Zcash NU7: Locking 16 Million Tokens and Network Acceleration

The Zcash network is set to undergo the NU7 protocol upgrade, which will lock approximately 16 million tokens in the private Sprout pool. If owners fail to withdraw their assets before the new rules take effect, the coins will become unavailable for transactions.

Key changes include accelerating block creation time from 75 to 25 seconds and more than doubling the throughput of the Orchard pool. A new fee mechanism is introduced, where 60% of funds are temporarily removed from circulation to form a reserve for miner payouts.

New restrictions on private operations aim to protect the network from spam and reduce the load on user wallets.