Zcash NU7 Priorities Poll (March 2025)

public election created by Jack Gavigan

This is a ZCAP poll to solicit the Zcash community’s input on which features should be prioritized in the next Zcash network upgrade.

The next network upgrade (NU) will be NU7, tentatively scheduled for the second half of 2025. The ZIP Editors, with input from node implementors, have published their viability assessment of the changes proposed for NU7.

There are concerns that trying to introduce too many changes at once may be risky and/or further delay NU7. Therefore, we are soliciting ZCAP’s input on which features should be prioritized, and will take this into consideration if the core engineers advise that some features should be postponed to a future NU, in order to streamline or simplify NU7.

Zcash Shielded Assets (ZSAs)
ZSAs will allow anyone to issue and transact digital assets on the Zcash blockchain (similar to Ethereum's ERC-20 tokens). This feature has been implemented by QEDIT, funded by several Zcash Community Grants. It will be ready for deployment in NU7.

The ZSA proposal consists of two interdependent ZIPs: ZIP 226 (Transfer and Burn of ZSAs) and ZIP 227 (Issuance of ZSAs). This poll also solicits input on what should happen to ZSA issuance fees.

Network Sustainability Mechanism (NSM)
Please review this background information and FAQ from Shielded Labs who has proposed three separate ZIPs, which can be deployed selectively or in stages:

• ZIP 233 (Network Sustainability Mechanism: Removing Funds From Circulation) would enable the voluntary removal of ZEC from circulation.
  
• ZIP 234 (Network Sustainability Mechanism: Issuance Smoothing) would smooth the issuance curve, and reintroduce ZEC that has been removed from circulation in a predictable manner, as part of future block rewards while maintaining the 21 million coin cap.
  
• ZIP 235 (Remove 60% of Transaction Fees From Circulation) would remove 60% of transaction fees from circulation.

The NSM has also been discussed on the forum. ZIPs 234 and 235 depend on ZIP 233. ZIP 233 assumes that a way to reintroduce burnt funds will be deployed at some point; ZIP 234 is not the only possible way to do so. The ZIP Editors’ viability assessment raised questions over the inclusion of ZIP 235.

Memo Bundles
ZIP 231 proposes changes to the Zcash transaction format to allow larger memos, and to enable memo data to be shared between multiple recipients of a transaction. If this change is not included in NU7, it will likely not be possible to implement it until 2026 or later (to minimize disruption caused by transaction format changes).

Disallow v4 transactions (prevent spending of Sprout funds)
ZIP 2003 would disallow V4 transactions, simplifying the Zcash protocol, and reducing the attack surface. However, it would no longer be possible to spend ZEC held in the Sprout shielded pool. This proposal has been discussed on the forum.

For more information on this poll, please visit https://zfnd.org/nu7-priorities-poll-march-2025