There are a lot of privacy coins currently on the market. All offering unique and supposedly revolutionary technology. Horizen (ZEN) is one of those. This fork-of-a-fork cryptocurrency used to be called Zencash until a rebranding in 2018. However, this was much more than a rebranding. The Horizen team used it as an opportunity to reinvent the cryptocurrency with a whole host of features and improvements.
What is Horizen?
Horizen (ZEN) is a privacy focused blockchain that is a fork of ZClassic which was itself a fork of Zcash. As such it is one of the privacy coins that makes use of Zcash’s ZK-snark technology. This highly advance privacy technology makes use of Zero Knowledge Proofs.
The Horizen network has been created to encompass a variety of privacy-focused projects, which include:
- A decentralized autonomous organization;
- A private messenger (ZenChat);
- An anonymous publishing platform (ZenPub);
- A TOR-like domain fronting service (ZenHide.
In addition, there is the ZEN cryptocurrency, a full suite application called Sphere by Horizen, ZenNodes, and Horizen sidechains (currently in Alpha as of January 2020).
ZEN Cryptocurrency
Horizen (or ZenCash at the time) did not hold an ICO, since ZEN was created as a fork of the ZClassic (ZCL) blockchain. That fork occurred on May 23, 2017 at block number 110,000 and ZEN was issued on a 1:1 basis to holders of ZCL.
Then, on the 22nd of August in 2018, the ZenCash team decided that a rebranding was in order. This was done in order to provide a springboard for much more than just a privacy coin – I will cover this in more detail below.
ZEN uses the Equihash algorithm to achieve consensus and is a Proof-of-Work blockchain. The current block reward for ZEN is 7.5 ZEN, with blocks being mined roughly every 2 ½ minutes. Just like Bitcoin, the rewards are halved roughly every four years.
Unlike Bitcoin, the block rewards are not all for the miners. Instead, 70% goes to the miners, 20% is split evenly between Secure Nodes and Super Nodes, and the remaining 10% goes to the Horizen Team Treasury.
Secure nodes are what you might normally consider to be master nodes. They require the node owner to stake 42 ZEN. The Horizen (ZEN) secure nodes are unique in that they use node-to-node TLS encryption to secure all communications.
Horizen Products
As mentioned above, Horizen (ZEN) is building out a full suite of tools that would add privacy for enterprise applications. The functions and products that have been developed so far are:
- ZenCash – ZEN is the cryptocurrency behind Horizen, and it was created to fulfill the original purpose of Zcash, which was to act as an anonymous financial tool.
- ZenChat – Encrypted messaging is nothing new. Because our communications are always being monitored Horizen created ZenChat, which encrypts transactions on an end-to-end basis using AES-256 encryption.
- ZenHide – ZenHide uses domain fronting (similar to TOR) to circumvent censorship by hiding the remote endpoint of communications. It does this by using HTTPS to communicate with a forbidden host while appearing to communicate with some other host.
- ZenNodes – ZenNodes were created to help enforce the blockchain’s rules, and Horizen boasts one of the largest node networks in a multi-tiered node architecture. Horizen’s large and geographically dispersed node network improves the reliability, resilience, and speed of the network. There are three node types: Full Nodes, Secure Nodes, and Super Nodes.
The Horizen Community
With its long history stretching back to ZenCash it shouldn’t be too surprising that Horizen (ZEN) has a solid and diverse community behind it. Over at Twitter, there are over 46,000 followers, and the Facebook page has over 8,400 followers. The subreddit for the project is just shy of 3,000 readers, which isn’t the biggest Reddit following, but it is a strong one, with regular updates being posted and multiple comments on each posting. Telegram was a bit more discouraging with just under 1,700 members.
Finally, we were pleasantly surprised with the YouTube channel of Horizen. Many cryptocurrency projects either ignore YouTube, or have a channel without much good content. Horizen has over 130 videos going back 2 years, and they continue to be active on the platform. They also have over 8,000 subscribers, which is pretty darn good for a blockchain project on YouTube.
Trading & Storing ZEN
You can purchase ZEN at over a dozen different exchanges, with the largest volume being exchanged at Binance. There is also a good amount of volume changing hands at DragonEx, TOKOK, Huobi Global, and Bittrex. If you don’t want to buy ZEN, but still want a small amount you can get it from the ZEN Daily Faucet.
Taking a bit of a closer look into the liquidity on the exchanges, the only one that has any real liquidity appears to be Binance. Having said that, the bid-ask spread is quite wide and the order books don’t appear to be too deep. Hence, you should exercise caution when placing large block orders on the exchange.
Your best option for holding your ZEN securely has to be that of a hardware wallet. ZEN is supported on both the Ledger Nano and Ledger X devices. You can also store it on the Trezor Hardware device but in this case you would need to buy the model T.
Conclusion
Horizen (ZEN) has made itself stand out from the crowd of privacy coins by getting away from the focus on basic anonymity and privacy. The full suite of tools being offered by Horizen appeals not only to individuals, but also to enterprise users, and that could be the key to ZEN adoption.
The main criticism of ZEN is that it uses the same Zerocash protocol that was developed for ZCash, and there are rumors of a backdoor in the code that would basically eliminate any privacy for the coin and blockchain. But Horizen has a lot going for it, from the ZenPub and ZenChat applications, to the development of sidechains that will allow for the hosting of any dApp or blockchain right alongside ZEN.
With these pieces in place, and with the coming launch of ZenDAO, Horizen has positioned itself well to become a sustainable blockchain ecosystem. The tools being developed are suited to the enterprise user.
