Zcash developers are targeting Nov. 5 for NU7, a network upgrade that would reduce block production times from 75 seconds to 25 seconds. The proposal would also reserve at least 60% of transaction fees for future mining rewards beginning in February 2031.
The planned activation date follows coordination among Zcash Foundation, Project Tachyon, Valar, ZODL and Shielded Labs. After a series of community and coinholder votes, the participating organizations and engineering teams reached unanimous agreement on the NU7 design.
Approximately 2.4 million ZEC participated in the voting, representing 66% of the eligible pool. Maintaining Zcash’s existing halving schedule received support from 98.9% of the participating ZEC, while 96.6% favored February 2031 as the date when accumulated fees would start being returned to miners.
Faster Blocks Could Speed Up Payments
Zcash and other blockchain payment projects are designed to enable funds to move directly between wallets or from customers to merchants without relying on banks or card networks such as Visa and Mastercard.
Users can hold and spend digital assets directly from their own devices, including for online and international transactions, without requiring a bank or card issuer to handle each payment.
The model, however, creates a privacy challenge on transparent blockchains. Transactions from visible addresses can expose account balances, previous payments and relationships with other addresses.
Zcash’s shielded transactions address that issue by concealing the sender, recipient and amount from the public blockchain. A user can therefore make a payment without leaving a publicly searchable trail revealing their financial activity.
Blocks contain groups of transactions that miners add to the network. A payment receives its first confirmation once it is included in one of those blocks.
Under NU7, the reduction in block time from 75 seconds to 25 seconds would mean exchanges and bridges waiting for a fixed number of confirmations could release ZEC in roughly one-third of the current time.
The change would not make Zcash payments as fast as tapping a card at a physical store, but developers expect the shorter confirmation period to make direct private payments more practical.
Faster Blocks Won’t Triple ZEC Issuance
Although NU7 would produce blocks three times more frequently, it would not result in three times as much new ZEC entering circulation.
The proposal would reduce the reward attached to each block by a factor of three and increase the halving interval from 1.68 million blocks to 5.04 million. The changes are intended to keep Zcash’s long-term issuance broadly consistent.
NU7 would also activate the Network Sustainability Mechanism.
Under ZIP-235, around 60% of transaction fees would initially be removed from circulation rather than distributed to miners. The collected coins would begin returning through block rewards in February 2031.
The mechanism is intended to provide an additional source of mining revenue as Zcash’s regular issuance declines through successive halvings.
Mainnet Launch Still Subject to Final Approval
NU7 would disable the older transaction format without adding a replacement format. Wallets are not expected to require major modifications, although full nodes, indexers and block explorers may need to update their software.
Developers plan to finish the code by Sept. 30 before deploying NU7 to Zcash’s testnet on Oct. 6.
The final mainnet decision and activation height are scheduled to be determined on Oct. 20. Therefore, Nov. 5 remains the targeted activation date rather than a confirmed launch date.
