Zcash Community to Vote on Moving 50,000 ZEC From the Grants Treasury

Zcash coinholders and community panels begin voting on Monday, Nov. 16, on a draft that would pull 50,000 ZEC out of the network's grants treasury and give the value back to miners through future block rewards. Polls close at 11:59 p.m. UTC on Nov. 30.

The document behind the vote is a draft Zcash Improvement Proposal, or ZIP, written by Zcash co-founders Sean Bowe and Zooko Wilcox with Jason McGee. If it clears the vote and a later network upgrade turns it on, the Zcash Community Grants committee, or ZCG, loses its automatic 8% slice of every block reward.

• The news: Coinholders and community panels vote from Nov. 16 to Nov. 30 on a draft ZIP that would move 50,000 ZEC from the grants treasury into the Network Sustainability Mechanism and end ZCG's automatic 8% share of block rewards.
• The figure: The draft, dated Oct. 29 and merged into Zcash's specifications repository on Nov. 11, would leave ZCG with an estimated 41,453 ZEC against $8,796,224 in cash and $2,417,165 of outstanding grant liabilities.
• What happens next: If the result shows rough consensus, the five groups that run coinholder voting say they will back Network Upgrade 7.1 to implement the winning proposal, with no activation date set yet.

What the Draft ZIP Actually Changes

The draft, titled "Future Dev and Legal Defense Fund Lockbox, and Removal of ZCG Funds to the Network Sustainability Mechanism", has two moving parts.

First, the ZCG Committee would take 50,000 ZEC out of circulation within 30 days of activation and credit it to the Network Sustainability Mechanism, or NSM. The NSM is a pool created under ZIP 237 that behaves like a slow-release reserve: ZEC going in is not spent at once but paid back out to miners gradually as part of their rewards.

Second, ZCG's 8% funding stream would end the moment the ZIP activates. The same 8% of the block subsidy would keep being issued, but from activation until Zcash's third halving it would go into a new pool, the Future Dev and Legal Defense Fund Lockbox.

Bowe, Wilcox and McGee write in the draft that "no disbursement mechanism is currently defined for this lockbox", leaving a future ZIP to decide how that money gets spent. A separate 12% slice of the block subsidy, which goes to the Coinholder-Controlled Fund, is left alone.

The Treasury in ZCG's Own Numbers

The draft leans on ZCG's own dashboard, accessed Oct. 26. It lists holdings of 91,452.98 ZEC and $8,796,224 in cash, against $2,417,165 of grant liabilities the program has already committed to. After a 50,000 ZEC transfer, the committee would hold an estimated 41,453 ZEC.

The same figures show ZCG taking in about 144 ZEC a day from its share of block rewards, an inflow that would stop after the NU7 upgrade. The draft also cites $4,718,359 of ZCG expenses in the first half of 2026, about $9.4 million a year.

Why the Vote Is Moving Now

ZCG has been here before. It floated a plan of its own involving about 98,000 ZEC and withdrew it in early November after community criticism, a reversal we covered when it dropped the proposal.

The ZIP editor, Jack "str4d" Grigg, held the co-founders' draft back on Nov. 3, saying editors had agreed that new ZIPs touching governance should go to a new body rather than through the ZIP process. He lifted the hold on Nov. 10, and the draft was merged into the project's GitHub repository early on Nov. 11 UTC.

The five groups that run Zcash's coinholder voting, Project Tachyon, Shielded Labs, Valar Group, the Zcash Foundation and ZODL, set the Nov. 16 to Nov. 30 window. Two competing drafts stay open alongside this one: a plan to wind down ZCG and redirect its funding, and a Zcash Adoption Pool proposal that would keep ZCG's share under a new name.

What Happens After the Polls Close

If the results show rough consensus, the five groups said they would back Network Upgrade 7.1 to implement the winning proposal, with engineering teams and miners agreeing a target date. No date is set, and nothing is decided yet: this is a draft being polled, not a rule in force.

The dollar value of the 50,000 ZEC is unsettled too. The draft does not fix a price for it, and Zcash's spot price was not read for this article, so the transfer has been described at different dollar figures elsewhere.

Until the vote closes on Nov. 30, ZCG still collects its 144 ZEC a day.