Zcash Price Hits $1,270 After a 99.9% Governance Landslide

Key Takeaways

Zcash Holders Weren’t Exactly Divided

Nearly 2.4 million ZEC, roughly two-thirds of the 3.6 million eligible coins, participated in the poll that closed Sept. 14. About 2,397,669 ZEC supported ZIP 218 and its proposed 25-second blocks, while just 141.6 ZEC opposed it. On issuance, 2,375,932 ZEC backed keeping halvings, compared with 22,384.875 ZEC favoring a smoother curve.

Coinholders also favored beginning Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM) reissuance in February 2031, disabling legacy Sprout transactions at NU7 and shipping whatever features are ready by Sept. 30. On the two big questions, faster blocks and existing halvings, this wasn’t much of a horse race.

The Vote Happened Without Exposing the Voters

Eligibility came from spendable shielded ZEC held in the Ironwood pool at block 3,459,350 on Aug. 24, with one eligible ZEC representing one vote. Ballots were homomorphically encrypted and split, allowing validators to recover the tally without reconstructing individual identities or balances. A 500,000-ZEC holder could wield 500,000 votes without publicly advertising which option that fortune backed.

Interestingly, a parallel Zcash Community Advisory Panel poll was far less decisive. Among 135 participants, 57 favored smoothing issuance and 54 preferred halvings. Coinholders, on the flip side, backed the existing halving model with 98.9% support.

Twenty-Five-Second Blocks Come With a Price

ZIP 218, drafted by Dev Ojha and Evan Forbes at Valar Group, would cut target block spacing from 75 seconds to 25, reducing the average wait for a first confirmation by a factor of three. Daily issuance wouldn’t triple because the subsidy per block would fall by the same factor, leaving the 21 million ZEC cap untouched.

Speed isn’t free. ZIP 218 cites a theoretical stale-block rate near 3.26%, compared with roughly 0.4% today. A geographically distributed Zebra-node experiment using 2 MB blocks recorded a 4.86% stale rate and 0.37% fork rate, putting more pressure on propagation and other network mechanics.

A 99.9% Vote Still Doesn’t Change the Code

The poll isn’t a consensus rule change. Developers still need to finish the code, review, testing, wallet support and an activation plan before NU7 can become reality. Holders have effectively settled what they want: faster blocks, the same halvings, delayed NSM recycling and obsolete Sprout transactions switched off.

If NU7 activates as scoped, Zcash will target blocks three times faster while retaining its Bitcoin-like issuance clock. Nearly unanimous voting made the preference clear. Now comes the harder test: whether the network can comfortably run at three times the block rate.

Zcash Price Rallies Following the Decision

On Wednesday, ZEC’s price rose 10.4% against the greenback, and at 10 a.m. ET, the privacy coin trades for $1,245 per unit. ZEC tapped an intraday high of $1,270. The asset is doing the opposite of what the rest of the market is doing today, including bitcoin, as most coins are in the red.

ZEC has risen 138% in the last 30 days and 53% over the past two weeks alone. The privacy coin is also up 7,744.8% since it’s all time low reached on July 4, 2024, when it tapped $16.08 per coin that day. Zcash is now the ninth largest market cap in the top ten positions, with a valuation of around $21 billion at press time.