Zcash developers confirm November date for upgrade that triples payment speed

Zcash is a step closer to confirming a change that would speed payments on the privacy-focused blockchain by a factor of three after developers settled on the exact block at which the upgrade, known as NU7, would switch on.

Zcash developer Sean Bowe filed a proposal on Tuesday to set activation at block 3,543,405, a height agreed at a meeting of Zcash Improvement Proposal (ZIP) editors, the group that signs off on changes to the blockchain’s rules.

Node software Zakura's public upgrade dashboard now lists that block as the planned mainnet activation point, around Nov. 5.

NU7 cuts the time between blocks, the batches of transactions added to the chain, from 75 seconds to 25 seconds. An exchange that waits for three confirmations before crediting a ZEC (ZEC) deposit could reduce the delay from nearly four minutes to about a minute and a quarter. The upgrade has run on Zcash's test network since early October.

NU7 also pulls 60% of the fees collected in each block out of circulation. Those coins will be paid back to miners starting around February 2031, while preserving Zcash's existing schedule for reducing mining rewards by 50%.

Sprout, Zcash's original privacy system, shuts down entirely. Any coins still sitting there when NU7 activates become unspendable, so holders have until activation in early November to move them.

Bowe's proposal had two approvals, but had yet to be merged into the deployment specification as of 08:00 UTC Wednesday, which still listed the mainnet activation height as undecided. Node software must also include the chosen height before the upgrade can take effect.