Privacy-oriented cryptocurrency ZCash is preparing for the first halving in its history. Its activation will take place approximately on November 18 at block # 1,046 400.
As a result of the halving, the miners' reward will decrease from 6.25 ZEC to 3.125 ZEC. At the same time, the fifth major update called Canopy will be activated. It will launch a network development fund and enhance the security of ZCash.
The upcoming changes behind the development of the cryptocurrency Electric Coin Company (ECC) and the Zcash Foundation agreed in July. The Canopy update includes five ZCash (ZIP) blockchain improvement proposals.
The activation of ZIP-207 and ZIP-214 will create a network development fund. The first proposal defines a mechanism to support funding streams allocated from the block addition reward portion. The second describes the changes in the consensus rules regarding the proposed structure of the development fund. The new rules will be in effect for the next four years.
With their activation, the share of miners from the funds received as a reward will be 80%. Of the remaining 20% of the funds, 8% will go to the grant fund, 7% will be reserved for the ECC, 5% for the Zcash Foundation.
ZIP-211 will disable the ability to add new values to pool balances that support old address format (Sprout). By doing so, the developers are taking another step towards completely abandoning the old Sprout protocol (the first iteration of Zcash), reducing the network attack surface and the overall complexity of the source code.
ZIP-212 will eliminate the potential privacy compromise associated with the use of diversified addresses. In particular, the proposal will avoid the assumption of the reliability of the zk-SNARK zero knowledge proof technology.
ZIP-215 will change the validity criteria for Ed25519 signatures used in Sprout transactions, making them compatible with batch verification.
From a technical point of view, the upcoming update, like all the previous major upgrades on the Zcash network, is a hard fork. Accordingly, the node operators need to update the installed software. To facilitate the process, the developers have released a special guide.
In early October, Electric Coin Company, by a majority vote of investors and stakeholders, decided to reorganize with the transfer under the control of the newly created non-profit Bootstrap Project.
(
It is argued that this move will not entail a restructuring of the current ECC structure with its operations, management and staffing. Changes to the governance structure with an increase in the role of the community are planned at the end of 2021.
The 7% reward received by ECC from the rewards for the blocks found will be intended solely to fund the project's "mission". Now these funds can be directed to the functioning of the company itself.
The non-profit status is also intended to ease the tax burden on the company.
Recall, the fourth major update to Zcash called Heartwood took place in July this year.