The NSM was previously referred to as the Zcash Posterity Fund and the Zcash Sustainability Fund. It doesn’t need another name change. If the word “burn” is creating confusion, we can instead describe the mechanism as “removing ZEC from circulation” and “recycling it into future block rewards.”
It sounds like we’re interpreting the results very similarly:
We’re open to discussing the appropriate activation height for the disbursement mechanism. As I mentioned on Signal, Zooko is building a simulator to model issuance smoothing as well as alternative approaches that don’t require smoothing, which we plan to review with you in the coming days. Let’s start there and then decide how to proceed.
We believe there’s an opportunity right now to attract long-term investors. In conversations we’ve had over the past year, investors respond positively to the fact that we’re thinking about and actively addressing long-term sustainability. Broad consensus from the community and coinholders for implementing the NSM in the next network upgrade would send a clear signal that we have a credible path forward.
Tachyon could increase aggregate fees in the near term by allowing a much higher rate of transactions, which makes the timing especially important. NEAR Intents integrations and additional Maya DEX activity could also increase fee demand. If several of these developments gain traction at the same time, aggregate network usage could rise meaningfully. In that scenario, it would be better to already have the NSM in place rather than trying to introduce it later.
Implementing the NSM now clearly signals that we are planning for the network’s long-term future. That clarity helps shape expectations and market behavior, because confidence in long-term sustainability is itself economically meaningful. Given the ongoing debate around Bitcoin’s future security budget, having a mechanism explicitly defined at the protocol level could be an important differentiator for users and investors evaluating network security.