Edition #26Sunday, September 20, 2026

Zcash Weekly — September 20, 2026

NU7 confirmed: testnet Oct 6, mainnet Nov 5. Shielded Ledger support is live. Q3 retroactive grants vote open with 37 proposals. Cross-chain volume crosses $550M. Sprout recovery guide published.

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Archive note: this edition uses the current ZecBlock name and links. Reporting and publication dates are unchanged.

OkTop Stories

NU7 Is Confirmed: Testnet October 6, Mainnet November 5

All Zcash development orgs — Shielded Labs, Tachyon, Valar Group, ZODL, and the Zcash Foundation — reached unanimous agreement on the NU7 timeline and contents. The upgrade includes 25-second block spacing (ZIP-218), disabling v4 transactions, and NSM integration (ZIP-234/235) with halvings preserved and reissuance starting February 2031. New transaction formats are not in this upgrade. Sean Bowe called it the most aligned the ecosystem has been: "NU7 is coming!" NU7 Timeline · ZecBlock governance tracker

NU7 Timeline

Shielded Ledger Support Is Live

Vizor shipped shielded ZEC support for Ledger hardware wallets — desktop and mobile. This has been in the works since April 2025. Hardware wallet users can now send and receive shielded Zcash without giving up custody. Ledger thread

Ledger thread

Q3 Retroactive Grants: 37 Proposals, Vote Is Live

The largest retroactive grants round to date opened September 17. 37 proposals from teams that built first and applied for funding after. The coinholder poll closes September 29 at 20:00 UTC. Vote in Vizor. Voting thread · Proposals

Voting thread

### NU7 Is Confirmed: Testnet October 6, Mainnet November 5

### Shielded Ledger Support Is Live

### Q3 Retroactive Grants: 37 Proposals, Vote Is Live

Ecosystem

"Zcash Governance Is a Superpower."

Josh Swihart published a long-form essay on how Zcash governance has evolved — from the Founders' Reward debates to coinholder voting — and why Shielded Labs thinks the current model is part of what makes ZEC valuable. Forum

Forum

Arjun Khemani interviews zkDragon.

"It is meaningfully different to be a Zcash user today than literally six weeks ago." The interview covers Zcash's security and UX improvements since Ironwood. Sean Bowe boosted it, noting wallets no longer need a "waiting" screen.

Passport Prime confirms shielded ZEC support.

Foundation Devices CEO Zach Herbert confirmed that the open-source hardware wallet will support shielded Zcash, following Ledger's progress. Two hardware wallet paths are now active. Forum

Forum

FROST threshold-custody library open-sourced.

The zyn-io team released their 2-of-3 threshold custody library for shielded ZEC — extracted from their own production use. Forum · GitHub

Forum

NozyWallet CLI ships easier developer onboarding.

Forum

Governance & Grants

New grant applications filed:

- [Verified Pasta Curve Operations
Poseidon R1CS Constraints
and Folding](https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/grant-application-verified-pasta-curve-operations-poseidon-r1cs-constraints-and-folding/57712)

The Q3 retroactive grants vote (37 proposals) dominates this cycle — see Top Stories.

The Ironwood formal verification grant (Ariel Gabizon) and the Pasta/Poseidon verification grant are both about making Zcash's cryptographic foundations machine-checkable — continuing the theme from last edition's formally verified prover.

Protocol & Development

Sprout Recovery: The Clock Is Ticking

NU7 mainnet is targeted for November 5. That means v4 transactions get disabled. A community guide on recovering old Sprout wallets went up this week and immediately became one of the most active threads (17 posts, 313 views). If you still have ZEC in a wallet.dat or zc-prefixed address, now is the time to move it. Recovery guide

Recovery guide

Tweets of the Week

"NU7 is coming! All of the Zcash development orgs have come to unanimous agreement about the contents and timeline of our next network upgrade."
— @ebfull · tweet

"Shielded ledger support is live for Zcash!!!"
— @zkDragon · tweet

"You can't reform the system from within the system. The Bitcoin maxi fallacy. We build anew, better, adjacent. Speech, in code, with the self sovereign choice to opt in."
— @jswihart · tweet

"It is meaningfully different to be a Zcash user today than literally six weeks ago."
— @arjunkhemani, interviewing @zkDragon on Zcash's post-Ironwood improvements

Forum Highlights

NU7 Timeline thread

(1,040 views, 42 likes) is the week's most-read post. The unanimous org alignment and concrete dates (testnet Oct 6, mainnet Nov 5) put a timeline on everything from Sprout deprecation to 25-second blocks. Thread

Thread

Sprout recovery guide

drew immediate engagement (17 posts). Users are actively helping each other recover old wallets before the v4 freeze. Thread

Thread

"Zcash Governance Is a Superpower"

(29 likes) — jswihart's essay argues that Zcash's governance model is an underappreciated competitive advantage, not just process overhead. Thread

Thread

Privacy Corner

$550M in Cross-Chain Volume

Cross-chain ZEC volume crossed $550M all-time this week — up from $422M just two weeks ago. That's $128M in cross-chain flows in 14 days, the fastest growth rate we've tracked.

The 24-hour numbers tell the story: $12.7M in volume across 1,228 swaps. All-time swaps passed 83,000. This isn't a single spike — it's sustained daily volume at levels that didn't exist before the ETF listing and the price run.

What's notable is that this volume is flowing through decentralized bridges, not just centralized exchanges. Users are moving ZEC across chains, which means the privacy features matter — you don't bridge to a privacy chain unless you intend to use the privacy.

Network Snapshot

ZEC Price

$1,539.28 · +19.2%

Block Height

3,495,441 · +9,691

Network Upgrade

NU6.3 Ironwood · —

Hashrate

28.94 GSol/s · −3.6%

Zcash Privacy Index

Privacy Score

42 · 38

Shielded TX % (all-time)

24.0% · 18.7%

Ironwood Pool

3,997,884 ZEC · 3,946,552 ZEC

Orchard Pool

383,877 ZEC · 414,847 ZEC

Sapling Pool

502,450 ZEC · 511,525 ZEC

Sprout Pool

22,429 ZEC · 22,491 ZEC

Cross-Chain Activity (24h)

24h Volume

$12.75M

24h Swaps

1,228

All-Time Volume

$550.6M

All-Time Swaps

83,547

Network Health

Hashrate

28.94 GSol/s

24h Transactions

—

Pulse Anomalies (7d)

13 (5 extreme)

Network Pulse flagged 13 anomalies this week, including 5 extreme events — fee market surges, shielded transaction spikes, and volume spikes. The network is busy.

Explore live data →

Tool Updates

ZecBlock:

No major feature releases this week. Focus on stability and NU7 governance tracker updates.

CipherPay:

No new features this week.

What's Ahead

Sep 29Q3 Retroactive Grants coinholder poll closes
Oct 6NU7 testnet activation
Oct 27–29Zcon7, Cancún — Zcash turns 10
Nov 5NU7 mainnet activation