Privacy coins have been doing something a little “counterintuitive” lately: while the broader market is still seeing declining volume, Zcash shielded transaction volume has hit a four-year high.
There were 62,379 shielded transactions last week, the highest weekly total since 2022.
There’s concrete news behind the buzz: the development team has finalized the activation height for the NU7 mainnet upgrade—block 3,543,405, expected to go live around November 5.
There’s one core change: block times will be cut from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, tripling confirmation speed.
For use cases like exchanges releasing funds after three confirmations, deposit times will shrink from almost four minutes to just over a minute. For privacy payments, where “how quickly it arrives” is part of the experience, that’s no small improvement.
Two other things are worth noting:
First, 60% of the fees from each block will be locked in a reserve pool and won’t start being returned to miners until February 2031. The halving schedule will remain unchanged. In a September vote, 99.9% of ZEC holders supported faster block times, while 98.9% supported keeping the halving schedule—a remarkably strong consensus.
Second, Sprout, the original privacy system, is being fully retired. Coins still held there after activation will become unspendable. Anyone with old coins should migrate them before early November.
As for development, the activation proposal submitted by Sean Bowe on Tuesday has been approved by two developers, but hasn’t yet been merged into the deployment specification. The testnet has been running since early October.
I think NU7 is Zcash’s most practical upgrade in the past two years: no new narrative, just fixing what’s “slow.” If privacy coins really are headed for a revival, it’ll probably look like this—first make the experience as fast as an ordinary chain, then talk about a privacy premium.
Are you bullish on this privacy-coin wave, or do you think it’ll be short-lived?
$ZEC
#ZcashDevelopersConfirmNovemberDateForNU7Upgrade
#ZEC #PrivacyCoins
This is not investment advice. DYOR. Trading involves risk.
There were 62,379 shielded transactions last week, the highest weekly total since 2022.
There’s concrete news behind the buzz: the development team has finalized the activation height for the NU7 mainnet upgrade—block 3,543,405, expected to go live around November 5.
There’s one core change: block times will be cut from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, tripling confirmation speed.
For use cases like exchanges releasing funds after three confirmations, deposit times will shrink from almost four minutes to just over a minute. For privacy payments, where “how quickly it arrives” is part of the experience, that’s no small improvement.
Two other things are worth noting:
First, 60% of the fees from each block will be locked in a reserve pool and won’t start being returned to miners until February 2031. The halving schedule will remain unchanged. In a September vote, 99.9% of ZEC holders supported faster block times, while 98.9% supported keeping the halving schedule—a remarkably strong consensus.
Second, Sprout, the original privacy system, is being fully retired. Coins still held there after activation will become unspendable. Anyone with old coins should migrate them before early November.
As for development, the activation proposal submitted by Sean Bowe on Tuesday has been approved by two developers, but hasn’t yet been merged into the deployment specification. The testnet has been running since early October.
I think NU7 is Zcash’s most practical upgrade in the past two years: no new narrative, just fixing what’s “slow.” If privacy coins really are headed for a revival, it’ll probably look like this—first make the experience as fast as an ordinary chain, then talk about a privacy premium.
Are you bullish on this privacy-coin wave, or do you think it’ll be short-lived?
$ZEC
#ZcashDevelopersConfirmNovemberDateForNU7Upgrade
#ZEC #PrivacyCoins
This is not investment advice. DYOR. Trading involves risk.