Hmm I did not know this. I believe you are correct. I lost my exploitable version of IronHax when I made my emunand and accidentally wiped all the data so I didn't know thatI can launch Ironfall / trigger the hax just fine.
It's dead because there's no way to download an exploitable version of Ironfall anymore (that and because I think versions 1.0 and 1.1 were explicitly patched out from being run on more recent firmwares. In either case surely it's the installation of updates that broke the hax rather than Nintendo simply stopping it working...no?