Zcash Community Overwhelmingly Votes for Faster Transactions and Bitcoin-Style Halving

ChainCatcher report: Zcash holders voted by an overwhelming majority to accelerate transaction speeds and retain the Bitcoin-style halving mechanism. This governance vote concerned Zcash’s next major network upgrade, NU7. Nearly 2.4 million ZEC participated in the vote, representing approximately two-thirds of the roughly 3.6 million eligible ZEC at snapshot time. Results were calculated by ZEC weight, with each eligible ZEC counting as one vote. Of the participating ZEC, 99.9% supported reducing the block time from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, 98.9% supported retaining the Bitcoin-style halving mechanism, 96.6% supported delaying the reissuance of fees collected by the Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM) until February 2031, and 99.3% supported deploying NU7 as soon as possible and abandoning any unimplemented features before the September 30 deadline. This vote was restricted to holders of ZEC in Zcash’s latest privacy pool, Ironwood. Ballots were encrypted and split into 16 parts for tallying, ensuring validators could not reconstruct individual voters’ choices or balances. In contrast, a February NU7 sentiment survey attracted participation from only 7.25% of circulating ZEC. The vote results themselves will not directly alter the network; the proposed features still require implementation, testing, and inclusion in the final upgrade.