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Zcash NU7 is set for block 3,543,405
The chain was still short of the height at 3:01 p.m. UTC on Nov. 5. The rules cut the target block to 25 seconds and stop Sprout spends.
Zcash's NU7 upgrade is set to turn on at block 3,543,405. The height was written into the Zcash Improvement Proposals on October 21, when Sean Bowe's change was merged. At 3:01 p.m. UTC on November 5, a block explorer showed the chain at 3,542,857. That is 548 blocks short. At the current 75-second target, 548 blocks is about 11 hours and 25 minutes, which lands near 9:30 p.m. Eastern on November 5. The activation note's own estimate was about 12:50 a.m. UTC on November 6. Neither figure is the block. The block is the height.
A block interval is the time the protocol aims to leave between blocks. NU7 cuts that target from 75 seconds to 25. Three confirmations are three of those intervals. Three times 75 seconds is 3 minutes and 45 seconds. Three times 25 seconds is 75 seconds. The wait gets shorter because the blocks are closer together, not because a transaction needs fewer of them. An exchange that still waits for the old number of confirmations will not feel the whole cut until it changes the count.
Faster blocks do not mean more ZEC in a day. The upgrade triples the number of blocks and cuts the new coins in each block by the same factor of three, so the day's issuance stays where it was. The 21 million cap is the existing ceiling, not a new vote, and the four-year halving keeps its place on the calendar. A halving is a scheduled cut in the new coins each block. The Bitcoin version of that clock is here: https://cryptokeymedia.com/news/what-is-a-bitcoin-halving
The fee split is separate from the subsidy. Under the upgrade, 60 percent of each block's transaction fees go to the Network Sustainability Mechanism, a protocol reserve, and miners keep 40 percent. ZIP 237 sets the mainnet height where those reserved fees are paid back out at 8,939,664. The activation note places that height around February 2031. The coins are taken out of circulation and scheduled to come back. They are not destroyed, and they are not a new mint on top of the day's subsidy.
The hard cut is the old Sprout pool. Spending those coins requires a version 4 transaction, and NU7 rejects version 4. Coins left in Sprout at the height cannot be moved under the new rules, even by someone who still has the keys. A dashboard updated at 3:21 p.m. UTC on November 5 showed 12,224 ZEC in Sprout. At the $1,247 price on that same page, the pool is about $15.2 million. The round $16 million in this morning's notes is that pile, not a second one.
The height is a line in the specification. It is not, by itself, proof that every node has taken the software. A miner or an exchange still on the old rules will be on a different chain once the height passes, or it will stop. The explorer print at 3:01 p.m. UTC is only that the chain had not arrived. It does not say the arrival will be clean, and it does not say wallets have changed the number of confirmations they show a user.
The desk note on the same height is here:
What comes next is the block itself. The things worth counting after it are whether the chain produces usable blocks near the 25-second target, whether exchanges shorten the confirmation wait, and whether the Sprout balance is still about 12,224 ZEC when version 4 stops working. Until height 3,543,405 is in the chain, NU7 is a scheduled rule, not a finished one.