Zcash (ZEC) Developers Propose 20-Second Block Time in Draft ZIP

A Second Cut Days After NU7

Days after the NU7 upgrade cut the target block interval of Zcash (ZEC) from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, developers ValarDragon and Evan Forbes want the number to fall again. The pair posted a draft Zcash Improvement Proposal (ZIP) on the Zcash community forum on Sunday, asking that the next community poll carry a reduction to 20 seconds and that the upcoming NU7.1 network upgrade weigh the change. It would be the second adjustment to block pacing on Zcash inside a week, touching a figure that had stood at 75 seconds until Friday.

A shorter spacing shortens the expected wait for a transaction's first confirmation, the earliest signal that a payment is moving and the moment most payment flows actually wait for. The draft names the settings where that wait bites hardest: point-of-sale payments, deposits sent to exchanges and cross-chain swaps. In a swap bridging two chains, less time between quote and settlement narrows the window for slippage. At a physical or digital point of sale, payer and merchant watch the same clock, which is where the two developers locate the largest gain in day-to-day experience.

The boundaries are written into the text. The change would leave the network's total daily capacity for private transactions unchanged, and it would keep Zcash's issuance schedule as written even with blocks produced more frequently. Timing and transaction flow are the whole subject: the privacy features of the layer 1 blockchain protocol stay as they are, and no change to the supply cap is proposed. Market context sits alongside the technical debate: the ZEC price slipped 4.8% over the past 24 hours, and our earlier coverage tracked post-rally momentum cooling near $1,300 after a 147% year-to-date climb.

What Friday's NU7 Activation Changed

The faster baseline the draft builds on is only days old. NU7 activated on the mainnet on Friday and cut the network's target block spacing from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, a reduction of roughly two thirds. Block spacing is the cadence at which new blocks are expected to arrive, and on a linear chain rather than a directed acyclic graph it effectively sets how quickly a first confirmation can land. The 25-second figure therefore stands as the number the ZIP would amend; without Friday's change, a 20-second request would read as a different proposal entirely.

NU7 carried a second change with a longer reach. The upgrade introduced the Network Sustainability Mechanism, a design that channels part of the fees users pay into future mining rewards, backing long-term network security and miner incentives as block subsidies follow their scheduled decline. The structure was built while preserving Zcash's total supply ceiling of 21 million ZEC, so it recycles existing payments rather than minting anything new, and the written issuance path is untouched. For a user sending shielded funds to an exchange before a deposit deadline, the interval difference shows up as minutes of waiting across a session; the draft treats that wait as a product question, not an economic one. Our separate coverage of the activation adds one more documented effect: the upgrade will lock 12,226 ZEC in the Sprout privacy pool. Taken together, the Friday package adjusted pacing, fee distribution and one pool balance in a single hard fork.

Read together, the two items describe a network turning the same dial in deliberate steps. Leaving the 20-second figure out of NU7 and offering it as a poll question for NU7.1 keeps the decision in community hands, and members applying the usual DYOR scrutiny will find both the benefit and the limits written into the draft itself. The proposal pulls a single lever on a chain where spacing alone sets confirmation cadence, and it names its own ceiling: the daily capacity for private transactions and the 21 million ZEC cap are the constraints that survived both changes. Those limits, not the faster clock, are what the community poll will be asked to weigh.