Zcash developers are aiming for Nov. 5 to activate NU7, a network upgrade that would cut the time between blocks from 75 seconds to 25 seconds. The proposal would also set aside roughly 60% of transaction fees to supplement mining rewards starting in February 2031.
The target date was established after discussions involving Zcash Foundation, Project Tachyon, Valar, ZODL and Shielded Labs. The groups and their engineering teams unanimously approved the upgrade’s design following a series of community and coinholder polls.
About 2.4 million ZEC participated in the voting, representing 66% of the eligible pool. Some 98.9% supported retaining Zcash’s current halving schedule, while 96.6% backed February 2031 as the starting point for returning collected fees to miners.
Faster Blocks, Quicker Confirmations
Payment-focused blockchain projects such as Zcash are built around the idea of allowing users to send funds directly from their wallets to merchants or other individuals without depending on banks or card networks such as Visa and Mastercard.
The approach allows users to hold and spend digital money directly from their devices, including for online and cross-border transactions, without a bank or card issuer processing each payment.
Privacy is a key consideration on public blockchains. Transactions made through transparent addresses can reveal balances, previous activity and connections to other addresses.
Zcash’s shielded transactions are designed to keep the sender, recipient and payment amount hidden from the public ledger. This allows users to make payments without leaving behind a searchable blockchain history that exposes their financial activity.
A blockchain block contains a batch of transactions added by miners, with a payment receiving its first confirmation once it is included in a block. By reducing Zcash’s target block interval to 25 seconds, exchanges and bridges that require a fixed number of confirmations could release ZEC in about one-third of the current time.
The shorter interval would not make Zcash transactions as fast as a card tap at a physical checkout, but developers believe it would improve the practicality of direct private payments.
ZEC Supply Schedule Remains Similar
NU7 would increase the number of blocks produced but would not triple the amount of ZEC issued.
The proposal cuts the reward attached to each block by three while extending the halving interval from 1.68 million blocks to 5.04 million. As a result, Zcash’s overall issuance over time would remain largely unchanged.
The upgrade would also introduce the Network Sustainability Mechanism.
Under ZIP-235, approximately 60% of transaction fees would be temporarily removed from circulation instead of being paid directly to miners. Those funds would begin returning through block rewards in February 2031.
The mechanism is intended to bolster miner income as Zcash’s standard issuance declines through future halving events.
NU7 Development Schedule
The upgrade would disable Zcash’s older transaction format without introducing a new format. Wallets are not expected to require substantial changes, although full nodes, indexers and block explorers may need software updates.
Developers expect to complete the code by Sept. 30, followed by deployment to Zcash’s testnet on Oct. 6.
The final mainnet decision and activation height are scheduled for Oct. 20. That makes Nov. 5 a target date for NU7 rather than a confirmed launch date.
