The date for Zcash’s next major network upgrade has been set by its developers. Network Upgrade 7 or NU7 for short will activate at block 3,543,405, which is set to land around November 5. Once it goes live, the upgrade will make payments on the privacy-focused blockchain three times faster by producing a new block every 25 seconds instead of every 75.
Traders have not waited for the activation with the token now trading near $1,300, up over 15% over the past week. ZEC climbed from roughly $1,060 on October 19 to a high close to $1,360 on October 21. Its market cap now sits at around $22 billion and is the ninth largest crypto asset.
Zcash Payments Will Confirm in a Third of the Time
A block is simply a batch of transactions added to the chain. A payment isn’t considered settled until it lands inside one. With blocks currently arriving every 75 seconds on average, this means the wait is a little over a minute for the first confirmation. This latest upgrade cuts this time to 25 seconds.
This is the second network upgrade wherein payments on Zcash have sped up. The Blossom upgrade back in December 2019 slashed block times from 150 seconds to the current 75. NU7 pushes this much further and places Zcash in a stronger position for everyday payments, where a merchant or exchange waiting several minutes on confirmations quickly turns into friction.
The 21 Million Cap Stays Untouched
Faster blocks does not mean more ZEC gets created and enters circulation. Currently, the network releases a set amount of new coins (1.5625 ZEC) per block. After Network Upgrade 7, three blocks will arrive within the same 75-second window and the reward essentially gets split across them. Therefore, what happens here is that the reward per block reduces to roughly a third of what it is today.
With this mechanism in place, the number of new ZEC entering circulation effectively remains the same as before. The network’s hard cap of 21 million stays the same, with about 16.99 million already in circulation.
Miners Get a Cushion for Future Halvings
NU7 is also about to change how and what miners get paid in fees. Today, the miner who adds a block keeps every fee in it. After this upgrade goes live, miners will keep only 40% with the remaining 60% of fees being held back, set aside and then paid out to the miners as extra rewards starting in February 2031.
The reason for this change ties back to Zcash’s halving schedule. Roughly every four years the block reward gets cut in half and each cut squeezes miner revenue. As their income drops with each halving, some miners may decide it’s no longer worth running their machines. A steady stream of deferred fees gives miners income that doesn’t vanish when the subsidy drops, which matters for a proof-of-work network whose security depends on miners staying online.
Sprout coins have a deadline
NU7 also closes the book on Sprout, the original privacy pool that shipped with Zcash’s launch in 2016. Any ZEC still sitting in Sprout once the upgrade activates will no longer be movable. Holders with funds there have about two weeks to migrate them into a newer pool.
The upgrade has been running on testnet since early October, giving wallets and exchanges time to prepare before the switch.
ZEC traders are positioning ahead of Nov. 5
Derivatives activity has picked up alongside spot buying. CoinGecko shows perpetual futures open interest at about $4.55 billion, close to four times the token’s $1.15 billion in 24-hour spot volume. Leverage at that level tends to make price swings sharper in both directions, particularly around a fixed date like an activation block.
Nothing changes onchain until block 3,543,405 arrives, but the market is already pricing in a faster network roughly two weeks before the first 25-second block.
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