ZEC’s long-to-short ratio stands at 1.01 on Wednesday, indicating strong bullish sentiment among traders.
Meanwhile, its OI-Weighted funding rate has also turned positive and stands at +0.0092%, indicating that traders holding long positions are paying those holding short positions, reflecting growing confidence in the asset’s upward potential.
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