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Days after NU7 tripled block speed, Zcash developers propose cutting block time again to 20 seconds
Summary
Zcash developers have proposed cutting the network's target block time from 25 seconds to 20, just days after Friday's NU7 upgrade cut it from 75 seconds, Cointelegraph and CoinDesk reported.
The draft proposal, posted Sunday, aims to speed first confirmations for shop payments, exchange deposits and cross-chain swaps, and its authors want it in the next community poll and considered for the NU7.1 upgrade.
Both outlets said the change would not raise daily private transaction capacity and would keep the issuance schedule and 21 million ZEC cap; CoinDesk said fewer transactions per block would offset the extra blocks.
CoinDesk said early data shows the orphan-block rate near pre-upgrade levels, which encouraged the push, but the proposal has not been approved or given an activation date.
Key facts
- Cointelegraph identified the authors as ValarDragon and Evan Forbes; CoinDesk named them as Dev Ojha and Evan Forbes.
- CoinDesk: an exchange requiring three confirmations could cut its expected wait from 75 seconds to 60, though real wait times vary because block discovery is random.
- CoinDesk: the orphan rate was 0.69% over the 24 hours ending early Monday per ZecBlock, versus about 0.66% before NU7, but 1.29% over the whole period since NU7; ZecBlock also expanded its monitoring from one node to ten, so the figures aren't an exact comparison.
- CoinDesk: in tests on 80 miners across 12 regions, 1.9% to 3.3% of 20-second blocks were lost depending on software, versus 4.68% in earlier stress tests used to vet 25-second blocks.
- Cointelegraph: NU7 also introduced a Network Sustainability Mechanism that recycles part of transaction fees into future mining rewards while preserving the 21 million ZEC cap.