Zcash has put five protocol questions to its coinholders and attached a number to the answer. The NU7 vote opens August 25 and closes September 14 at 19:00 UTC. It only counts, the organizers say, if at least 1,000,000 ZEC takes part. That is 5.96% of the 16.785 million ZEC in circulation, and roughly $501 million at the $500.98 price CoinGecko carried on August 6.
The threshold comes from a Zcash Community Forum post published by developer ebfull on August 5. The wording is plain: results count as legitimate if at least 1,000,000 ZEC participates.
Only money that already moved can vote
Eligibility is the buried part. Voters need spendable shielded funds in Ironwood at a snapshot taken August 24 at 19:00 UTC. Ironwood is the replacement pool Zcash switched on July 28 after sealing Orchard over a four year counterfeiting bug, and on day one it held about 182,000 ZEC, per the Zodl migration dashboard.
Money kept crossing. Zodl counted 129,396 ZEC moving in on a single day in early August, and ZecHub reported on August 5 that Ironwood had passed 1 million ZEC. Which leaves the quorum and the eligible float at roughly the same figure, eighteen days before the snapshot.
The rest of the chain is shut out. Transparent addresses held 12.5 million ZEC on the day Ironwood went live, close to three quarters of supply, and none of it votes unless it shields in first. Sapling's 581,380 ZEC sits in the same position, which is why the NU7 vote doubles as a referendum on migration speed.
February's poll drew 7.25% of supply
One turnout figure exists. The Zcash Foundation reported on February 23 that its NU7 polling round reached 7.25% participation of circulating ZEC, with ballot counts running from 210 on Project Tachyon to 55 on Consensus Accounts. Applied to today's supply, 7.25% works out to about 1.22 million ZEC. So the bar sits just under the only turnout anyone can cite, and that round had no Ironwood requirement.
Participation bars have a patchy record elsewhere. BIP 110 needed 55% of Bitcoin blocks and never got past 1%. On the XRP Ledger, two amendments were pulled this month after failing a security review. Aave's DAO carried its Aave Will Win plan on a 75% vote.
Two ballot questions already split the room
| NU7 ballot question | February poll signal |
|---|---|
| NSM issuance smoothing | ZCAP 84% for, coinholders 83.5% against |
| When fee reissuance starts | Not put to the February poll |
| Sprout deprecation timing | ZCAP 77.7% for, coinholders 84.6% against |
| Block time from 75s to 25s (ZIP-218) | Not put to the February poll |
| Ship NU7 with features unfinished | Not put to the February poll |
Two of the five questions land where February showed the delegate body and the coinholders pulling opposite ways, so the NU7 vote runs on the thinnest consensus available. Ballots go through a dedicated chain where at least ten validators hold shares of the decryption key, and two thirds must cooperate before a result appears. Vizor has confirmed wallet support.
Funds are free to move the moment the August 24 snapshot lands, so voting costs nobody three weeks of locked capital. For a sector that put up gains as large as 33% this spring, the figure worth tracking now is how much more ZEC crosses the turnstile.
