Zcash holders voted almost unanimously to speed up block times while keeping the coin's Bitcoin-style halving schedule intact. ZEC rose 10.4% on Wednesday to an intraday high of $1,270, even as the broader crypto market fell.
A Landslide With Almost No Dissent
Nearly 2.4 million ZEC, roughly two-thirds of the 3.6 million eligible coins, participated in a poll on Network Upgrade 7 that closed Sept. 14. About 2,397,669 ZEC supported ZIP 218 and its proposed 25-second blocks, while just 141.6 ZEC opposed it.
On issuance, 2,375,932 ZEC backed keeping the existing halving schedule, against 22,384.875 ZEC that favored a smoother issuance curve. Coinholders also favored starting Network Sustainability Mechanism reissuance in February 2031 and disabling legacy Sprout transactions at NU7.
A separate Zcash Community Advisory Panel poll told a different story. Among 135 participants, 57 favored smoothing issuance and 54 preferred keeping halvings. That is far closer than the coinholder vote's 98.9% support for halvings.
Encrypted Ballots Kept Voters Anonymous
Eligibility came from spendable shielded ZEC held in the Ironwood pool at block 3,459,350 on Aug. 24, with one eligible ZEC representing one vote. Ballots were homomorphically encrypted and split, letting validators recover the tally without reconstructing individual identities or balances. A 500,000-ZEC holder could therefore cast 500,000 votes without publicly revealing which option that stake backed.
Faster Blocks Bring Tradeoffs
ZIP 218, drafted by Dev Ojha and Evan Forbes at Valar Group, would cut target block spacing from 75 seconds to 25, cutting the average wait for a first confirmation by a factor of three. Daily issuance would not triple, however, because the subsidy per block would fall by the same factor, leaving the 21 million ZEC cap untouched.
Speed is not free. ZIP 218 cites a theoretical stale-block rate near 3.26%, compared with roughly 0.4% today. A geographically distributed Zebra-node experiment using 2 MB blocks recorded a 4.86% stale rate and a 0.37% fork rate, adding pressure on network propagation.
The vote itself does not change the consensus rules. Developers still need to finish the code, review, testing, wallet support and an activation plan before NU7 can go live.
Zcash Trades Against the Broader Market
ZEC's price rose 10.4% against the dollar on Wednesday, and at 10 a.m. ET the privacy coin traded at $1,245 per unit after tapping an intraday high of $1,270. The asset moved opposite the rest of the market, including bitcoin, as most coins traded lower that day.
ZEC has risen 138% over the past 30 days and 53% over the past two weeks. The coin is up 7,744.8% since its all-time low of $16.08, reached on July 4, 2024. Zcash now ranks ninth by market cap among the top ten cryptocurrencies, with a valuation of around $21 billion at press time.
Source: Bitcoin News
Trading involves risk.
Risk Disclaimer
