Zcash climbed toward $1,400 on Thursday after coinholders backed the privacy-focused network's next major upgrade while keeping its existing Bitcoin-style halving schedule intact. The token reached $1,388 and traded around $1,368, up roughly 11% on the day and 168% over the past 30 days.

The rally followed the outcome of the NU7 governance vote, which drew participation from nearly 2.4 million ZEC — about two-thirds of the eligible voting supply — giving holders a direct role in determining the network's monetary and technical direction.

NU7 Vote Sets Network Direction

Holders voted 98.9% in favor of retaining Zcash's current halving structure rather than adopting a smoother issuance curve. Zcash borrowed the halving model from Bitcoin: block rewards are cut on a fixed schedule, gradually slowing the creation of new coins on the way to a 21-million-coin cap, so the vote effectively reaffirmed the asset's existing emission path.

Voters also approved cutting the target block time from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, a change designed to shorten confirmation waits for anyone sending or receiving funds on the network.

Additional approved measures included:

• Delaying Network Sustainability Mechanism fee reissuance until February 2031
• Disabling transactions tied to the obsolete Sprout privacy pool — the original shielded pool Zcash launched with in 2016, which newer shielded pools with lighter-weight proofs have since replaced
• Proceeding with NU7 while dropping features that remain unfinished after September 30

The voting process used shielded ZEC and encrypted ballots, allowing voting power to reflect token holdings without publicly revealing individual balances or choices. Shielded transactions of that kind rely on zero-knowledge proofs, the cryptography that lets Zcash validate private transfers without exposing sender, recipient, or amount.

Privacy Narrative Gains Momentum

The advance extends a steep recovery for ZEC, which has gained more than 2,500% over the past year and recently ranked among the largest crypto assets by market value. Market participants have paid growing attention to financial privacy as artificial intelligence tools make blockchain activity easier to analyze, while the launch of a Grayscale Zcash exchange-traded fund has broadened institutional access to the asset.

The NU7 vote does not immediately activate every approved change: developers must still implement and test the selected features before the network upgrade takes effect. That gap between approval and activation sets up the milestones to watch — implementation and testing progress ahead of the upgrade, the September 30 cutoff for unfinished features, and the February 2031 date now attached to the fee reissuance. Meanwhile, the token's sharp price increase leaves it exposed to significant volatility as traders assess whether the recent momentum can continue.