Zcash Closes On $1,400 After Coinholders Vote to Keep Bitcoin-Style Halvings

In brief

• ZEC reached $1,388 following the NU7 sentiment polls, whose results landed on Sunday.
• Coinholders voted 98.9% to preserve halvings, with 2.4 million ZEC cast, a record 66% of the eligible pool.
• The privacy coin has tripled since July's Ironwood upgrade and is up more than 2,500% over a year that brought a Grayscale ETF.

Zcash surged double digits to $1,388 Thursday, after the community settled the shape of its next network upgrade. ZEC is currently trading at $1,368, up 10.9% on the day and 168% over 30 days, making it the ninth-largest asset by market cap at $22.9 billion, per CoinGecko data.

The privacy coin's move up the rankings signals that "the market is redefining the value of privacy," according to Tim Sun, senior researcher at HashKey, with Zcash "the leading front-runner in this wave of narratives."

Roxana Nasoi, a core contributor at privacy network Logos, framed its appeal more bluntly, arguing that, "Privacy denies everyone else the knowledge that makes you a target."

NU7, ETF and privacy

Five questions on the NU7 upgrade went to a coinholder vote whose results were published on Sunday, on a turnout of 66%. Eligibility was fixed by spendable shielded ZEC held in the Ironwood pool at block 3,459,350 on August 24, one coin to one vote, and ballots were encrypted and split into 16 unlinkable pieces so totals could be counted without revealing who voted or how much they held. Holders voted 98.9% to keep Bitcoin-style halvings rather than smooth issuance, and also chose faster 25-second blocks, immediate deprecation of the legacy Sprout pool, and a cut in scope to whatever is ready by September 30.