Zcash Speeds Blocks to 25 Seconds Without Extra Issuance

On Oct. 4, 2026, Zcash switched NU7 on at testnet block 4,465,026, cutting the wait between blocks from 75 seconds to 25 seconds. Coinholders had already voted 2,397,669.375 ZEC for that cut, and the spec shrinks the per-block reward so the chain still creates about 1,800 ZEC a day.

That is the part the mid-September rally priced. The quieter half of the same vote parks at least 60% of transaction fees until February 2031 and triples the block count between halvings so the calendar of cuts does not move.

Ironwood Holders Locked in Bitcoin’s Clock

The NU7 coinholder vote closed at 19:00 UTC on Sept. 14, 2026. Eligibility was spendable ZEC in the Ironwood shielded pool at snapshot block 3,459,350, set for Aug. 24. Zakura’s count shows 2,403,537 ZEC voted, well above the 1,000,000 ZEC bar the organizers set, and about two-thirds of the roughly 3.6 million ZEC that could take part.

Most issued ZEC never got a ballot. Chain figures from ZecStats on Oct. 11, 2026, at 10:49 UTC put 16,980,233 ZEC of a 21 million cap in existence, with 11,944,237 of that in transparent outputs. Those coins, 70.3% of what has been issued, sat outside Ironwood and could not vote. The money that could vote moved as a bloc.

The final NU7 coinholder vote totals were posted on the community forum the same evening.

THE NU7 COINHOLDER TALLY

Only 141.625 ZEC voted against faster blocks. A smooth issuance curve drew 22,384.875 ZEC. Starting the fee recycle “as soon as possible” drew 70,239.625 ZEC. On the Zcash Community Advisory Panel, 135 of 198 members voted, and they split 57 to 54 for smoothing over halvings, while panel ballots favored an ASAP recycle by 101 of 203. Coinholders did not follow them on money.

The Per-Block Reward Falls to a Third

Three times as many blocks would mint three times as many coins if the reward stayed put. The 25-second block target in ZIP 218, drafted by Dev Ojha and Evan Forbes at Valar Group, divides the subsidy by three and stretches the halving interval from 1,680,000 blocks to 5,040,000 so wall-clock issuance does not speed up.

Under today’s 75-second rules the subsidy is 1.5625 ZEC, and about 1,152 blocks a day produce 1,800 ZEC. After NU7 the same day’s work is 3,456 blocks at 0.52083333 ZEC each. Three of those blocks issue one zatoshi less than one pre-NU7 block, a rounding dribble ZIP 218 records in the formula. The 21,000,000 cap does not move.

THE BLOCK CLOCK BEFORE AND AFTER ZIP 218

Some early notes printed 0.26041666 ZEC as the new reward. That figure is the subsidy after the next halving, not the one at activation. The next cut is still aimed at block 4,406,400, around November 2028, when the 75-second subsidy would fall from 1.5625 ZEC to 0.78125 ZEC. Of each block now, 80% pays miners, 8% goes to Zcash Community Grants, and 12% accrues to the protocol lockbox, which held 68,922 ZEC on Oct. 11.

Miners do not get a smaller daily coin print. They get the same 1,800 ZEC a day in smaller slices, paid 100 blocks later, which at 25 seconds is a much shorter wait than 100 blocks at 75 seconds.

What 25-Second Blocks Change for Payments

ZIP 218’s first job is wait time. A first confirmation is meant to arrive in about 25 seconds instead of 75, which matters for tills, exchange deposits, and bridges that sit on one or two blocks. The spec also caps shielded work per block so the extra blocks do not turn light wallets into a spam sink.

A block may carry at most 330 shielded actions across pools, with 330 Orchard, 330 Ironwood, and 300 Sapling inputs plus outputs. Sprout JoinSplits go to zero because NU7 disables v4 transactions. Those caps are set to more than double Orchard-protocol throughput from 2.9 to 6.6 transactions per second, while the worst-case daily sync load on light clients falls from 271 MB to 169 MB, a 37% cut even with three times as many headers.

The cost sits with miners and anyone who needs blocks to land cleanly. ZIP 218 puts today’s stale-block rate at 0.4% and the theoretical rate at 25 seconds at about 3.26%, from measured propagation delays. A 99-node Zebra experiment with full 2 MB blocks recorded a 4.86% stale rate and a 0.37% fork rate, still under the 5.4% proof-of-work stale mark Ethereum used to run. Difficulty averaging widens from 17 blocks to 102, which is 2,550 seconds, so the retarget window keeps the same span of clock time.

Sixty Percent of Fees Sit Idle Until 2031

NU7 also turns on the Network Sustainability Mechanism. From activation, miners keep 40% of each block’s transaction fees. The other 60% is pulled out of circulation into a reserve that is scheduled to start returning through block rewards in February 2031. The cap stays 21,000,000 ZEC; the coins are not burned forever, they are delayed.

That is the holder preference, not the panel one. Advisory groups leaned toward recycling as soon as possible. Coinholders put 2,319,643.750 ZEC on 2031 and only 70,239.625 ZEC on an immediate start. On the public testnet the reissuance height is already set at 7,305,222, and the dashboard showed a 560.63 TAZ NSM balance while NU7 was running.

WHAT THE FEE SPLIT DOES NOW

• Miner share: 40% of each block’s fees is paid in the usual way.
• Reserve share: 60% is removed from circulation and recorded for later rewards.
• Start date: Reissuance is set for February 2031, the most conservative reading of the coinholder poll.
• Supply cap: Recycled fees replace issuance later; they do not lift the 21,000,000 ceiling.

Daily new coins stay 1,800 ZEC, so the haircut is on fees, not the subsidy. With 6,357 transactions on mainnet in the 24 hours to Oct. 11, 2026, that fee slice is still a small line next to the block reward. The bet is that it will not stay small after later halvings, which is why holders were willing to wait until 2031 to pay it back out.

Testnet Has Been Mining the Faster Chain

Zcash cofounder Sean Bowe said on Sept. 17, 2026, that every development group had agreed on the contents and the timing after the vote.

NU7 is coming! All of the Zcash development orgs have come to unanimous agreement about the contents and timeline of our next network upgrade, following the sentiment collection results earlier this week. Activation approximately November 5.

Sean Bowe, Zcash cofounder, on X

NU7 is coming! All of the Zcash development orgs have come to unanimous agreement about the contents and timeline of our next network upgrade, following the sentiment collection results earlier this week.

Activation approximately November 5.

Learn more:https://t.co/3pSKptV9gO

— Sean Bowe (@ebfull) September 17, 2026

The Zcash Foundation, Project Tachyon, Valar Group, ZODL, and Shielded Labs are the groups on that list. NU7 then activated on public testnet at height 4,465,026 on Oct. 4, 2026, two days before an Oct. 6 estimate. Zakura’s public testnet already running NU7 showed a 25-second target, a 52,083,333-zatoshi base subsidy, a 102-block difficulty window, 40/60 fee split, and Sprout JoinSplits at zero.

Gemini said on Sept. 29 that it had moved its Zcash stack onto Zakura ahead of the faster blocks, with no customer action required. The Foundation’s Oct. 6 engineering note still had no mainnet activation height. Zebra 6.4.x is set to stop around Nov. 2, 2026, and Zakura 1.6.0 mainnet nodes halt at height 3,536,467, estimated Nov. 1, so operators have a hard date to be on NU7 software even before a height is named.

THE NU7 CALENDAR

1. August 24, 2026: Snapshot at block 3,459,350 freezes Ironwood balances for the vote.
2. September 14, 2026: Coinholder poll closes; 2,403,537 ZEC have voted.
3. October 4, 2026: NU7 activates on public testnet at block 4,465,026.
4. November 5, 2026: Target mainnet activation, with no height set as of Oct. 6.

On Oct. 11, 2026, at 19:09 UTC, ZEC traded at $1,269.43 on ZecStats, up 3.8% over 24 hours inside a $1,217.38 to $1,297.48 range, for a $21.53B market cap at rank 10. That is below September’s $1,438.41 monthly close and 30 days still up 9.0%. Bitcoin, on the same tape, was $83,500.02.

The 22,309 ZEC Still Sitting in Sprout

Voters put 2,333,854.625 ZEC, 97.3%, behind disabling v4 transactions as soon as NU7 activates. Sprout, the 2016 pool, has been closed to deposits since 2018. On Oct. 11 it still held 22,309 ZEC, 0.1% of the 21 million cap and under 0.1% of volume, according to the poll text and the live pool table.

Once v4 is off, those coins cannot move on the old path. Holders who want to keep spending them have to migrate before mainnet activation. Sapling still holds 476,171 ZEC and stays open under the new per-block caps. Orchard, sealed after the 2026 circuit work, holds 361,821 ZEC. Ironwood, the live shielded pool, holds 4,106,772 ZEC. Across all four pools, 4,967,074 ZEC, 29.3% of issued supply, is shielded.

The vote itself ran inside that private set. Ballots were encrypted and split so validators could check the count without seeing individual balances, the same Ironwood pool the poll was designed around.

Hardware Signers Reach the Ironwood Pool

Zcash Labs posted a funding deal with Ledger on Sept. 15, 2026, committing $80,000 so devices could custody Ironwood, not only older pools.

Announcing our funding agreement with @Ledger.

The agreement supports the work required to integrate the new Zcash Ironwood pool into Ledger devices.

As a result of this agreement, Zcash coin holders will be able to use their ledger devices to self-custody their Zcash in… pic.twitter.com/kPYSOH9dNO

— Zcash Labs (@ZcashLabs) September 15, 2026

Ledger shipped native shielded Zcash in Ledger Wallet on Sept. 23, 2026, on desktop only, with keys staying on the signer and the computer doing the proof math. The firm said it secures almost 30% of retail bitcoin and more than 30% of dollar stablecoins across more than 8 million signers sold. The older Zondax shielded app is due to come off download on Nov. 5, 2026, the same day builders are aiming to flip mainnet.

Faster blocks do not require a new transaction format, which is why wallets are not being asked to rewrite payment types for NU7. They are being asked to follow the pool map: Ironwood for new shielded coins, Sprout emptied, and a node build that can ingest a block every 25 seconds. The Foundation told mainnet operators they did not need to do anything for NU7 yet except run Zebra 6.4.2, then install the NU7 release before 6.4.x stops in early November.

The height that actually starts 25-second blocks on mainnet still has not been published. Until it is, the chain keeps printing 1.5625 ZEC every 75 seconds, and the 60% fee reserve stays off. The vote already chose the other clock.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of a Zcash protocol vote and the NU7 upgrade plan. It is for information only and is not investment advice, trading advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold ZEC or any other asset. Cryptocurrency prices, hashrate, fees, and activation dates can move quickly, and protocol rules change only if the network adopts them. Readers should consult a qualified financial adviser and, where relevant, a tax professional before making any investment or custody decision. Figures and statuses here reflect the cited chain data, vote tallies, specifications, and company posts as dated in the piece and may change.