Zcash after the NU7 upgrade: ZEC climbs 7 percent while the market falls

Zcash is moving against the market on Friday. At 3:51 pm CET on November 6, 2026, one ZEC cost $1,374.92 according to CoinGecko, roughly €1,234, which is 7.3 percent more than 24 hours earlier. Over the same period Bitcoin lost 3.8 percent and Ether 5.3 percent. The backdrop is the NU7 network upgrade, which activated overnight at block 3,543,405 and cuts the block time from 75 to 25 seconds.

Zcash (ZEC) ranks tenth among cryptocurrencies with a market capitalization of $23.4 billion. The upgrade changes more than speed. Part of every transaction fee now flows into a reserve, and the network's oldest private pool, Sprout, has been closed since activation. The sections below cover the numbers behind it, where the price is finding support and what investors in Germany should consider when buying and storing ZEC.

NU7 at block 3,543,405: the Zcash upgrade has been live since 02:34 UTC

On Zcash, a network upgrade is a hard fork. From a fixed block height new consensus rules apply, and nodes running old software can no longer follow the new blocks. NU7 stands for "Network Upgrade 7", the seventh such step since the network launched in 2016.

According to CoinDesk, block 3,543,405 was mined at 02:34 UTC on November 6, which is 03:34 German time. By 04:59 UTC another 225 blocks had followed at an average interval of about 39 seconds. That is still above the new target because mining difficulty first has to adjust to the shorter block time. The activation height had been fixed since late October; the November 5 date was only an estimate, since the moment a block height is reached depends on actual block production.

The technical basis is set out in ZIP 218 from the Zcash developers. A ZIP (Zcash Improvement Proposal) is a public document that records every change to the protocol rules. Besides the new block time, it also sets a cap on private transactions per block.

Zcash fee reserve: 60 percent of transaction fees stay in the pot

The second major change concerns miners' income. Until now they received transaction fees in full. Since NU7, CoinDesk reports, only 40 percent goes to the miner who finds the block and 60 percent goes into a reserve. From around February 2031 this pot is meant to fund future block rewards. Citing the Zcash Foundation, the news site CoinCentral gives block 8,939,664 as the starting point for redistribution.

The mechanism has a name, the Network Sustainability Mechanism, and a clear purpose. The maximum supply of 21 million ZEC stays untouched even as issuance of new coins keeps falling over the years. Miners lose part of their income in the short term, while the network gains a funding source for the period in which the reward per block has become very small.

Because the number of blocks rises along with the faster block time, the reward per block falls by a factor of three. According to the Zcash Foundation, the four-year halving cycle stays in place, with halving intervals measured in blocks lengthened accordingly. Nothing fundamental changes about supply for holders; what is new is only the route by which fees flow back into the system.

Zcash price on Friday: from $1,256 to $1,375 within six hours

The price reacted in two stages. Shortly after activation, during the night, ZEC traded at about $1,310 according to CoinGecko's hourly prices. By the morning it had slipped with the broader market to around $1,256. In the afternoon it turned sharply: just under $1,290 around midday, and $1,378 shortly afterwards.

No single report explaining the afternoon jump was available at the time of writing. What is documented is that ZEC clearly decoupled from the rest of the market. Among the 25 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, Zcash was the only one up by more than one percent at that point. Trading volume over the past 24 hours was $1.56 billion according to CoinGecko, one fifteenth of its total market capitalization.

Traders had positioned for the upgrade before the deadline. On November 5, CoinCentral reported a 9.4 percent gain to $1,310 in the previous day's session and attributed it to expectations around NU7. Despite the recovery, ZEC is still about 57 percent below its all-time high of $3,191.93 from October 2016.

25-second blocks: three confirmations in 75 seconds instead of almost 240

For everyday use, the shorter block time is the most noticeable change. A confirmation means a transaction has been included in a block; each further block on top makes it harder to reverse. Many exchanges credit a deposit only after several confirmations. With three confirmations that used to take just under four minutes, and according to CoinCentral it will now take about 75 seconds.

Throughput rises as well. ZIP 218 puts the number of simple private payments in the Orchard protocol at about 6.6 per second, up from roughly 2.9. CoinDesk speaks of more than six instead of about three. Orchard is the newer of Zcash's shielded pools, in which sender, recipient and amount remain encrypted. How quickly an exchange credits a ZEC deposit is still up to the exchange itself; the new block time only shortens the wait where the exchange measures its confirmation rule in blocks rather than minutes.

Orphaned blocks and wallet sync: the cost of a shorter block time

Faster blocks have a known drawback. The shorter the interval, the more often two miners find a valid block almost simultaneously, and one of them is discarded. In a test by the Zakura developers, a group formed by Valar Group and Project Tachyon, on 80 machines across eleven regions, that share was 3.43 percent at a 25-second block time and 1.57 percent at 75 seconds, CoinDesk reports. For users, an orphaned block does not mean lost funds; its transactions land in the next valid block.

NU7 sets a cap against a second problem. More blocks mean more data a wallet has to scan for private balances. ZIP 218 therefore limits private actions per block to a shared budget of 330 units. In the worst case, the daily volume of data a wallet has to download for synchronization falls from about 271 to about 169 megabytes, a drop of 37 percent. For anyone using a smartphone wallet, that number matters more than the block time itself.

Node operators had to install compatible software before activation. The Zcash Foundation released version 7.0.0 of its Zebra node software for this, which also closed seven security vulnerabilities. Since NU7, transactions in the old version 4 format are also invalid.

Sprout pool shut down: 12,224 ZEC can no longer be spent

The harshest consequence of the upgrade hits a small group of holders. Sprout is Zcash's first shielded pool, dating from 2016. NU7 shut it down, and according to CoinDesk around 12,224 ZEC that were still held there can no longer be spent. At Friday afternoon's price that is worth just under $16.8 million.

The coins may not be lost for good. Zcash co-founder Sean Bowe has outlined a way owners could later recover their Sprout balances. According to CoinDesk, however, no such mechanism had been approved as of Friday. Anyone who still holds ZEC from the early days and does not know which pool it sits in should check in their wallet software. Balances on transparent addresses and in the Sapling and Orchard pools are not affected by the shutdown.

For market supply the figure barely matters. According to CoinCentral, about 17.02 million ZEC are in circulation; the frozen Sprout coins account for less than 0.1 percent of that.

Zcash since November 4: from a funding dispute to upgrade day

cryptoticker.io last reported on Zcash on November 4, when the Zcash Community Grants committee withdrew its plan covering 98,000 ZEC (see our report on the withdrawn ZCG plan). That evening ZEC traded at $1,283.61, with a daily range from $1,159.27 to $1,347.03.

Since then the picture has changed in two respects. The price is about 7 percent higher and on Friday broke above that day's high of $1,347. And the upgrade the market waited on for weeks is no longer a date but a reality. The question therefore shifts from activation to usage: whether faster blocks and cheaper synchronization bring more private payments will only show up in on-chain data in a few weeks.

Zcash price levels: $1,392 above, $1,217 below

On the upside, the first level is $1,392.21, the seven-day high reported by CoinCentral on November 5. According to the same report, analyst Ardi had named $1,370 as an entry condition for a position as early as October 27; ZEC crossed that threshold on Friday. Whether it holds remains open.

On the downside, the area around $1,256, where the price turned on Friday morning, offers the first reference point. Below that lies the 24-hour low of $1,217.35. If ZEC falls below it, the entire rise since activation would be wiped out. The range between $1,217 and $1,392 spans a good 14 percent, a move Zcash has made several times within a few days in recent weeks.

Anyone trading ZEC with leverage should know this range. At ten times leverage, a counter-move of around ten percent is enough to lose the entire collateral. A liquidation is the forced closure of a leveraged position by the exchange once the posted collateral no longer covers the losses.

ZEC holders in Germany: EU trading ban from July 2027 and a one-year holding period

For buying in Germany, the provider comes first. Only firms licensed under the EU's MiCA crypto regulation may offer crypto assets in the EU. Zcash has an added twist: from July 2027, crypto service providers in the EU may no longer hold or trade so-called privacy coins, as cryptoticker.io described on August 23, 2026 in its article on the EU trading ban for Zcash. If you buy ZEC on an exchange, you should therefore know from the start which self-custody wallet you can later move the coins to. Which platforms currently list ZEC and what they charge is shown in our crypto exchange comparison.

For tax purposes, ZEC is treated in Germany like Bitcoin. Gains from a sale are tax-free under Section 23 of the German Income Tax Act if more than one year passes between purchase and sale. Within that period, gains of up to €1,000 a year remain tax-free under an exemption threshold; above it, the entire gain is taxable. Swapping ZEC for another coin counts as a sale. If you move ZEC between transparent and private addresses, keep your own purchase records, because tax tools do not automatically recognize private transactions.

Zcash after NU7: above $1,392 the weekly high would be broken

NU7 started without visible disruption, the network is producing blocks, and on Friday the price broke away from a weak overall market. What remains open is whether the new rules bring more usage over time and whether the price clears $1,392. Three steps for holders and anyone interested:

1. Choose how to buy: Check whether your exchange lists ZEC and holds a MiCA license. Our crypto exchange comparison gives an overview.
2. Sort out storage: Because of the EU ban from July 2027, keep ZEC in your own wallet whose keys only you know. Devices that support Zcash are listed in our hardware wallet comparison.
3. Document the holding period: Record the purchase date and price of every ZEC position so the one-year period can be proven. The programs in our crypto tax software comparison help with this.

(As of November 6, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)