Photo: Zcash / Wikimedia Commons
Zcash activated its NU7 network upgrade early Friday, cutting the target time between blocks from 75 seconds to 25 and retiring the privacy coin’s original Sprout pool, where about 12,224 ZEC (about $15 million) can no longer be spent.
The upgrade took effect at block 3,543,405 at 02:34 UTC Friday (9:34 p.m. ET Thursday). In its first hours the chain was still speeding up: 225 blocks had been mined by 04:59 UTC, an average of about 39 seconds apart, with mining difficulty still adjusting toward the new target.
Faster private payments
Zcash lets people send money while hiding the sender, recipient and amount. At the new target, a merchant could see a payment’s first confirmation in about 25 seconds on average, and an exchange requiring three confirmations could cut its expected wait from nearly four minutes to about 75 seconds.
NU7 also caps how much shielded activity fits in each block, reducing the worst-case data wallets must download each day from 271 megabytes to 169, while estimated capacity for simple private payments could more than double to over six per second.
Sprout funds locked
Under the ZIP 2003 specification, NU7 rejects version 4 transactions, the only format that can spend funds from Sprout, Zcash’s original 2016 shielded pool. The remaining coins cannot be transferred under the new rules but have not been burned.
The specification leaves open the possibility that a future network upgrade could restore access, while warning that the ability to spend Sprout funds “may never be re-enabled.” Co-founder Sean Bowe has outlined a possible recovery mechanism, though none had been approved as of Friday.
Fees set aside for future miners
Miners now receive 40% of transaction fees. The remaining 60% is removed from circulation and recorded in a reserve that starts feeding future block rewards around February 2031 under a Network Sustainability Mechanism, which preserves Zcash’s 21 million-coin supply cap and halving schedule.
JBizNews Desk | New York
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