Zcash wants to cut block times from 25 to 20 seconds. What would users gain?
NU7 recently reduced the target time between blocks from 75 to 25 seconds. Now, authors on the Zcash forum are proposing a further reduction to 20 seconds and want to put the proposal up for feedback as part of NU7.1. As of 9/11, the proposal was still under discussion.
If approved, users may have to wait less for a transaction’s first confirmation. The clearest benefit would be when paying at a checkout or when an asset-exchange service needs to see a transaction included in a new block before proceeding. Actual waiting times will still depend on when the transaction is included in a block and how many confirmations the service requires.
The draft reduces the reward per block to keep the expected amount of ZEC issued each day unchanged. The daily limit on private transaction processing also remains unchanged. Blocks will appear more frequently, but each block will have a smaller budget for processing private transactions.
I’ll be watching the rate of blocks that are orphaned from the main chain during testing, and how wallets and payment services implement the change if the proposal is approved. Only then will I be able to assess what difference a five-second reduction makes in real-world use.
If you use Zcash for payments, do you think an extra five seconds saved per block would make a meaningful difference?
Sources — Zcash Community Forum and the ZIP draft on GitHub.
$ZEC
NU7 recently reduced the target time between blocks from 75 to 25 seconds. Now, authors on the Zcash forum are proposing a further reduction to 20 seconds and want to put the proposal up for feedback as part of NU7.1. As of 9/11, the proposal was still under discussion.
If approved, users may have to wait less for a transaction’s first confirmation. The clearest benefit would be when paying at a checkout or when an asset-exchange service needs to see a transaction included in a new block before proceeding. Actual waiting times will still depend on when the transaction is included in a block and how many confirmations the service requires.
The draft reduces the reward per block to keep the expected amount of ZEC issued each day unchanged. The daily limit on private transaction processing also remains unchanged. Blocks will appear more frequently, but each block will have a smaller budget for processing private transactions.
I’ll be watching the rate of blocks that are orphaned from the main chain during testing, and how wallets and payment services implement the change if the proposal is approved. Only then will I be able to assess what difference a five-second reduction makes in real-world use.
If you use Zcash for payments, do you think an extra five seconds saved per block would make a meaningful difference?
Sources — Zcash Community Forum and the ZIP draft on GitHub.
$ZEC
