Zcash announces 1,000,000 ZEC coinholder vote on NU7 for August 25

Zcash has scheduled a coinholder vote on the parameters of its upcoming NU7 network upgrade for August 25, 2026. The vote runs roughly 18 days, closing September 12; the balance snapshot determining voting eligibility will be taken on August 24 at 19:00 UTC on the Ironwood network.

For the results to count as legitimate, at least 1 million ZEC must participate in the vote. Holders will cast ballots through a new Tokenholder Voting Chain infrastructure built by Valar Group and the Project Tachyon team; shielded-wallet users will be able to vote anonymously, while publishing the results will require sign-off from at least two-thirds of a minimum of 10 network validators. Five proposals are up for the vote: shifting from traditional halving to a Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM) model, when transaction fees re-enter circulation, fully deprecating the legacy Sprout transaction format, cutting block time from 75 to 25 seconds, and whether NU7 should ship on schedule even if some features aren't ready in time.

• The vote runs August 25 through September 12, 2026 — roughly 18 days
• At least 1 million ZEC must participate for the result to be legitimate; the balance snapshot is August 24 at 19:00 UTC
• Five proposals are on the ballot, including cutting block time from 75 to 25 seconds

The vote comes shortly after we covered how Zcash closed a bug in Orchard that could theoretically have allowed fake ZEC to be minted for four years. Both stories fall within the same stretch of intense technical and organizational work on the network — the team is closing out old technical risk while simultaneously building out a community decision-making mechanism for the next major upgrade.

This piece is informational, not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any asset.