The privacy coin's largest protocol overhaul in years went live on mainnet at block 3,543,405, after a September governance poll in which about 98.9% of participating ZEC holders backed the changes.

Target block spacing drops from 75 to 25 seconds, so three confirmations now take roughly 75 seconds instead of about 225.

A new Network Sustainability Mechanism removes 60% of the transaction fees in each block from circulation and starts paying them back to miners around February 2031, without lifting the 21 million ZEC cap. The upgrade also retires the original Sprout shielded pool: version 4 transactions are no longer valid and any remaining Sprout funds become unspendable.

Node operators and services had to move to the NU7-compatible releases, including Zebra 7.0.0, ahead of activation. Faster settlement is aimed at making shielded payments practical for everyday use.