Zcash targets November upgrade to make private payments up to three times faster

Zcash developers target Nov. 5 for NU7 network upgrade

Zcash developers are targeting Nov. 5 to activate an upgrade known as NU7, according to CoinDesk. The change would cut the time between blocks from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, which the report says would make private payments on the network up to three times faster.

The upgrade would also begin setting aside part of the network's transaction fees for future mining rewards, a change described as Zcash's Network Sustainability Mechanism.

Key numbers

• Target activation date: Nov. 5, with a final activation decision due Oct. 20.
• Block time would fall from 75 seconds to 25 seconds.
• Roughly 60% of transaction fees would be temporarily removed from circulation under ZIP-235, with those coins intended to return through block rewards beginning in February 2031.
• The per-block reward would be divided by three, and the halving interval would rise from 1.68 million blocks to 5.04 million blocks.
• About 2.4 million ZEC took part in a community vote, equal to 66% of the eligible pool.
• 98.9% of participants backed keeping Zcash's existing halving schedule; 96.6% chose February 2031 as the start date for returning collected fees to miners.

How the timeline was agreed

The timetable follows talks among the core builder teams Zcash Foundation, Project Tachyon, Valar, ZODL and Shielded Labs. CoinDesk reports that the groups and engineering teams reached unanimous agreement on the upgrade's contents after a series of community and coinholder polls.

What faster blocks would and would not do

Blocks are batches of transactions that miners add to a blockchain. A payment receives its first confirmation when it appears in a block. Cutting Zcash's target block time would let an exchange or a bridge that waits for a fixed number of confirmations release ZEC in about one-third the time.

At a shop counter, the report notes, this would still be slower than tapping a payment card. Even so, Zcash's developers believe the shorter wait makes a direct private payment more practical.

Producing three times as many blocks would not create three times as much ZEC. The proposal, ZIP-0218, divides the reward paid with each block by three and extends the halving interval, leaving issuance over time largely unchanged.

Why shielded payments matter

Public blockchains create a privacy problem: paying from a visible address can expose its balance, previous transactions and links to other addresses. A shielded Zcash payment hides the sender, recipient and amount from the public record, so a customer can pay without handing the merchant or anyone watching the blockchain a searchable trail into their finances.

CoinDesk describes the wider goal as money moving directly from a person's wallet to a business or another person over a blockchain, rather than through banks or card networks, letting people hold and spend digital money from their own device, including across borders.

What is confirmed

The target dates, the proposed block-time change, the fee set-aside, and the coinholder vote results are all reported by CoinDesk based on the cited Zcash community forum thread and the ZIP proposals. The upgrade has unanimous agreement among the listed builder teams.

What is still unclear

NU7 has a target date, not a guaranteed one. The final activation decision is due Oct. 20, so the Nov. 5 date remains a plan until that decision is made.

What happens next

The final decision on activating NU7 is scheduled for Oct. 20, ahead of the Nov. 5 target. If activated, the fee set-aside would begin returning collected coins to miners through block rewards starting in February 2031.

Sources

• CoinDesk