Zcash developers confirm November date for upgrade that triples payment speed
- Zcash developers agreed to activate the NU7 upgrade at block 3,543,405, expected to be around Nov. 5, though the proposal still requires final integration into deployment and node software.
- The new version will cut block times to 25 seconds from 75 seconds, potentially reducing the wait for three transaction confirmations from nearly four minutes to about 75 seconds.
- The upgrade will temporarily remove 60% of block fees from circulation and disable Zcash’s original Sprout privacy system, making any funds left there unspendable.
Zcash is a step closer to confirming a change that would speed payments on the privacy-focused blockchain by a factor of three after developers settled on the exact block at which the upgrade, known as NU7, would switch on.
Zcash developer Sean Bowe filed a proposal on Tuesday to set activation at block 3,543,405, a height agreed at a meeting of Zcash Improvement Proposal (ZIP) editors, the group that signs off on changes to the blockchain’s rules.
Node software Zakura's public upgrade dashboard now lists that block as the planned mainnet activation point, around Nov. 5.
NU7 cuts the time between blocks, the batches of transactions added to the chain, from 75 seconds to 25 seconds. An exchange that waits for three confirmations before crediting a ZEC (ZEC) deposit could reduce the delay from nearly four minutes to about a minute and a quarter. The upgrade has run on Zcash's test network since early October.
Read More: Inside Zcash's new node that targets Visa-scale privacy at 50,000 transactions per second