Crypto: Zcash Wins 99.9% Support for Major Network Upgrade

Zcash is preparing to drastically reduce the time between its blocks. During the vote organized around the NU7 upgrade, 99.9% of expressed ZEC supported the shift from 75 to 25 seconds. Crypto holders also chose at 98.9% to keep the current halving schedule. About 2.4 million ZEC participated in the vote, out of 3.6 million eligible at the snapshot. For this privacy-focused crypto network, NU7 thus affects both performance and the future issuance of ZEC. 

Zcash Gets 99.9% for Blocks Three Times Faster

The result leaves little doubt on this specific point. Holders of the ZEC crypto massively chose the reduction of the target time between two blocks. This is one of the most visible changes proposed for NU7, a new step after the significant modifications already made to the protocol this year, notably with the Ironwood upgrade of Zcash.

Today, Zcash aims for a block every 75 seconds. ZIP 218 proposes to go down to 25 seconds. A transaction waiting for its first confirmation could therefore, on average, receive it about three times faster.

The vote was not weak. According to the results published on the Zcash forum, about 2.4 million ZEC participated, out of 3.6 million present in the eligible pool at the time of the snapshot. This represents approximately 66% participation by value. The threshold set to consider the vote sufficiently representative was one million ZEC.

However, it must be clarified what the famous 99.9% means.

It is not 99.9% of the people using Zcash. The vote was weighted according to the eligible ZEC held by each participant. The cryptos notably had to be available in the Ironwood shielded pool at the snapshot. So the result measures the weight of voting ZEC, not the number of individuals.

The nuance matters. The support remains massive.

Moving to 25 Seconds Changes More Than the Waiting Time

ZIP 218 does not just consist of changing a number in the protocol. With a block every 75 seconds, Zcash theoretically produces about 1,152 per day. At 25 seconds, the network would switch to 3,456 daily blocks. Three times more.

The main expected benefit concerns payments, deposits on exchanges, and certain operations using bridges. Today, even when the network is lightly loaded, one must wait for the next block. The reduction of the interval directly targets this latency.

The Orchard throughput must also increase. The ZIP authors estimate that its maximum capacity would increase from about 2.9 to 6.6 transactions per second for some operations using two actions. So it is not an automatic tripling of TPS across all Zcash, even if three times more blocks will be produced.

Limits are added in parallel. A block can contain a maximum of 330 Orchard actions, 300 Sapling inputs and outputs, as well as 25 Sprout JoinSplits. The goal is to prevent the increased block frequency from turning the synchronization of crypto wallets into a much heavier problem.

The ZIP calculations even give a somewhat counter-intuitive result. In the worst-case scenario studied, the daily bandwidth needed for shielded synchronization would drop from about 270.5 MB to 169.1 MB, a 37% decrease, despite three times more blocks. The technical change is thus broader than “Zcash becomes three times faster.” It combines more blocks and stricter caps on what each can contain.

The Halvings Will Finally Stay in Place

NU7 also touches a much more sensitive topic: the creation of new ZEC. Zcash has adopted from Bitcoin a capped supply model at 21 million tokens and a system of periodic halvings. Another option was on the table: replacing the sharp reward cuts with a more progressive emission curve.

ZEC crypto holders largely rejected this change. 2,375,932.375 ZEC voted to keep the halvings. Only 22,384.875 ZEC supported the smoothed curve. 4,147.625 ZEC wanted to exclude this change from NU7 and 1,072.125 ZEC abstained. Cointelegraph thus calculates support of 98.9% for keeping the current schedule.

The shift from 75 to 25 seconds therefore does not mean that miners will receive three times more ZEC each day. The block reward must be adjusted.

ZIP 218 explicitly plans to keep the same daily issuance despite the increased number of blocks. In other words, more blocks will be produced, each with a lesser amount of new ZEC.

This detail avoids an easy misunderstanding: tripling the block frequency without changing crypto rewards would have accelerated issuance and disrupted the entire monetary schedule. This is not what is proposed.

The Sustainability Mechanism Will Wait Until 2031

Another vote concerned the Network Sustainability Mechanism, or NSM. The project seeks to prepare funding for network security when mining rewards have sharply decreased. Several ZIPs are associated with this idea. One of them notably plans to temporarily remove 60% of transaction fees from circulation, then allow their reissuance later through block rewards. The 21 million cap of crypto ZEC would be maintained.

Holders do not want to rush the second part of the mechanism.

For the start date of this reissuance, about 2.32 million ZEC chose February 2031. Some 70,240 ZEC preferred to start as soon as possible and 6,283 ZEC voted for February 2027. The choice of 2031 represents about 97% of the expressed weight on this issue.

There were more debates in other consulted groups. The Zcash Community Advisory Panel, for example, was much more split on keeping the halvings: 57 members preferred a smoothed issuance and 54 the current system. The vote by ZEC crypto holders produced a huge gap.

On the reissuance schedule, Shielded Labs, Project Tachyon, ZODL, the Zcash Foundation, and Valar Group finally indicated choosing February 2031 as the most cautious interpretation of the different results. The subject can be put back to vote later.

No major immediate monetary upheaval, then. The halvings stay.

Sprout Must Also Disappear with NU7

The vote did not concern only speed and rewards. Holders also voted to disable the old v4 transactions notably linked to Sprout when NU7 is activated. Sprout is Zcash’s first shielded transaction system and has long been replaced by newer generations. According to the Zcash Foundation, this pool contained less than 23,000 ZEC before the vote and accounted for less than 0.1% of transaction volume.

Orchard now carries most of the shielded activity. In May, data used for ZIP 218 indicated about 4.53 million ZEC crypto in Orchard, or 87.9% of the supply placed in shielded pools. Sapling held about 598,000 ZEC and Sprout 25,409 ZEC at that date.

Zcash has indeed worked a lot on this infrastructure in 2026. A critical vulnerability discovered in Orchard pushed the ecosystem to accelerate several technical changes. An audit conducted later with Claude Mythos did not identify any other major flaw, as Cointribune reported in its article dedicated to the Zcash audit after the Orchard flaw.

NU7 arrives a few months later with another priority: simplifying and speeding up the network. Not all projects will nevertheless be added at any cost.

ZEC crypto holders also supported the idea of removing from the NU7 scope the functions that will not be ready before September 30.

NU7 Still Has No Activation Date

This may be the easiest point to forget after such a clear vote: NU7 is not yet activated.

Zcash’s official page still indicates that the activation height has not been set. The ZIPs are still presented as candidates and the final content must be decided before deployment on testnet then on the main network.

The 99.9% thus gives a direction. Not an immediate activation.

The reduction to 25 seconds will need to be integrated, tested, and adopted by the software that ensures the network’s functioning. Zcash also indicates that NU7’s major consensus changes will require the use of Zebra, the node developed by the Zcash Foundation, rather than the old zcashd.

The timing is particular for ZEC. Privacy returned to the forefront of the crypto market this year, while Zcash has undergone a critical flaw, hard forks, governance changes, and the launch of a US-listed product. At the end of August, Grayscale launched its Zcash product on NYSE Arca. A few days later, ZEC rose above levels unseen since 2018.

On September 16, ZEC still showed a 132% increase over one month. The movement goes beyond the token price alone: Zcash mining currently generates nearly four times more revenue per megawatt than Bitcoin mining. NU7 touches something more sustainable. Blocks every 25 seconds, halving kept, NSM reissuance postponed to 2031, and Sprout destined to disappear. The vote now gives a clear direction. It remains to integrate these changes into the code, test them, then set the activation date on the main network.