Key facts
- The draft would cut Zcash's target block interval from 25 seconds to 20 seconds, per developers ValarDragon and Evan Forbes.
- The developers want the change in the next community poll and considered for the NU7.1 upgrade.
- The developers said the change would not increase the network's overall daily capacity for private transactions.
- The proposal would preserve Zcash's existing issuance schedule and its 21 million ZEC supply cap.
- In tests on an 80-miner network across 12 regions, orphan rates were 1.9% with one software implementation and 3.3% with two, the developers reported.
Zcash developers ValarDragon and Evan Forbes submitted a draft Zcash Improvement Proposal on the Zcash community forum on November 8, 2026, proposing to reduce the blockchain's target block interval from 25 seconds to 20 seconds, according to Cointelegraph.
The developers said they want the change included in the next community poll and considered for the upcoming NU7.1 network upgrade. According to the proposal, the reduction would shorten the expected wait for initial transaction confirmations, which the developers said would improve the user experience for point-of-sale payments, exchange deposits and cross-chain swaps.
The developers said the change would not increase the network's overall daily capacity for private transactions. The proposal would also preserve Zcash's existing issuance schedule despite blocks being produced more frequently, and would retain the 2 MB block size limit while adjusting other settings to preserve their existing timing.
The proposal follows the activation of the NU7 upgrade on the mainnet on November 6, 2026, which cut the target block interval from 75 seconds to 25 seconds. NU7 also introduced a Network Sustainability Mechanism designed to recycle a portion of transaction fees into future mining rewards while preserving Zcash's 21 million ZEC supply cap.
Developers tested an 80-miner network across 12 regions to check whether shorter block times would raise the rate of orphaned blocks, which occur when competing blocks are produced and the network rejects one. They reported orphan rates of 1.9% when miners used the same software, Zakura, and 3.3% when they used two implementations, Zakura and Zebra-Andele, close to the rates recorded in NU7 tests supporting the 25-second interval. The developers said the tests were carried out in a controlled environment and results could differ once the change goes live.