Zcash Token Holders Vote to Reduce Block Time and Maintain Halving Schedule

Zcash token holders backed cutting the network’s target block time to 25 seconds from 75 seconds and preserving its existing halving schedule in a poll on the next major upgrade.

The faster-block proposal received 99.9% of the Zcash (ZEC)-weighted vote, while 98.9% supported keeping halvings, according to results published Monday. Voting power reflected eligible ZEC holdings, with both percentages including abstentions.

The shorter interval would reduce the expected wait for a transaction’s first confirmation, according to the proposal. The amount of new ZEC issued per block would fall to keep scheduled daily issuance unchanged.

The changes are proposed for NU7, a Zcash network upgrade whose activation date remains undetermined. Token holders also favored excluding features not implemented by Sept. 30.

The coinholder vote was separate from polls of ZecHub, the Zcash Community Advisory Panel and other community groups. Eligibility was limited to spendable ZEC in the Ironwood shielded pool at the voting snapshot. Developers plan to ship the final items for the upgrade by the Sept. 30 cut-off deadline, with testnet and mainnet activation not yet determined.

Halvings are scheduled cuts that reduce the issuance of new ZEC by half. The winning coinholder option would preserve that schedule while allowing funds removed from circulation under a separate proposal to be returned through future block rewards.

The advisory-panel results showed a closer split, with 57 members favoring a gradual issuance curve that would replace halvings and 54 favoring keeping them.

Another major feature considered for NU7 inclusion was the Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM), a proposed upgrade to Zcash’s economic model that aims to recycle a portion of transaction fees back into a pool, rather than relying solely on block rewards.

About 97% of token holders voted to delay NSM reissuance until February 2031, with 2.3 million ZEC tokens voting to delay the motion, while only about 70,239 tokens voted to start it as soon as possible.

NSM was proposed in January in response to the network’s long-term security budget concerns, as the declining block rewards may eventually be insufficient to incentivize miners to validate transactions. The model’s three-part mechanism seeks to burn and recycle 60% of ZEC transaction fees into future block rewards, without exceeding the token’s 21 million maximum supply.

ZEC rose 3.8% in the past 24 hours, extending its 132% rally seen during the past month, according to CoinMarketCap data.