Zcash Is Running—Devs Want to Make It Faster

In brief

• Zcash developers are targeting Nov. 5 to activate NU7, an upgrade that cuts block time—the interval between confirmed batches of transactions.
• A companion rule shrinks the reward miners earn per block by roughly the same factor, so the total amount of new ZEC created each day doesn't change.
• 98.9% of voting coinholders chose to keep Zcash's Bitcoin-style halvings intact, and a new mechanism will start banking transaction fees in 2026 to help pay miners after 2031.

Zcash developers are targeting Nov. 5 to switch on NU7, the network's next major upgrade. The biggest improvement is set to be block time, the gap between each confirmed batch of transactions, drops from 75 seconds to 25.

That's a three-times speedup for a coin built around zero-knowledge proofs—math that lets someone prove a payment is valid without revealing who sent it, to whom, or how much. Shorter blocks mean shielded, private transactions confirm almost as fast as a card swipe.

Developer Sean Bowe said NU7 hits Zcash's testnet on Oct. 6, and the team will set the final mainnet activation height on Oct. 20 after watching how the network behaves under the new rules.

The Zcash Foundation, Project Tachyon, Valar Group, ZODL, and Shielded Labs—the separate teams and companies that build Zcash's software—reached what developers called unanimous agreement on the upgrade's scope and timeline, with the underlying specifications due by Sept. 30.