Voting begins next week on a plan for Zcash holders to remove 50,000 $ZEC from the network’s grants treasury and return its value through future mining rewards.
The draft Zcash Improvement Proposal, authored by co-founders Sean Bowe and Zooko Wilcox with Jason McGee, was merged into the specifications repository on Wednesday. Polls for coinholders and community panels open Nov. 16 and close Nov. 30.
The proposed withdrawal amounts to about 55% of the 91,453 $ZEC recorded in an October treasury snapshot cited in the draft. Zcash Community Grants, or ZCG, uses the treasury to fund developers, wallets and community projects.
If adopted and activated in a network upgrade, the plan would require ZCG to remove the coins from circulation within 30 days. Their value would be credited to the Network Sustainability Mechanism, a reserve activated under the recent NU7 upgrade that gradually returns $ZEC through future block rewards.
The proposal would also end ZCG’s current 8% share of newly created $ZEC. Instead, that allocation would accrue in a new Future Dev and Legal Defense Fund until Zcash’s next halving.
Initially, nobody would be able to spend from the new fund. A separate proposal would need to set out withdrawal rules. ZCG would retain its remaining treasury and continue awarding grants, while the separate 12% Coinholder-Controlled Fund would remain unchanged.
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Why the vote takes place
Zcash funds some of its development with newly created coins. ZCG receives 8% of that issuance, and its five-member committee awards grants to independent developers, wallet builders and community projects.
Those grants help fund the software people use to hold and spend $ZEC. Ending automatic funding would mean ZCG relies on its remaining treasury to support that work. The proposed removal of 50,000 $ZEC, meanwhile, would help fund future miners, who operate the machines that confirm transactions and secure the network.
A rally in $ZEC’s price greatly increased the value of the committee’s existing coins, even as new funding continued to arrive. This prompted calls to stop adding to a treasury already large enough to cover years of grants.
Based on its October treasury snapshot, an assumed $ZEC price of $1,300 and spending in the first half of 2026, the draft estimates that ZCG could cover about 13 years of expenses. Removing 50,000 $ZEC would leave roughly six years under those assumptions.
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