Zcash developers are targeting Nov. 5 for the NU7 mainnet activation after organizations and engineering teams reached “unanimous agreement” on the upgrade's contents and its estimated timeline.

On Thursday, Zcash developer Sean Bowe said in a post on X that NU7 is scheduled to activate on the testnet on Oct. 6, giving developers a live environment to evaluate the changes before any mainnet height is finalized. A final decision on the mainnet upgrade and its activation height is set for Oct. 20, following an assessment of NU7's testnet performance. The proposed timeline was also detailed in a post to the Zcash community forum.

The upgrade would reduce Zcash's target block spacing from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, roughly tripling the rate at which new blocks are produced and typically shortening the wait for a transaction's first confirmation. It would also disable version 4 transactions and integrate the Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM), which governs the network's issuance over time. Under the selected NSM configuration, Zcash's halving schedule would be preserved, with previously removed supply reintroduced beginning in February 2031.

Bowe said NU7 would not introduce new transaction formats and should not significantly affect wallets, although full nodes, indexers and block explorers may require adjustments. That split follows from the nature of the changes: the upgrade alters consensus rules rather than how transactions are constructed, so wallet software is largely unaffected while infrastructure that processes chain data directly carries more of the adjustment burden.

Community support for the package was decisive. On Wednesday, ZEC holders voted overwhelmingly in favor of the shorter block and the preservation of the halving schedule: 98.9% backed keeping halvings, while 99.9% of the Zcash (ZEC)-weighted vote supported the faster-block proposal.

The activation timeline comes amid a recent surge in ZEC's price. On Thursday, Zcash (ZEC) rose about 20% over 24 hours as privacy coins substantially outperformed the wider market, according to market coverage. Glassnode data showed the privacy coin sector was 213% above its level at Bitcoin's October 2025 peak, while a basket excluding ZEC was up about 85% over the past year.

Zcash, launched in 2016, is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency that uses zero-knowledge proofs to enable shielded transactions. Its current 75-second block spacing dates back to the Blossom network upgrade in 2020, which halved the network's original 150-second target interval.

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Source: Cointelegraph