When exactly ZEC creation amount will fall to 6.25

Mining
1

you said :“Each 4 year period (or 840,000 mined blocks), the ZEC creation amount will halve (from 12.5 to 6.25 to 3.125 to 1.5625 and so on).”
if there were not 840,000 mined blocks when exactly will ZEC creation amount fall to 6.25?

2

Interessting question.

I’d guess fall/winter 2020?

The drop in reward for miners is 37.5%, witch is nice (if we don’t switch to PoS)

3

The block reward halves every 4 years, Zcash launched Oct 28th 2016 so the first halving should be approximately October of 2020.

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4

It happens only after 840,000 blocks - the date is simply an estimate (albeit a very good one) of when this will occur given the 2.5 min block time. This figure is hard-coded into the protocol as a constant zips/protocol.pdf at main · zcash/zips · GitHub

HalvingInterval N := 840000

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5

Thanks.
How to know the current block number?

6

You can either use an online block explorer e.g. https://explorer.zcha.in/ or if running a fully synced node just run zcash-cli getblockchaininfo which at the time of typing outputs the below, so current block height is 388659.

{
  "chain": "main",
  "blocks": 388659,
  "headers": 388659,
  "bestblockhash": "000000000638a85fc45b7315995eb10c826de14ceb87c075a94cc2bbb5f37506",
  "difficulty": 16643789.37159076,
  "verificationprogress": 0.9999897569248111,
  "chainwork": "000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000003e326e76110432",
  "pruned": false,
  "commitments": 1161848,
  ....... lots more stuff .......
}
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7

I get Tuesday, October 27, 2020 based on current block height and an assumed constant 2.5 minute block time (and Zcash launched October 28 2016).

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8

Note that the slow start extends the first halving by 10k blocks. So it’s really 850,000 to get to 6.25 block rewards then 840,000 thereafter. I’ll update that FAQ to clarify. :slight_smile:

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9

Then when it will be?

10

Thanks for clearing that up!

So let’s add another 10,000 2.5 min block intervals (17.3 days) and we get Friday November 13th.

11

That sounds pretty lucky xD

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