Status: Activated on mainnet. Zcash’s NU7 upgrade went live at block 3,543,405 early Friday, November 6, 2026, according to Decrypt’s report and an announcement from Zcash’s official account.
Original publication: November 6, 2026, at 18:13:27 UTC+08:00. The timeline below reflects the status reported at that time.
Fee recycling and the 2031 milestone
NU7 activated the Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM), designed to help fund network security as mining subsidies decline through successive halvings.
Under the mechanism, 60% of transaction fees are removed from circulation and will gradually be reissued through future block rewards. Reissuance is scheduled to begin in 2031, following a smooth curve layered on top of the existing halving schedule. The 21 million ZEC supply cap remains unchanged.
The mechanism addresses a question Zcash inherited from Bitcoin: whether transaction fees alone will eventually provide enough compensation for miners to secure the network as block subsidies shrink. Its activation does not establish that this long-term funding challenge has been resolved.
Shielded Labs developed the NSM as its first project. According to the organization’s Jason McGee, it builds on an earlier idea from developer Nate Wilcox called the Zcash Posterity Fund.
A separate proposal under consideration would require Zcash Community Grants (ZCG) to contribute 50,000 ZEC from its treasury to the NSM. That contribution was not reported as approved or completed.
Faster blocks and Sprout retirement
According to the Zcash Foundation, NU7 reduced the target interval between blocks from 75 seconds to 25 seconds. It also retired Sprout, Zcash’s original privacy pool introduced in 2016, leaving coins worth approximately $16 million locked in the pool.
Shorter block intervals increase the risk of orphan blocks: valid blocks discarded because another miner’s block reached the network first. Zakura developers tested 80 nodes across 11 regions with every block full of private transactions. They measured orphan rates of:
- 3.43% with 25-second blocks.
- 1.57% with 75-second blocks.
The developers expected the live network’s orphan rate to remain below 1%, citing more concentrated mining and substantially emptier blocks. That figure was an expectation, not a reported mainnet measurement. Decrypt also noted that Zakura had proposed a quantum privacy fix for shielded swaps the previous month.
NU7 additionally limits the amount of private transaction activity in each block, reducing the data wallets must scan to locate payments, according to the upgrade specification.
Why the halving schedule stayed
Shielded Labs initially proposed replacing Zcash’s halvings with a smooth issuance curve. Community panels supported that approach, but coinholders did not. The alternative design therefore retained halvings.
McGee said Shielded Labs still considered its original design simpler and better, while respecting the process that produced the adopted version. He argued that protocol changes should be difficult and resistant to capture by any single organization, group or influential individual.
Dev Fund deadlines and a conditional NU 7.1
At the time of the report, the community was also debating ZCG’s future and its share of the Dev Fund, the portion of block rewards allocated to development.
The five organizations coordinating coinholder voting—Project Tachyon, Shielded Labs, Valar Group, the Zcash Foundation and ZODL—set an expedited schedule, saying tensions were high and a prolonged debate risked deepening community divisions:
| Milestone | Reported timing and status |
|---|---|
| NU7 mainnet activation | Completed November 6, 2026, at block 3,543,405 |
| Dev Fund proposal deadline | November 8, 2026 |
| Coinholder and community-panel polls | Scheduled for November 16–30, 2026 |
| Possible NU 7.1 upgrade | Conditional on rough consensus; no activation date reported |
| NSM fee reissuance | Scheduled to begin in 2031 |
The coordinating groups said they would support NU 7.1 to implement an outcome if rough consensus emerged. The polling schedule was not a guarantee of agreement or a confirmed upgrade date.
Original source: Decrypt — Zcash’s NU7 Upgrade Goes Live, Recycling 60% of Fees to Fund Future Block Rewards.