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Horizen Upgrade & $ZEN Migration: Progress, Challenges, and Next Steps
Recorded: July 23, 2025 Duration: 1:04:39Space Recording
Short Summary
Horizon celebrates a decade-long partnership while launching Zen as an ERC-20 token on Base, enhancing liquidity and accessibility. The project is set to grow through innovative grants for privacy-focused applications and yield opportunities for token holders.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Hello everyone.
Rolf, can you guys hear me?
Joyce, can you hear me?
Just wanted to test the audio before we start.
I can hear you.
Can you hear me?
This is Rolf.
Hi, Rolf.
Nice to meet you again.
Great to be here.
Awesome. I think Joyce has just given me a notification that basically means she can hear me um so I just basically really really really want to welcome
Horizon here because we have been such a long time partner we were talking about that earlier
when we first met didn't we it was like nine years for us and eight years for you guys and
we were partnering up at least like seven to eight years.
Right, Rolf?
Oh, we've had a long history together.
It's been a good history.
So much has happened in the industry.
I mean, I'll have seen it for nine years straight.
We were launched in 2017 and we've been around for eight years.
There's so much advancement and the space is so different now.
And both our organizations have adapted and succeeded so far.
Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for your kind words.
But yeah, when we were first talking, we were like, oh gosh,
we've seen the industry for a long time.
And then I was just so happy to kind of be an old friend and, you know,
a long partner after all.
So other than, you know, the amazing long-term partnership that we had,
also congratulations for, you know, your last mind,
your last block in mind and your migration.
Come on, Rolf.
We need to give some credits for you guys and the team as well.
Thanks. Yeah, we've got an amazing team.
I'm at the Horizon Labs main office this week in Milan.
And, you know, the team has just done such an amazing job.
A migration like we've done is a little bit different because Horizon has actually two blockchains connected by a bridge, so a Bitcoin
like blockchain and an EVM. And we're taking both of those migrating to a token on base. And then in
a few months, we're going to relaunch an L3 app chain. So that, yeah, the big step is moving Zen
over to base. So it's easily acceptable in the entire Ethereum space.
Absolutely amazing. Thank you so much. So we're going to ask a bit more on the migration
side because guys, can you believe that we actually posted a Yawa questions and 2,000 more than 2,000 questions
flew in for Rolf and their team so I do
apologize for the
amount of questions that you guys had to go through
at a short amount of time
so we're going to answer some of
them over here at the MA obviously
because people have been
looking forward to
this migration for such a long time
and then seeing what's happening what's expected, what's going on.
And then we also answer some of them on a blog post
for people who prefer to read it out, read it in detail.
And then we also have another AMA out later in around August time
so that Horizon will be able to kind of brief us what what is it
you know the after what after the migration what are you going to be expected any new things coming
up we're having exciting plans ahead Rolf so we say all right if you two can just briefly introduce
yourself to us even though you know we've basically kind of told everybody.
But and then I'll start with some questions there, Rolf.
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Vivian.
Yeah, so I co-founded Horizon Zen back in 2017 with a good group of folks.
And back then we were known as Zen Cash.
And I took a long way to get to the crypto industry, kind of like a lot of people did.
I'll give you the short version of it. I started out as an officer in the Navy, the U.S. Navy on a nuclear submarine out in Hawaii.
I did that for five years. Then I worked industrial water treatment for the semiconductor industry for a big data networking company called Cisco Systems.
I started my own Cisco Systems information technology company, grew that to 60 people,
sold it to private equity in 2015, and then started Bitcoin mining.
And so that got me into the space.
And then I started doing GPU mining.
And that's when I learned about zero- zero knowledge proofs through mining Zcash.
And so we started Zencash, which has the privacy component.
I was looking at it from a business owner standpoint.
If I'm going to be using crypto for payments for everybody, I have to have some element of privacy because I have competitors that see who
my customers are and my suppliers. And so I just thought it was natural that you had to have
private payments and private communications, not to do nefarious things, just to be able to conduct
business in a highly competitive environment. And so that led to Zencash. And gosh, the industry
has gone and done so many things.
I can talk more about that.
But that's how I got into this space.
Nice.
Thank you so much.
Definitely the Bitcoin miner has given you another chance of looking at the crypto space as well.
Nice.
So I'll just start with some questions from the community because the community has actually overloaded us with so much questions.
So I'm just going to get started. All right. So the first question would be, why was space chosen as a destination for Zen's migration?
And how does this align with Horizon's vision for privacy and scalability?
I think that's one of the most popular questions out of all.
Yeah, that's a really good one.
So I'll give you kind of a long answer to that.
So one of the things that we learned in starting Zen is,
you know, it's great to build a project, but it really needs to be used.
So one of the first things that we did was try to internationalize everything to get.
We translated all our documents from English to Spanish and to Chinese.
And that helped us build our worldwide community.
We built a very usable wallet.
And by having people actually use your product, you find out what's good and what's bad.
And even though we had private payments, they were difficult to use.
And we found out over the years that the way that we had implemented privacy, it wasn't very granular.
It wasn't very useful.
It wasn't very useful.
You had to run a full node.
And then when as crypto grew and regulation became even more important because we had the basic privacy, we were getting delisted from exchanges, especially in Korea.
And so we said, well, we need to have lots of users and it needs to be usable.
And during this time, Ethereum and the Ethereum space grew.
So we have a great team of developers here at Horizon Labs
with extensive knowledge in cryptography
and the ability to implement zero knowledge proofs.
And so the team built the Zendu sidechain capability
where we were gonna be a blockchain with multiple sidechains,
and that was the way we were going to scale and get more composable zero-knowledge proofs.
And then the team built a custom EVM, and we launched that in 2023.
That gave us the ability to do governance.
So we moved to a full decentralized DAO, but that still wasn't getting
us to where we needed to be. We needed lots of users and we needed funding and we needed to have
applications that people would actually use because we have the idea of having a long-term
vision for the project. So we decided that we were going to upgrade our two blockchains to something new and improved.
We had gotten the experience in 2024 of working with the Ape Foundation to help them launch the Ape chain on Arbitrum as an L3 orbit chain. And so we had the idea that we were going that we saw from that, that it was so important to be part of a larger ecosystem.
When you're part of a larger ecosystem like Ethereum or Arbitrum or Base, there's so many users that are interested in your success and that want to try the products.
success and that want to try the products.
We knew we needed to have our own applications because what we want to do is have
really very good specific privacy-focused applications.
As we were going through and working to architect the next phase of our evolution,
my co-founder, Rob Biglioni called Jesse at Base and said,
Hey, look, we're planning on being part of a growing ecosystem.
We see that Base is the fastest growing ecosystem in the Ethereum space, but we really need to have our own blockchain.
Are you all looking at doing L3s? And Base is.
So we're part of the initial cohort of six projects that are going to be that are L3 app chains
on base. And that gives us being part of the Ethereum ecosystem, being part of the rapidly
growing base ecosystem. And Zen has been listed on Coinbase for a long time. And Coinbase
team has been working hard to get crypto accepted by people, by institutions, by companies,
by governments. And so we thought that would just be a wonderful partnership. And they were excited
to have an OG project like Zen with a privacy focus to be part of their ecosystem as well. So
it just worked out really, really well. And so we're excited to take the first step of that,
of having Zen be the base, a token on base.
But there's multiple other steps that we're taking here over the next few years
that's going to just supercharge the project.
Nice. That's some exciting things.
It's just a lot of timing work.
But really good for you guys as well. It just matches and makes it suitable for you guys.
The timing has worked out great. Absolutely. Absolutely. Amazing. Amazing.
And then how will the migration of Zen to base as an ERC-20 token impacts liquidity.
Obviously, everyone takes a really good concentration
and concern about the liquidity side,
interability and accessibility for users.
Yeah, so, I mean, liquidity in the crypto space,
first of all, centralized exchanges like CoinX
are the original liquidity for all projects.
And so we're fortunate, like we said earlier, to be partnered with you all as well as a number of
other exchanges. So, you know, working with centralized exchanges is really important,
as well as our market maker teams that help us to keep the price similar across exchanges.
teams that help us to keep the price similar across exchanges. So that's a base level of
liquidity that projects really need to have. However, we see also that there's a lot of
activity happening in the Ethereum space with DeFi, decentralized finance, and the on-chain applications whether they're swaps or
borrow lend or perpetuals or all sorts of other things that you can do with
tokens and so our liquidity strategy is right out the gate as soon as we are
fully switched over to the ERC20 token, which should be first thing tomorrow,
is we're going to add to our liquidity by having trading pairs on Aerodrome,
which is an excellent DEX on base, as well as on Uniswap.
So that's the first step for our liquidity.
And we're working with different partners to make sure that the depth on those
trading pairs is solid so people can be confident in working to buy Zen, sell Zen, create liquidity
pools, do all sorts of things that they want. Of course. And then anything, okay, and how about the, oh, I can't hear Rolf anymore.
Hi, Rolf. Oh, I'm here. Are you able to hear me?
Yeah, I can, yeah. And how about the integrity and accessibility as well? So other than the
DEXs that you have mentioned. Oh, yeah. So, well, I mean,
well, one of the things that we learned early on
is if you make people have to have a custom wallet
or a special wallet,
it's gonna make it difficult for them
to access your token.
So by being able to have Zen available using Metamask wallet or base wallet or Rabi
or Rainbow or any of those common Ethereum type wallets and just and being on base,
as long as you've got the base network on your wallet, you're going to have the ability to buy the Zen token. And so in addition to liquidity, the accessibility is going to be a lot more.
Now, for interoperability, one of the really nice things, and we're going to build out a suite of privacy-enabled applications on our app chain on base.
I'm happy to talk about that more.
But that's one of the things that is really important that base has done for the app chain.
So the app chains are using the OP stack, but it's modified with an enclave in a trusted execution environment, which means basically, if you want
to send your tokens to the Horizon app chain to be able to use the privacy applications on there,
say you wanted to buy or sell an NFT, and we had an NFT where you could trade the NFT
privately. You know, you could transfer your tokens to the Zen app chain very easily,
use the application, and then send it right back to base or Ethereum.
So it makes it very easy for any user within the base ecosystem,
which is any user within the Ethereum ecosystem,
very easily move their tokens to the Horizon app chain, use the apps
and move them back off.
That's definitely so much useful and users, please do take note on that regards.
And then you've said about kind of the Zen migration to the base side.
How about the users actually who are holding Zen
in centralized exchanges like ourselves
or non-supported wallets?
What's going to be the steps that's
going to be taken for us guys, like the users within CoinEx
and any other centralized exchanges or non-supported
wallets that you guys already have?
So what else is there to kind of ensure their seamless kind of migration?
Yeah. So over the years, the Zen has been held in many different ways, but in many different places,
a lot of Zen is held on centralized exchanges. And so our team at Horizon, it's not like swapping one token for another.
It's changing from a UTXO-based blockchain like Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is a UTXO blockchain to an account-type blockchain like Ethereum.
So there's not really an ability to directly translate.
So our team at Horizon Labs put together a process to do a snapshot of our two blockchains, our Horizon EVM and our Horizon main chain, and to do a snapshot of that
and then load that into our smart contract
that's been deployed to base.
And that's in progress right now
because we've already passed the snapshot block.
And that's one of the reasons I'm here in Milan
to work closely with the team.
And this week, normally I live in the USA
thank you and yeah so so we have been talking with our exchange partners for five months now about
this process since we decided to to move to base back in late January and have been working closely with all our exchange partners
like CoinX to make sure that it's supported. So anybody that has Zen on an exchange,
on our website, horizon.io, we have a list of all the exchanges that support it and they're
supporting messages. And so anybody that has Xen on an exchange,
it's gonna get converted automatically by the exchange.
Now there's a lot of work our team
and the exchange is doing on the backend,
but the users don't have to worry about that.
So next is people have Xen
in either their Ledger hardware wallet
or on their Horizon Sphere wallet. Those are very
straightforward things. So they'll just go to the claim website, say, hey, this is my Metamask or
this is my Ethereum address. It tells them to sign this message. They sign the message with their
Ledger wallet app or their Sphere app and then put that message back on
the claim website boom they get their Zen token into their Ethereum wallet and then for any of
the older wallets that are out there or third-party wallets as long as you have access to your private
key which anybody who has a crypto wallet should have access to their private key they're able to
sign using that that private key so we have a lot of documentation. We have videos on how to do this. We have a lot of help in both
our Telegram and Discord channels. Anybody's welcome to open a ticket in Discord. And I got
to say, there are a lot of scammers that happen when there's events like this. So if anybody DMs
you about helping you to
do this migration do not accept that dm nobody on our team is going to be dming you our official
support is we publish it you know we do it publicly or you open a ticket on our discord
and make sure you go to the correct discord from our main website and the tickets will usually get responded within? Oh, within a few hours. I mean,
we've got, you know, there's a lot of focus on making this successful and we have many,
there's a lot of wallets out there that have Zen in them. When we counted it, I think there was
over, anyway, there's a lot of wallets.
And so we want to make sure we take care of our community
and provide all the support that's needed.
Nice.
So you guys have heard it.
I can also be one of the person that states that he's telling the truth
because I was one of those people who Rolf has spoken to five months ago to make sure everyone is clear and on the seamless
yeah zen migration to base what's going on what's expected he has explained it very well to the team
and also to our tech team for just ensuring the seamless migration.
So, yep, he's telling the truth.
And also, don't forget about that Discord side.
So people who still have further questions, I even asked Rolf for you.
Within three hours, you guys should get the answers you guys want.
Thank you, Rolf.
And also, how will Zen integrate with existing DeFi platform on base?
Will it only just focus building its own privacy native DApps,
or will it just actually focus on the own privacy DApps?
Yeah. Like I mentioned earlier,
we're definitely creating trading pairs on Aerodrome and then Uniswap on base.
So that's a solid starting point. As we continue, we may now it's decentralized finance.
Anybody that owns Zen as a token and owns USDC or USDT, your Ethereum, they're able to set up their own trading pairs
and liquidity pools.
Of course, it's nice to have projects like Horizon
that set up the pairs and make sure
that there's a lot of depth and capability.
So we are setting up the basic applications
of wallet support, swaps, and things like that.
Then we're going to move towards focusing on having applications built on the Horizon app chain.
So we have some specific things that we're doing to enable privacy-focused applications.
And we have a grants program where we have specific types of applications that we're looking to have built.
where we have specific types of applications that we're looking to have built.
And then of course, Horizon Labs, really one of the top teams in the space of advanced
cryptography, zero knowledge proofs, and all the other privacy preserving technologies
like FHE and MPC and using execution environments, trusted execution environments,
we have applications that we're planning on building as well.
Nice, nice, nice.
All right, thank you.
And also, I think one of those questions
that comes pretty that you've also mentioned it briefly,
but we want to kind of say into detail is that what kind of advantages does Horizon layer three
up chain on base offer for developers
building privacy preserving applications?
So what's a good thing about Horizons like layer three?
Yeah, so one of the things that I do is
that I am the developer growth lead.
So it's kind of new to Horizon that we're engaging with time and energy and activity to develop an
application for a project, that it's going to be successful, which means it's going to be promoted,
it's going to be supported by the users, and that the project is going to be around for a while. So
one of the advantages that we have as a project is we have a track record of accomplishment.
People can say, hey, what's Horizon about?
What are those folks like?
Do they do what they say that they're going to do?
Is it worth investing my time and effort to being part of this project?
We've been around for a long time. We have continued to improve our capabilities and enable new things.
to improve our capabilities and enable new things.
So to answer your question, the specific things that we're doing is we're starting out as
an EVM.
So an EVM, there's a lot of things that can be done to create privacy-focused applications
in an EVM.
Just with the tools that are there, you can look at, for example, Railgun is a great project.
You can see Tornado Cash enabled private payments.
So there's different ways of doing privacy and applications.
In fact, at the ETHCC conference just last month,
our CTO, Zane Cheng, gave a great presentation
on the different ways to create privacy-enabled stablecoins.
And he went through and gave examples of different implementations using the different privacy-preserving technologies for doing stablecoins. And to me, being able to send a stablecoin like USDC or USDT to somebody else while maintaining some privacy is essential to businesses that want to pay their employees and pay their suppliers.
So the first part is, OK, there's a lot of privacy capabilities in a basic EVM that can be put to use.
You just have to have a focus and a commitment.
And that's where our grants program comes in, where we're saying, hey, we've got 200,000 Zen
per year for the next five years allocated. This is already voted on. So Zen is, we'll say it's
around $10 a Zen right now. So that's $ million dollars a year that we're providing in grants programs and we're working with with thrive really one of the
leading grants organizations in the space uh to to have applications developed so we're putting
our money where our mouth is we we're paying for applications next part um is we're integrating with ZK Verify.
So ZK Verify is a way to do advanced zero-knowledge proofs.
And what I like most about ZK Verify is ZK Verify is partnering with LowPro and other projects that are enabling zero-knowledge proofs to be optimized for mobile devices. So really looking to have applications that are designed to work in web browser or mobile devices
that have advanced zero knowledge proofs that can create the proofs quickly and inexpensively
and be verified quickly and inexpensively.
So zero knowledge proofs turn from slow and expensive to fast and inexpensive. Nice.
The next privacy preserving technology that is going to be that is unique is, and this is on the roadmap, so this is later on in the year, is we're enabling applications to use a trusted execution environment. So this means a very specific way
to have parts of an application run
in a way that keeps some of the application hidden.
And it's flexible, and it's inexpensive, and it's fast.
So the application can be written
to be done in a privacy-preserving,
regulatory-compliant manner quickly and inexpensively.
So having that TEE, the Trusted Execution Environment Capability,
running and making it easy to use on the Horizon app chain
is an additional privacy-preserving technology that fits in with our roadmap, our track record, and our
goal of having useful applications with privacy.
Thank you so much.
So yeah, guys, the guys who would actually like to develop Horizon's layer three app
chain, you guys know where to go.
And there are grants grants so they're
not taking you know developers for granted as well so your skills are definitely appreciated
within the horizons layer 3 environment okay and um also um we were talking about how there is the interability, liquidity, accessibility.
How about, you know, Horizons, Layer 3 app chains,
how does that leverage basic scalability and Ethereum's security as well
to enhance, you know, Zen's performance and adoption?
Yeah, so there's a lot of choices that projects need to make when they decide, you know, going to be a standalone layer one, going to be a layer two.
The great thing is that Ethereum is extremely decentralized and continues to develop it by being by operating within a layer two or even a layer three environment.
So we leverage all the security
that Ethereum pays for. So we don't have to pay for that security by being a scalability layer
on top of Ethereum. So we get a ton of security from there, which is a big change because our
previous blockchain, what we've been running for the last
eight years, has been proof of work. So we've had miners that have been providing security
to Horizon. And it's wonderful that these miners have bought the dedicated ASIC machines and run
them and provided security. Mining has also taken 60% of the block reward. And I used to mine a lot. So you do have
to pay for your electricity. So you end up having to sell a good part of what you mine. And so we're
excited that we're not going to have that selling pressure anymore. But we're getting the security of Ethereum through base. So I feel it's the
security is right there and it's solid. Scalability. Now that's one of the neat things.
So base is a really good L2, but if you want to build applications, it helps to have a lot of dedicated block space. So that's why having an L3 app
chain on top of base, we get dedicated block space, which allows our applications to scale
while keeping the transaction costs low. There's a bunch of developer tools that are pre-done.
So our team here at Horizon Labs, a lot of our time and effort has been involved in maintaining and improving the existing blockchains.
By having Horizon now be first a token and then an app chain, we don't have to worry about developing the blockchain technology anymore.
That comes from the ecosystem.
So we can focus on making sure that we have really good apps and getting people to use them.
We get all the security of the ecosystem that comes to us without having to pay for it, really, other than transaction fees.
Nice. Thank you so much.
I would like to kind of go into some of the open floor questions.
And some of the questions were asked during the time that we um posted the the posts because uh some
of them these these are the questions that uh people were kind of interested at and talking
about different um culture and different uh markets actually so from ansan underscore our
one southeast asia is a very vibrant market and there are a lot of new platforms under development.
So what do you think about Southeast Asia and do you have plans to grow there?
It's a very kind of different questions on just focusing on Zena and migration.
So I just wanted to kind of add on to the role.
wanted to kind of add on onto the role.
Yeah, so Southeast Asia is a really important market,
as is Chinese mainland.
And so, like I said earlier, we're
fortunate that we have many existing Zen holders
in Eastern Asia.
And we want to make sure that we continue
to support those users and to grow our base.
So within the applications that are developed, one of the things that we encourage the developers that are getting grants to do is make sure that the applications are internationalized so that they can be used in every market. And I want to say that we're not
really focused on any one geographic area over another. We want to have users and developers
from all over the world. And now I went to Token 2049 in Singapore last year, extremely dynamic, a lot of energy, really enjoyed going to that.
I'm planning to go to Bitcoin Asia in Hong Kong next month.
And one of the things that we've learned, and I mean, we have team members all over the world, including in Singapore.
So by committing to being part of that market and making sure that we follow through on it, I think that demonstrates that Southeast Asia is a very important geography to us.
And talking about token2049, any other events that you guys will be holding on?
So if your Horizon fans or supporters will be able to meet you guys there?
Any plans that you'll be attending?
We've noticed that we get the most traction in going to Ethereum-focused events and zero-knowledge-focused events.
So, for example, we had a good presence at ETHCC in France recently.
There's going to be ETH Global in New York City in August.
So we're going to have a presence there.
We have team members that work in New York City.
Obviously, that's a very important financial market. Of course. Yeah, absolutely. And we're
going to have a good presence again at token 2049 this year in Singapore, as well as ETH New Delhi, which is just before that. So we have a strong Debrail team in India.
We have a lot of people there.
In fact, we're going to have a hacker house at ETH India.
And we also are having a hacker house that we're sponsoring at ETH Vietnam.
So in early August, there is GM Vietnam and then ETH Vietnam.
So we're going to have team members there.
Nice.
And then there was one other one.
Oh, Korea Blockchain Week, of course.
So we're going to have lots of good presence at all these events.
And to us, the most exciting and enjoyable events turn out to be in Asia.
I'm hoping that we'll get the same level of excitement in North America.
We were at ETH Denver.
ETH Denver is really a solid Ethereum-focused conference.
So we're going to continue to be at ETH Denver, but that's not until February next year.
And then DevConnect, Buenos Aires.
Got to go to that.
Nice.
All right.
You have a lot of plans within the traveling.
So, so kind of just let me wrap it up.
There is all in India, Delhi, there's Singapore token 2049.
There is New York.
And then there is Vietnam, GM Vietnam.
Yeah, a lot of traveling to be done.
And also you already did ETHCC in Chinese.
I actually wanted to go there as well,
but there were kind of complicated kind of schedules
that I had to miss that one.
But yeah, ETHCC.
Yeah, it was hot it was like singapore hot
there in france this year so uh and then uh we'll be at bitcoin asia too in hong kong so yeah
oh vivian i think i might have lost you
might have lost you. Well, until I get you back, there are some other things. Let me
check the questions here. Okay. So one question that I know Vivian had asked is what role
will Zen play in Horizon's L3 ecosystem? So it's always a question of why would you want to buy a token? Why would
you own it? So first of all, Zen is absolutely going to continue to be a large part of the
governance. So Zen has been operating under a DAO, Cayman Island DAO, since 2023. We do put all major
in Cayman Island Dow since 2023.
We do put all major ideas up for a vote.
And right now you can see the results of that vote.
We talk about the votes and the ideas in discourse
and then vote on them using snapshot.
But we got to have more utility for Xen than that.
So the plan is that any of the privacy-focused applications,
and you can see this in our grants,
the words we have on our grants program,
is they've got to use Xen in the privacy application.
So Xen is going to, it's the token to be used
in the privacy-focused applications
running on the on the horizon
app chain so we're we're working to continue to have horizon be um thought of as you know
the place that you go to if you want to have um solid useful privacy focused applications
privacy-focused applications.
Nice.
All right.
Thank you so much, Rolf.
And then can you also take a open floor question from the audience, please?
Please.
Do you have one queued up?
I'll take any questions.
Love it.
Okay.
So one question from Anthony Sagora, because I'm taking on different angles now. Nearly 85% of investors focus on only short-term token value instead of understanding the actual value of the project. Can you tell our investors about the motivation and benefits of holding your tokens in the long run? Hey.
That's a good one. And, you know, it's actually what we've learned is you need to be able to address both the short and long term investors.
So we have a solid and experienced marketing team.
And to make sure we put out lots of good content
and then have that technical content and leadership content reflected out there so we keep
everybody up to date on what's going on. And one of the things that we've had in our community
that we've had in our community is for the long-term holders, Zen over the years has had
staking. So we started out with secure nodes and then we went to super nodes. And then when we had
the EVM, we had forging nodes. So people were able to stake their Zen and to be able to gain
additional Zen by doing that. Now that was because we were on
a emissions curve that's very similar to Bitcoin. So if you remember, if you know the Bitcoin
emissions curve, there's a halving that happens every four years. So we actually went through
two different halvings. And in December of last year, the amount of new Zen that was being created was not as much. And so people
weren't able to earn as much by holding Zen and staking it as they had been previously.
So that was part of the idea of us saying, okay, well, how can we get people that hold
Zen to be able to earn more Zen? And if you look at our grants program, that's actually one of the goals is that if people
that have Zen design applications that have the ability
for people to use their Zen in that application to earn more,
a basic idea of that is creating a liquidity pool.
If you create a liquidity pool in a decentralized exchange,
you're able to earn more Zen by providing liquidity to it.
There's also, so that's a goal that we have is to be able to have people earn more Zen
with their existing Zen.
And so we're working to have that integrated into the applications.
And one of the reasons that we have grant programs is that we want to have the creativity of the software developers out there really put to work for us.
And so we're going to see lots of different ideas on how people can use Zen to earn more Zen.
Yes, I think that's how investors basically look into it, right?
They're like, so what do I gain from this? What's the ROI of holding then?
But yeah, I think from a long-term partnership point of view,
Horizon has been here for a while and quoting from Rolf,
they've actually also went through two Bitcoin halving as well as us.
So, yeah, we kind of know that, you know, it's not only just, you know, what do you get straight away, but it's also kind of like they've been doing work and they've been building and they've been improving.
been improving um to add on to that they want go on and onto that so when that within the tokenomics
So maybe to add on to that.
Go on.
and there's been a lot of studies on tokenomics is you have to create sources and sinks and which
you basically have to create supply and demand so we know what the supply of zen is it's it's capped
the 21 million it doesn't have inflation so that in itself um by capping the supply and making sure that a lot of it is spent,
that addresses one part of the equation. So the other part is, how do you create demand?
And long term, you create demand by having useful applications that people need a token to be able
to use. So if we can create really useful applications that require Zen to be used as the gas for those applications, then people will buy Zen to be able to use those applications.
So that's a really long term answer because that takes years to really get people to develop and use.
but we're always looking at the overall sources and sinks,
the supply and demand side of things and say,
how can we create demand for Xen to have it actually be useful?
I mean, being part of the project, buying the token,
being part of the governance,
showing your support for the project by buying the token,
that's very important.
But we want people outside our existing ecosystem to say,
wow, those are some really
cool apps. I'm going to buy some Zen and go use those apps. And that creates demand. That
makes the price go up over time. And that provides long-term value.
Here we go. Thank you so much, Ralph. And thank you for the question, Anthony underscore Saigor11. And then there's two more that I'm actually quite
interested
at asking the questions
too, actually.
How will this upgrade
affect current tokenomics
to supply staking rewards
or inflation offset from
Web3 underscore
Guy33? That's something that's very
practical for the users.
It's super practical.
And I'm glad you asked that question because one of the things that we've talked to our community about
and we've heard from our community is they want Zen to be limited to 21 million.
No inflation beyond that.
And so when we first started this process at the beginning of the year,
16 million Zen had
already been mined and were already in circulation. Now, some of that Zen that got mined got paid to
the treasury, but not a lot of it. And so we said, okay, well, we've got 16 million mined and we have
a limited 21 million. What can we do to really get people excited about Zen?
And we noticed, and we were actually a little bit jealous of some other projects that had gone out and gotten investors and done all sorts of other things.
And they had a good amount of money in their treasury.
They said, oh, you know, they got a long runway
because they got a lot of money in their treasury.
And so we redesigned the tokenomics and put it to vote,
and it was passed, where as the transition happened,
the 5 million Zen that hadn't been mined gets minted
and then put into escrow.
So timed lockup over four years.
And so some of that Zen is released to the foundation and to the Dow to be able to spend on things.
So over the next four years, the Horizon Dow will receive 3 million Zen, which at today's price is about $30 million.
And we've had a vote on how to use that Zen.
And a million of that Zen over the next four years is going to be used for grants programs.
And the other 2 million is going to be done as treasury management.
And so part of that treasury management is used to maintain Zen in a little bit in Bitcoin,
a little bit in Ethereum, a little bit in USDC. And it can also be used to provide liquidity pools
indexes. And then the other 2 million is going to be
distributed over four years to the foundation, which is going to be used for operations.
Running a blockchain, it requires some ongoing operational costs. There's payroll costs. You've
got to have RPC providers, indexers, other things like that. So that gives the foundation and the
DAO funds to make sure that
we're going to continue to operate so we're able to have a long-term view. And then we're setting
things up from an application standpoint. You can go look at the grants program that we want to
make sure that the foundation and Dow continues to receive Zen from investing in different applications
and things like that. So the tokenomics, the cap of 21 million is in effect. We're minting
5 million and putting it on a four-year distribution. And none of the zen that is being minted well very little of it can be
sold right away because it's all being maintained by the dow and the foundation and that's all the
zen that the down foundation is going to have there's no inflation that's going to be provided
for that so there's no more staking and there's no more mining as of today oh all right here we go because yeah because um
also a bit of background information um you know horizon actually was a good partner of ibdc as
well so this is something that uh all the miners can definitely take in consideration on that regard.
You know, Horizon has gone in a different route
and an
upgrading route too.
Alright.
Okay. And the last
question of the night then,
please, Rolf, also from the
open floor questions from the audience
of tonight, there were
like around 800 plus comments
so our sns manager has to work really hard for to choose the great questions for our team so also um
how does uh horizon uh incorporate community feedback to its development process particularly
through initiatives like the horizon improvement proposal Proposal, HIP.
Can you share an example of a community suggestion that significantly shaped a recent protocol update from bullish pizza 690?
So if you look at our governance documents, the way that we have our governance set up is we have zen ips and
they're either technical zen improvement pro uh proposals uh or non-technical and they they have
different amounts of voting that's required for quorums and for passing them and this is uh being
managed by by snapshot so one of so some of the proposals come from horizon labs because the team
at horizon labs is really focused on making sure that uh horizon uh gets improved and works long
term we put a lot of thought and effort into it we do have other proposals uh that come from the
community i'm hoping that we're going to, that the community will become
even more active in proposing new initiatives because, you know, ideas, good ideas come from
everywhere. And so by having people be active about it, one of the proposals that is under discussion in discourse is we made a change a few years back where
Horizon had transparent transactions that anybody could see on the blockchain and private transactions
that were done in a privacy pool. And we made the decision as a project to no longer have that private payment capability.
So we had to have people that to move all their Zen from the private pool side over to the transparent side.
So one of the proposals that's under discussion is as we go through this migration and after the migration is done,
if people can prove that they had Xen on the privacy side and weren't able to transfer it
over before that change was made, that they would be able to claim that back. So that's a proposal
that's under consideration. You know, it's not a big, you know, hey, there's, you know, we're going to make these major changes.
It's a minor change.
But for the people who had Zen and weren't able to access it because of the change, it's really important to them.
So we want to make sure that we're open to having these types of proposals and being able to work through an action on them.
Amazing. Thank you, Rolf. I appreciate a lot of questions from the audience from the open floor. It's actually still increasing as we speak.
is still increasing as we speak.
I see that. 888.
Yeah, it's
pretty amazing. Joyce, shall
we go for another one to
answer? I can't
leave these 888
questions alone. Can we just choose
one more, just one more
for Rolf
to answer and we'll wrap it up from there
because, you know,
Joyce has commented to me
there's a lot of crazy amount of
people.
Yeah, I think
maybe we shall
unmute one of our audience to
ask a live Q&A.
Yeah, let's go.
Okay, I guess pick it randomly.
Yeah, you choose, Joyce.
I'll give you that power.
And then Rolf, please answer it as accordingly then, please.
All right, Joyce, I'll give you that power.
Okay, I just unmute an audience from Fris.
So I allow him to speak.
Hi, Fris.
Hi, Fris.
Hi. speak hi face hi face hi maybe he's not like uh hi hi hi hear us yeah yeah go on yeah amazing um i i've seen you having so many hands up for wanting to speak. So what's the exciting questions that you have for Rolf tonight then, please?
auditing process have these contacts undergone and what are measures are in
place to ensure their security and immediate ability so the way I
understand your question is the about the Zen contracts on base and yes
security is really important so we've had for the migration.
Well, we have about, I think it's like five to seven smart contracts on base for the Zen token.
And these are all on our GitHub.
They're all published.
You can go to the base explorer and see those smart contracts.
and see those smart contracts. So before deploying them, we actually had two different
third-party security reviews of the smart contracts. So one of them was done by Spearbit,
another was done by Halborn, and we've published those third-party security reviews of the smart
contracts. And at the beginning of the process, we actually did find, or the third party reviewers
did find some potential security issues that we addressed
before deploying those smart contracts to production.
And then as always, we do have a bounty program
for people that find security concerns and submit them through our security aspect.
So we have a security team at Horizon Labs. And even though we have a security team at Horizon
Labs that manages this, we still believe it's really important for our community and the
ecosystem at large to have third-party security reviews.
So for this migration,
not only did we have third-party security reviews
of the smart contracts,
also of the migration tools and the scripting tools
and the claiming website.
So we feel that it's pretty secure,
but even though we've had the two different organizations
do the review, we still have a bounty program as well.
So I think that's following industry standards, security best practices, and we try to do
things the right way.
Even though getting those third-party security reviews are expensive, it's important to do
that.
Thank you, Rolf.
And thank you, Fizzizz underscore books for your question.
Okay and then also kind of also something I'm curious about as well. So also an open
for all question as well from PT 003. What's the biggest hurdle in the Zen migration database?
How is the team tackling it?
I know there is Horizon Labs and I think you've been kind of shilling them for a good amount
of time and because of how amazing the Horizon Labs team members are.
So what's the kind of the biggest hurdle that you guys had to face?
Well, so from the very beginning of Horizon launching as Zencash, the biggest hurdle for any project is to get people to care that you exist and then to get them to buy into your vision.
And so to me, one of the the migration that we're doing is a very uncommon migration, because when you have your own layer one blockchain, you know, people ask, why would you want to go to a token? Why would you want to be part of a different ecosystem? So explaining the motivation behind that is sometimes difficult.
difficult. But what we've learned over the years is, you know, if we want actually our project to
be used, you have to make it easy for people and you have to make it useful and you have to be part
of a really large and engaged community. I think you're going to see more projects doing something
similar. So explaining what it is that we're doing and why we're doing it has been very challenging.
explaining what it is that we're doing and why we're doing it has been very challenging.
Now, I'm not on the development team, but I have been talking with the development team
and figuring out the specific custom methods.
And our team developed the custom methods to do this was to figure out how to go from
Bitcoin's type accounts on a blockchain to Ethereum type accounts?
I don't know that anybody has made that type of migration before.
So it's technically challenging to do all the work that our team has done.
I can't explain how technically challenged in England
because they take care of it. But it's not just a basic thing that our team is doing.
It's advanced. And yes, I am shielding Horizon Labs, but Horizon Labs is really one of the
top teams in the crypto space. And I'm proud to work with them.
I'm so glad that someone has showed their own team so many times. I must be so proud of them.
All right. All right. All right.
Okay. Thank you, Rolf, once again, so, so, so much
for your thorough answers to the questions that were asked
from the audience,
from the open team or open floor, and also from, you know, the Yawa questions.
So guys, don't forget that Rov and their team will be answering a lot more questions on detail
on the post blog post as well.
So don't forget about that.
And also there will be another
ama pretty soon in around august time so don't forget yeah just keep the hype up because i think
the horizons migration and a lot of people have been looking at it and and everybody knows horizon
has been horizon has been such a long-term project. So yeah, we are also very looking forward to,
you know, what's the plan change, what's it going to be like after the migration as well. So also
a lot of migration questions are also available on their own official website and also on, you know,
the, yeah, they have a lot of video content as well, explaining what it is.
So feel free to also ask further questions and keep the questions up for the next AMA as well.
And Rolf, do you have any further, you know, last comments that you wanted to tell the community before we wrap it up?
So Vivian and Joyce, I really wanted to thank you all for this opportunity.
It was your idea to have this AMA
and I'm excited to be here.
So thank you very much for organizing it
and making it happen.
And all I have to do is show up and talk.
So I really appreciate that.
Yeah, love working with CoinX
and via BTC over the years.
I want to thank everybody who has mined. I've been a miner over the years and worked with ViabTC. And I know when I mined Zen, I used ViabTC. So that's important to me. I'm excited about our future. We're engaged. We've got a lot going on. We've been around for a long time.
We're going to be around for a long time.
So be part of the Horizon community.
Be active.
Bye, Zen.
And we'll look forward to talking to you in August.
Absolutely.
All right.
Thank you so much once again, team.
And I appreciate all the time.
And have a great day great week ahead
talk to you guys soon thank you bye thank you and bye
