Zcash holders choose speed, keep the halvings, and tell NSM to wait its turn until 2031 🚦

Zcash ($ZEC) coinholders voted overwhelmingly to cut the network's target block time to 25 seconds from 75 seconds and to preserve its existing Bitcoin-style halving schedule, according to NU7 sentiment poll results published Monday. The faster-block proposal received 99.9% of the ZEC-weighted vote, while 98.9% backed keeping halvings; both figures include abstentions. Voting power reflected eligible ZEC holdings at the snapshot, and the ballot was limited to spendable ZEC in the Ironwood shielded pool.

Nearly 2.4 million ZEC participated in the vote out of about 3.6 million eligible tokens, a turnout of roughly 66% that exceeded the organizers' 1 million ZEC participation threshold. Ballots were encrypted and split into 16 unlinkable segments so totals could be verified without revealing individual balances or votes. ZEC rose 10.9% to trade near $1,368 on Thursday, extending a 168% gain over the past 30 days, and the token climbed to ninth place by market capitalization at $22.9 billion, per CoinGecko data. CoinMarketCap figures showed a 3.8% move in the prior 24 hours and a 132% rally over the past month.

Coinholders also used the NU7 vote to delay the Network Sustainability Mechanism, with 96.6% backing a reissuance start date of February 2031. About 2.3 million ZEC voted to delay the motion, while roughly 70,239 ZEC voted to begin the process as soon as possible. NSM, proposed in January, would burn and recycle 60% of ZEC transaction fees into future block rewards without exceeding Zcash's 21 million maximum supply. Shielded Labs, Project Tachyon, ZODL, the Zcash Foundation and Valar Group have aligned on the February 2031 date as "the most conservative interpretation of the results," with another poll able to revisit the question.

The Zcash Community Advisory Panel returned a closer split, with 57 members favoring a gradual issuance curve that would replace halvings and 54 favoring keeping them. Developers plan to ship the final items for the upgrade by the Sept. 30 cut-off deadline, with testnet and mainnet activation dates not yet determined. The shorter block interval would reduce the expected wait for a transaction's first confirmation, and the amount of new ZEC issued per block would fall to keep scheduled daily issuance unchanged.

Grayscale's Zcash Trust began trading Tuesday on NYSE Arca under the ticker ZCSH, the first exchange-traded product offering spot ZEC exposure, months after developers disclosed and patched a critical vulnerability in the privacy coin's shielded transaction system. Tim Sun, senior researcher at HashKey, said the launch "alleviated regulatory concerns" and coincided with a pitch that has moved "from pure anonymity to financial privacy and confidentiality." Joe Andrews, chief executive of Aztec Labs, added that "the world is waking up to the need for on chain privacy," while Roxana Nasoi, a core contributor at privacy network Logos, argued that "privacy denies everyone else the knowledge that makes you a target." ZEC is up more than 2,500% over the past year, and Zcash Labs is funding Ledger support for shielded ZEC transactions.