NU7 Is Live: 25-Second Blocks and the Network Sustainability Mechanism
NU7 activated at block 3,543,405 on November 6 at 02:34:02 UTC (announcement). Target block spacing fell from 75 seconds to 25, and the block subsidy was divided by three, so daily issuance stays the same. The first 9,819 NU7 blocks averaged 25.5 seconds through the end of November 8. On November 8 alone, 3,453 blocks arrived, or one every 25.02 seconds.
From now on, 60% of each block's fees go to the Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM) reserve, to be reissued through future block rewards from around 2031. The reserve held 369.47 ZEC at the close of November 6 and 371.23 ZEC on November 9.
ZecBlock's node recorded 24 one-block reorgs in those 9,819 blocks, and none went deeper. Orphan rates depend on how many competing blocks an observer catches: zkDragon reports 0.89% after the upgrade against 0.66% before.
Sprout Freezes With 12,224 ZEC Inside
Sprout spends require version 4 transactions, and NU7 made those invalid. The pool's balance has held at 12,224.21 ZEC since activation. It held about 22,591 ZEC at the start of September, and most of the drop came from the single 9,094 ZEC migration on November 1. CoinDesk valued the frozen balance at about $16 million.
ZCG and the Dev Fund: A Poll Opens November 16
Project Tachyon, Shielded Labs, Valar Group, the Zcash Foundation and ZODL, the five organizations that coordinate the coinholder voting chain, published a timeline for deciding what happens to ZCG's share of the Dev Fund. Proposals closed on November 8 at 23:59 UTC. Draft poll questions come out November 9 for a week of public comment. Polls for coinholders and community panels run November 16–30. If rough consensus emerges, engineering teams and miners would ship the result in a small upgrade called NU7.1.
The arguments kept coming. Paul Brigner argued for balanced governance and investment in adoption. T. S. Felstead opposed both the lockbox proposal and ZAP as written, and wants both streams to expire in 2028 as scheduled. iJaack filed a draft ZIP so coinholder grants cover business development, developer relations and education, after finding that 93.1% of approved Q3 money went to security and core infrastructure.
How the vote itself should work is now its own debate. Arya's draft ZIP would weight votes by how long coins are locked after the snapshot. Zec.rocks plans a parallel December poll that tries to give each coinholder one vote.