NU6.1
NU6.1 went live on Zcash mainnet at block 3,146,400 (November 24, 2025 UTC).
What you'll take away: how Zcash pays for its own development without a company in charge, and how NU6.1 gave the community and coin holders a direct say in that money.
NU6.1 is a Zcash network upgrade, defined in ZIP 255, that set up a new funding and governance model for Zcash's development. It decides where a slice of the block rewards goes and who controls it, and it also shipped a few smaller technical fixes. NU6.1 was endorsed by both the Electric Coin Company and the Zcash Foundation.
Why this matters. Most software is paid for by a company. Zcash is a decentralized network with no single owner, so it faces a hard question: how does it fund the people who keep building it, in a way the community trusts? NU6.1 is Zcash's current answer. It routes part of every block reward into two pools, one for community grants and one that coin holders themselves control.
The funding model
NU6.1 splits each block reward into three parts.
- The largest share, about 80 percent, goes to the miners who secure the network.
- 8 percent goes to Zcash Community Grants (ZCG), which funds work by and for the community.
- 12 percent goes to a new fund that coin holders control, seeded by the Deferred Dev Fund Lockbox.
The rules of this model are defined in ZIP 1016, and they stay in place until the third Zcash halving, which gives the community time to see how it works before making it permanent or changing it.
Who controls the coin-holder fund
The 12 percent stream is the new idea. Instead of a company or a foundation deciding how to spend it, coin holders decide together whether to release those funds or hold them.
- The Deferred Dev Fund Lockbox, created in the earlier NU6 upgrade, seeds this fund.
- Coin holders collectively decide whether to distribute the money for ecosystem work or keep it locked.
- This gives the people who hold ZEC a direct voice in how Zcash funds its future.
The smaller fixes
NU6.1 also cleaned up two technical things.
- Before NU6.1, some RPC methods did not correctly recognize funds being unshielded from the Orchard pool, so balances and fees could look wrong in wallets and explorers. NU6.1 fixed that.
- It changed the zcashd wallet default to build version 5 transactions, the format first introduced in NU5, instead of version 4. Version 4 transactions stay valid.
How Zcash funding evolved
NU6.1 is one step in a longer story about how Zcash pays for its own development.
- Canopy (2020) ended the original founders reward and created a development fund.
- NU6 (2024) set up the Deferred Dev Fund Lockbox, reserving a share of issuance for future community-decided grants.
- NU6.1 (2025) answered the question NU6 left open, who decides and how, by continuing 8 percent of the block reward to community grants and directing 12 percent into a coin-holder-controlled fund seeded by that reserve.
Glossary
| Term | Plain-English meaning |
|---|
| Block reward | The new ZEC created and paid out as each block is mined |
| Zcash Community Grants (ZCG) | A committee that funds work by and for the Zcash community |
| Deferred Dev Fund Lockbox | A reserve set up in NU6 that holds a share of issuance for future community-decided grants |
| Coin-holder fund | The NU6.1 fund, seeded by the lockbox, that ZEC holders collectively control |
| Halving | The scheduled event where the block reward is cut in half |
| Network upgrade (NU) | A coordinated change to Zcash's consensus rules, activated at a set block height |
FAQ
Does NU6.1 change my ZEC or my privacy? No. NU6.1 is about how development is funded, not about transactions or privacy. Your funds and shielded transactions are unaffected.
Where does the funding money come from? From block rewards, the new ZEC issued as blocks are mined. A share is routed to the grant and coin-holder funds instead of all of it going to miners.
What is the coin-holder fund for? Ecosystem grants that coin holders collectively choose to fund, or to hold if they prefer to wait.
Is this permanent? No. The model runs until the third halving, and then the community can keep it, change it, or replace it.
How is NU6.1 different from NU6? NU6 created the lockbox. NU6.1 set the rules for who controls it and how the money is split.
Test your understanding
NU6 reserved a pool of funds in a lockbox but left one big question unanswered. What was it, and how did NU6.1 answer it?
Answer
The open question was who decides how the lockbox funds are used. NU6.1 answered it by splitting the money: 8 percent to Zcash Community Grants, and 12 percent to a fund that coin holders themselves control, choosing whether to distribute it or hold it.
Resources
ZIP 255: Deployment of the NU6.1 Network Upgrade
ZIP 1016: Community and Coinholder Funding Model
ZIP 271: Dev Fund Extension and One-Time Disbursement
Network Upgrade 6.1
See also
Zcash Network Upgrades
Development Fund
Zcash Monetary Policy
Zcash Governance
NU6.2
What is ZEC and Zcash
Series: Network Upgrades index · Previous: NU6 · Next: NU6.2
