Zcash (ZEC) surged about 12% over the past 24 hours as developers officially agreed on a mainnet activation block for the network’s highly anticipated NU7 upgrade, which is now expected to go live in early November.
The privacy-focused cryptocurrency traded around $1,270 at last look on Wednesday, according to data from CoinGecko. The sudden double-digit price rally coincided directly with a Tuesday GitHub proposal submitted by Zcash developer Sean Bowe, which set the proposed mainnet activation at block 3,543,405. Based on current network parameters and expected block generation rates, this milestone is projected to arrive around Nov. 5.
The latest upward price movement adds to an already impressive year for the asset. The value of the privacy-centric cryptocurrency, which relies on advanced trustless zero-knowledge proofs to secure and anonymize user transactions, is up more than 148% year-to-date amid shifting market dynamics and ongoing protocol improvements.
"Height agreed at ZIP editor meeting," Bowe wrote in the GitHub pull request, noting that the development team still needed to finalize the overarching upgrade specifications before officially merging the proposal into the main codebase. Two core developers have already approved the proposed changes, signaling a strong internal consensus within the development community regarding the upgrade’s readiness and timeline.
The Zakura NU7 dashboard also lists the upcoming upgrade as pending on the mainnet at block 3,543,405, reaffirming the expected early November activation window around Nov. 5.
The NU7 upgrade aims to significantly overhaul network performance by reducing Zcash’s target block time by two-thirds down to just 25 seconds. This substantial acceleration will allow user transactions to receive confirmations much more quickly, addressing historical throughput bottlenecks that have occasionally frustrated users accustomed to the faster settlement times of other modern layer-1 networks. The transition from the current 75-second block time has been undergoing rigorous testing since early October, giving developers a chance to monitor stability in a controlled environment before rolling the changes out to the live network.
Meanwhile, the Zcash Foundation’s NU7 readiness tracker shows that six out of 12 planned development tasks have been successfully completed. The remaining work primarily involves resolving lingering Zebra node synchronization issues and carrying out necessary mainnet preparations to ensure a smooth, uninterrupted hard fork. As of Wednesday, core developers have not yet confirmed whether these outstanding issues could potentially impact the planned early November activation date, leaving the community watching repository updates closely for any further adjustments.
