Zcash NU7 upgrade goes live with 25-second block target

Less work for wallets

NU7 also reduces the amount of work wallets have to do to find private payments addressed to them. Because shielded transfers are encrypted, a wallet has to check incoming data to discover which payments belong to its user. Trimming that effort should help wallets sync and display balances more efficiently.

Fees set aside for future miners

The upgrade additionally sets aside fees for future miners. The change is aimed at the long-term economics of securing the network, though further details were not available at the time of writing.

Why it matters

Speed and wallet usability are among the main hurdles for privacy-preserving cryptocurrencies, where extra cryptographic work can make the experience slower than on transparent chains. By shortening block times and reducing the scanning burden, NU7 targets both problems at once.

Users and exchanges running Zcash software will be operating on the upgraded network now that NU7 is active.