Zcash Sets a 16 November Poll on Pulling 50,000 ZEC From Grants
Zcash coinholders begin voting on 16 November on a plan to pull 50,000 ZEC out of the treasury behind the network's grants program. The draft Zcash Improvement Proposal was merged into the project's specifications repository on Wednesday. Polls for coinholders and community panels run through 30 November, according to the account CoinDesk published early on Thursday. The coins are not burned. Their value goes back to miners through future block subsidies.
What the poll actually asks
The draft does two things. It asks Zcash Community Grants, the five-member committee that funds wallets, developers and community projects, to move 50,000 ZEC from its treasury into the Network Sustainability Mechanism, the reserve created under ZIP 237 that feeds value back into block rewards over time. It also ends ZCG's automatic 8% share of newly issued ZEC and sends that stream into a new Future Dev and Legal Defense Fund instead.
Nothing can be spent from the new fund yet. A separate proposal has to define how withdrawals work first. The 12% coinholder-controlled fund is untouched. If the community accepts the plan, the 50,000 ZEC has to leave within 30 days. Sean Bowe, Zooko Wilcox and Jason McGee wrote it, and this desk covered their draft when Wilcox announced it on 31 October.
The dollar figure keeps moving
CoinDesk's headline prices the 50,000 ZEC at $50 million. Coindoo, writing on 31 October, put it at $62 million using roughly $1,240 per ZEC, and the draft's own arithmetic assumes $1,300, which lands near $65 million. Those three numbers do not reconcile and none of them supersedes the others. The obligation is denominated in ZEC, so any dollar figure attached to it has a shelf life of about a day. ZEC was quoted at $981 on The Block and $983 on CoinDesk during Thursday's sweep, under all three assumptions.
What the committee would be left with
ZCG holds about 91,453 ZEC on the October snapshot the draft cites, plus roughly $8.8 million in dollars against $2.4 million of outstanding grant liabilities. Take out 50,000 and 41,453 ZEC remain. The tap closes too. The committee currently takes in about 144 ZEC a day from its share of the subsidy, a figure Coindoo derived from the 1.5625 ZEC block reward and 75-second blocks, or near 52,600 ZEC a year.
On runway the accounts part company. CoinDesk reported that the draft estimates about 13 years of committee expenses before the removal and roughly six years after, using an assumed $1,300 ZEC and spending from the first half of 2026. Coindoo's arithmetic gives 6.4 years at that price and 3.5 years at $650. The post-removal numbers broadly agree. The 13-year estimate sits in one account only. Coindoo also noted that the authors flagged the treasury dashboard they worked from as unreconciled, a caveat nothing else read here repeats.
The upgrade this still needs
A poll is not an activation. Redirecting the 8% stream and crediting the donated coins to the mechanism are both consensus changes, so they need a network upgrade after NU7, which went live on 5 November and froze 12,224 ZEC in the Sprout pool. CoinDesk reported that organizers will judge whether the November polls show rough consensus before engineering teams and miners work toward a follow-up upgrade it names NU7.1. Crypto Briefing instead wrote that the 8% share ends once NU7 arrives, which does not fit an upgrade that has already shipped. Neither account confirms the other there.
The draft carries no ZIP number, no activation height and no reference implementation. ZCG's own competing plan, worth about 98,000 ZEC on CoinDesk's reading, was withdrawn on 3 November after criticism from the community. So the vote that opens on Monday settles a direction. It does not settle a date.
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