Zcash holders vote to preserve halvings and defer recycled ZEC until 2031

Participating Zcash coinholders have overwhelmingly favored keeping scheduled halvings and waiting until February 2031 to begin returning ZEC collected by the Network Sustainability Mechanism to future block rewards.

The choices were part of a five-question poll on NU7, Zcash's next network upgrade. Between 2.399 million and 2.404 million ZEC participated in each question. All five cleared 1 million ZEC, although the poll rules required only one question to reach that threshold for the overall poll to be considered representative.

The result gives implementers a strong signal from participating economic stake. It does not activate any change, schedule NU7 or guarantee that every preferred feature will ship.

ZEC poll favors halvings over smoother issuance

The largest monetary-policy result came on whether the Network Sustainability Mechanism should replace periodic halvings with a smoother issuance curve. The final tally put 2,375,932.375 ZEC behind preserving halvings, compared with 22,384.875 ZEC for smoothing issuance.

A separate timing question put 2,319,643.75 ZEC behind February 2031 as the date to begin recycling funds that the mechanism removes from circulation. Starting as soon as possible drew 70,239.625 ZEC, while February 2027 received 6,283 ZEC. That preference selects a timetable, but the advisory poll neither encodes the date nor commits the network to activating it.

The remaining questions also produced clear results. About 2.33 million ZEC supported disabling Sprout-era v4 transactions at NU7 activation. Nearly 2.4 million ZEC favored cutting target block spacing from 75 seconds to 25 seconds alongside per-pool action limits. Another 2.38 million ZEC supported shipping NU7 without any applicable feature that misses a Sept. 30 implementation deadline.

Other Zcash constituencies showed less unanimity on the monetary questions. The Zcash Community Advisory Panel, a group that provides community input to the Zcash Foundation, drew 135 of 198 eligible members for a 68% response rate. A community-authored recap characterized ZCAP as narrowly favoring smoother issuance and other panels collectively as preferring recycled issuance to begin as soon as possible. Those signals differ from the ZEC-weighted poll and remain separate advisory inputs.

On Sept. 15, a public post in the results discussion said Shielded Labs, Project Tachyon, ZODL, the Zcash Foundation and Valar Group had aligned on February 2031 as the most conservative interpretation of the outcome. It added that another poll could revisit the timing if conditions change.

As of Sept. 17, Zcash's official NU7 page said the upgrade's activation height had not been set. The preserve-halvings specification work also remained open, with relevant deployment values unassigned.

The next consequential step is therefore implementation rather than another tally. Specifications, code, review, testing and a final activation decision will determine which preferences reach mainnet and when.