The people building Zcash are aiming to finish their NU7 upgrade by Nov. 5. That change would shorten the wait between blocks from 75 seconds to 25, which should make private payments move along more quickly. The upgrade would also start putting a portion of the network’s transaction fees aside for future rewards paid to miners.
Zcash’s issuance and halving schedule will be preserved through a reduction in block rewards paired with a tripling of the halving interval. The final call on whether to activate the upgrade sits at Oct. 20.
The Poll Behind the Upgrade
The core builder teams — Zcash Foundation, Project Tachyon, Valar, ZODL and Shielded Labs — reached a shared understanding through their talks, and all agreed on what the upgrade should contain. Roughly 2.4 million ZEC took part in the vote, which amounts to about 66% of the total pool that could have voted.
Some 98.9% backed keeping Zcash’s existing halving schedule, while 96.6% chose February 2031 as the starting point for returning collected fees to miners.
How Block Times Shrink and Fees Vanish
A swap or link that waits for a set count of blocks before letting go of ZEC could cut its release time by roughly one-third, since Zcash’s blocks are batches of transactions that miners add to a blockchain. A payment gets its first confirmation when it appears in one. Cutting Zcash’s target block time sits between 75 and 25 seconds.
The developers behind Zcash believe that even at a shop counter, where a direct private payment still takes longer than tapping a card, the reduced wait time makes such a transaction more practical.
The adjustment triples the number of blocks produced, yet the total amount of ZEC created remains the same. To keep issuance steady over time, the proposal cuts the reward for each block by a factor of three while stretching the halving period from 1.68 million blocks to 5.04 million.
ZIP-235 is the proposal behind NU7, which sets aside roughly 60% of transaction fees so they do not go to miners. Instead, those coins are expected to come back into circulation via block rewards starting in February 2031, boosting miner earnings as Zcash’s standard supply declines due to its halving schedule.
No new transaction formats appear with the upgrade, which merely removes support for the older one. Full nodes, indexers and block explorers could need adjustments, though wallets should not be greatly affected.
What Private Payments Hide
The open nature of public ledgers creates a privacy issue. When a payment is made from an address that everyone can see, the balance, prior transactions and connections to other addresses become exposed for all to view. A shielded transaction in Zcash conceals the sender, recipient and the amount from the public record, which lets a customer make a payment without giving the merchant or any observer watching the ledger a searchable path into their financial history.
Payments-focused projects like Zcash picture money passing straight from one wallet to a business or another person via a blockchain, instead of going through banks or card networks such as Visa and Mastercard. This arrangement allows individuals to keep and spend digital currency from their own device, whether they are shopping online or sending funds across borders, with no bank or card issuer needed to process each transaction.
Code, Tests and the Final Date
The deadline for finishing the code falls on Sept. 30, ahead of NU7 arriving at Zcash’s test network in October 6. The developers will reserve the right to make the final call about going live, settling on an activation height during October 20. That leaves November 5 standing as a goal rather than a fixed date for the launch.
| Timing | Event |
|---|---|
| Sept. 30 | Code completion |
| Oct. 6 | Test network deployment |
| Oct. 20 | Final mainnet decision |
| Nov. 5 | Target launch date |
The Numbers Behind NU7
- Block time: 75 seconds to 25 seconds
- Halving interval: 1.68 million blocks to 5.04 million
- Collected fees: About 60% temporarily removed
- Fees return: Scheduled to start in February 2031
- Vote participation: 2.4 million ZEC, 66% of eligible pool
Coinholders who weighed in made their preferences clear: strong majorities wanted the halving schedule left unchanged, while strong majorities of those voting on the fee-return date chose February 2031.
Oct. 20 is when the final decision will be made, while Nov. 5 remains a target date for the upgrade rather than a guaranteed launch date.
Source material: “Zcash targets November upgrade to make private payments up to three times faster,” CoinDesk.
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