NU7 Coinholder Vote Opens August 25
The biggest governance event in Zcash since the original ZCAP polls. Sean Bowe (ebfull) announced on August 5 that Valar Group and Project Tachyon will coordinate a coinholder vote on the scope of NU7, running approximately 20 days from August 25 through September 14. Eligibility requires spendable shielded ZEC in the Ironwood pool at a blockchain snapshot on August 24 at 19:00 UTC — funds can move freely after the snapshot.
Five policy questions are on the ballot: whether to replace halvings with a smoother issuance curve (NSM), when transaction fee reissuance should begin, whether to deprecate the legacy Sprout format, whether to cut block times from 75s to 25s, and how aggressively to hold a September 30 implementation deadline. The results will only be recognized if at least 1,000,000 ZEC participates — roughly 5.9% of circulating supply. The Zcash Foundation separately announced that a ZCAP NU7 poll opens August 27. Two governance tracks, one upgrade. CipherScan NU7 tracker · Forum
Ironwood Crosses $1 Billion
Twelve days after activation, the Ironwood pool crossed $1 billion in value on August 8 — making it the largest shielded pool on Zcash, overtaking Orchard. Over half of all Orchard ZEC has now migrated through the turnstile. The pool holds 2.1M+ ZEC at time of writing, up from 828K a week ago. Migration velocity remains strong: 250,000+ ZEC crossed in a single 24-hour period on August 7 alone. Every ZEC that moves is one more coin with formally verified circuit guarantees.
Zcash Foundation Q2 2026 Report
The Foundation published its second-quarter report on August 6, covering the full arc from the Orchard bug discovery in late May through Ironwood's clean activation on July 28. The engineering team shipped seven Zebra releases during the quarter, cut full sync time to ~14 hours, finalized FROST v3.0.0 with automatic key zeroization, and began early NU7 and Ironwood work. ZF also formally assumed stewardship of the Zcash GitHub organization, the z.cash domain, and the @Zcash handle on X — partnering with ZecHub to manage the account day-to-day. ZF Report
ZCG August 3 Meeting: Eight Grants Declined
The committee cleared a long backlog, declining eight grants: Ironwood Sentinel (#376), Zcash UK & Ireland (#374), VibeQuest (#373), ZIP-229 Conformance Suite (#372), Zebra Mempool Adversarial Resilience (#362), Legitimacy Beyond Transparency (#360), FROST Threshold Custody (#358 — second attempt after #351 declined in July), and Zcash Belgium Chapter (#384). ZCG is tightening criteria: "lacking an end-to-end application" was cited repeatedly. No new approvals this cycle. Forum #56909