Only $ZEC held in Ironwood, Zcash’s newest private transaction pool, could vote. “Shielded” simply means the blockchain can verify that the coins exist and are being spent correctly without publicly showing the wallet balance or the details of the transaction.
That privacy carried over into the vote. In a normal token vote, a wallet casting 500,000 votes can effectively announce to the world that it controls 500,000 tokens and which side it backed. Zcash’s system let that economic weight count without publishing the holder’s balance or identity alongside the choice.
Ballots were encrypted and split into 16 separate pieces before being counted. Validators could add up the final result without being able to reconstruct which holder cast which vote or how much $ZEC that person controlled.
In other words, holders could use their actual economic stake to vote on Zcash’s monetary policy and technical roadmap while keeping the size of that stake hidden.
Read More: Zcash seals $1.7 billion shielded pool as Ironwood upgrade activates
That is a major jump from Zcash’s earlier coinholder polling. February’s NU7 sentiment poll drew participation equal to just 7.25% of circulating $ZEC and exposed sharp disagreements between coinholders and Zcash’s Community Advisory Panel, or ZCAP.
