Zcash holders have made their preference clear for the network’s next major upgrade: faster confirmations, without rewriting the rules around new coin issuance.
Nearly 99% of Zcash holders backed cutting the target block time from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, while 98.9% voted to keep the existing ZEC halving schedule unchanged, according to results published Monday.
The faster-block proposal received 99.9% of the ZEC-weighted vote. Both percentages included abstentions, and voting power was based on eligible ZEC holdings.
For users, the proposed change is fairly straightforward. Shorter blocks should reduce the expected wait for a transaction’s first confirmation, making the network feel less like it is keeping everyone waiting at the door.
The economics behind the upgrade are more carefully calibrated.
Rather than increasing the amount of ZEC entering circulation, the proposal would lower the amount of new ZEC created in each block. The goal is to preserve the network’s scheduled daily issuance even as blocks arrive three times as often.
That means faster block production without changing the broader issuance timetable.
Zcash Is Choosing Speed Without Rewriting Its Halvings
The changes are being considered for NU7, Zcash’s next major network upgrade. There is still no confirmed activation date for either testnet or mainnet.
Coinholders also voted in favor of leaving out features that are not implemented by the Sept. 30 deadline. Developers are expected to deliver the final upgrade components by that cutoff.
The voting process itself had a specific scope. It was separate from polls conducted by ZecHub, the Zcash Community Advisory Panel and other community groups, and eligibility was limited to spendable ZEC held in the Ironwood shielded pool at the voting snapshot.
The halving question exposed a more interesting split elsewhere in the community.
Halvings are scheduled reductions in the amount of new ZEC issued over time. While coinholders overwhelmingly favored preserving that structure, the Zcash Community Advisory Panel produced a much closer result: 57 members supported a gradual issuance curve that would replace halvings, while 54 backed keeping them.
Under the preferred coinholder proposal, the existing halving schedule would stay intact. It would also allow funds taken out of circulation under a separate proposal to return through future block rewards.
Another economic proposal, the Network Sustainability Mechanism, also came up for a vote.
About 97% of token holders supported delaying NSM reissuance until February 2031. Around 2.3 million ZEC voted for the delay, compared with roughly 70,239 ZEC supporting an earlier start.
The NSM was introduced in January as a response to a longer-term concern around Zcash’s security budget. As block rewards decline, the network could eventually face difficulty providing miners with enough incentive to validate transactions.
Its proposed model would burn and recycle 60% of ZEC transaction fees into future block rewards, while staying within Zcash’s 21 million maximum supply.
For now, the clearest message from the coinholder vote is narrower. Zcash holders overwhelmingly backed shorter block intervals, while keeping the network’s existing halving framework in place.
The market has been moving at a different speed entirely. ZEC gained 3.8% over the previous 24 hours, extending a 132% increase over the prior month, according to CoinMarketCap data.