Zcash token holders have voted to approve a series of protocol changes for the upcoming NU7 update. Nearly 2.4 million ZEC were used to support reducing the block interval from 75 to 25 seconds, with 99.9% of participating coins in favor. This change aims to increase transaction throughput for Orchard standard transactions from 2.9 to 6.6 transactions per second.
Regarding emission, 98.9% of the votes favored maintaining the current halving schedule over a gradual reduction model. The vote involved approximately 66% of the 3.6 million ZEC held in the Ironwood pool at the time of the snapshot. Participants also supported disabling the legacy Sprout pool and set February 2031 as the target date for the Network Sustainability Mechanism.
The voting process utilized a privacy-preserving system where votes were encrypted, allowing for tallying without revealing individual balances. While the results are advisory and do not automatically alter the protocol, they provide a roadmap for the development team. The proposed features must still undergo implementation and testing before being integrated into the NU7 release.
