A roughly 18-day coinholder vote will use a new privacy-preserving Tokenholder Voting Chain to decide key NU7 design choices, including issuance, fees, block times and release timing.
Zcash coinholders are set to begin voting on Aug. 25 on the scope of the network's upcoming NU7 upgrade in what is shaping up to be one of the project's most significant governance events in recent years. The vote is expected to run for about 18 days and will be considered legitimate only if at least 1 million ZEC participates. Eligibility requires users to hold spendable shielded ZEC in Ironwood at a blockchain snapshot scheduled for Aug. 24 at 19:00 UTC, after which funds can be moved freely while voting remains open until Sept. 12. The process is being coordinated by Valar Group and Project Tachyon through a newly developed Tokenholder Voting Chain that replaces Zcash's previous governance mechanism. The system is designed to let shielded wallet users vote without revealing their identities, with tallies recoverable only after approval from two-thirds of a distributed election authority of at least 10 validators. Coinholders will decide whether to replace traditional halvings with a smoother issuance curve under the Network Sustainability Mechanism, when transaction fee reissuance should begin, whether to deprecate the legacy Sprout transaction format, whether to cut block times from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, and how quickly NU7 should proceed if some features miss the proposed deadline.