Zcash developers agree on block 3,543,405, around November 5, for the NU7 upgrade that cuts block times by two-thirds, and ZEC jumps about 12%

Zcash has a proposed block number for the upgrade it has been aiming at November 5 since at least September. Sean Bowe, a Zcash developer, proposed block 3,543,405 as the mainnet activation height for the NU7 network upgrade in a GitHub pull request on Tuesday, Cointelegraph reported. He wrote that the height was agreed at a ZIP editor meeting, and two developers approved the change, although the upgrade's specifications still had to be finalized before it was merged. Cointelegraph said that block is expected around November 5.

NU7 cuts the target block time from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, per Cointelegraph and CoinDesk; CryptoNinjas attributes the change to ZIP-218. CoinDesk said the upgrade also sends 60% of transaction fees into a reserve that is paid out over time. CryptoNinjas reported in September that ZIP-218 also proposes widening the so-called goldrush window from 17 to 102 blocks, that the halving schedule is unchanged, and that ordinary wallets should see little difference because NU7 adds no new transaction types, while full nodes, indexers and explorers may need updates.

The market reacted first. ZEC rose about 12% over 24 hours to about $1,270 as of Cointelegraph's report at 10:15 UTC on Wednesday, which cited CoinGecko, and stood at about $1,351, up 11.7% over 24 hours, at 20:17 UTC, per The Motley Fool's CoinGecko table. CoinDesk said open interest in ZEC futures rose 24% against the 12% price gain, and that the coin was still down about 12% over the month.

What comes next: the Zcash Foundation's readiness tracker showed six of 12 tasks complete, with Zebra node synchronization work outstanding, and developers had not said whether that could move the date, per Cointelegraph.